My final research question is "How can technology improve parent involvement in a K-12 child's education?" My audience are parents, teachers, and students K-12, so I have a pretty big audience which is good because I can share my knowledge and research with a lot of individuals. My audience will benefit because technology allows for enhancement in communication and parent involvement in schools. Technology could be one of the solutions to decreasing the drop out rates and increasing college enrollment. Also, technology can help bridge the gap from school to home in K12 education in various ways. For one, parents can view their child's grades online and see what their schedule looks like week to week. Instant messaging or online chatting allows parents and teachers to communicate while their students are working in the classroom. Also, a teacher can create a chat room and invite several parents to chat together about the curriculum, concerns, and their students.
My final product will be a poster board. On the poster board, I will have my final research question at the top of the poster and underneath, I will share all the different tools, resources, and ways to help bridge the gap from school to home.
The peer evaluations are very helpful for my 20% project. Julia brought up an interesting thought, which would have never crossed my mind. Julia, who peer evaluated my paper, stated "I would continue to find this kind of strong evidence to back up your arguments because it is very likely you will find many people (particularly students) who disagree with granting this much access to parents." That was a very intellectual thought and from this critique, I will present different sides to this issue like, partial access, regulated access, or selective access for the older age groups.
A concern I have is that students may not like this idea as much as the teachers and parents because some students may not like the idea of their teacher and parents communicating as well as parents having the ability to look at their child's work. In order to overcome this obstacle, I will present on my poster board how this issue is beneficial to students. For example, I will mention, "Parents who monitor their student’s school work and daily activities, communicate frequently with teachers and help develop their children’s plans for education or work after high school have children who are more likely to graduate from high school and to pursue post-secondary education" (Henderson & Berla, 1994). Hopefully, this makes students more eager to have technology improve parent involvement.
My next step will be to do more research on how to get students to support and appreciate this idea. I will also do more research on the different alternatives for parent access like having partial, regulated, and selective access. I agree that these regulated accesses should be available for students in upper grade levels, like 9-12 grade. I am looking forward to digging deeper with this project and I hope my audience enjoys my topic!
My final product will be a poster board. On the poster board, I will have my final research question at the top of the poster and underneath, I will share all the different tools, resources, and ways to help bridge the gap from school to home.
The peer evaluations are very helpful for my 20% project. Julia brought up an interesting thought, which would have never crossed my mind. Julia, who peer evaluated my paper, stated "I would continue to find this kind of strong evidence to back up your arguments because it is very likely you will find many people (particularly students) who disagree with granting this much access to parents." That was a very intellectual thought and from this critique, I will present different sides to this issue like, partial access, regulated access, or selective access for the older age groups.
A concern I have is that students may not like this idea as much as the teachers and parents because some students may not like the idea of their teacher and parents communicating as well as parents having the ability to look at their child's work. In order to overcome this obstacle, I will present on my poster board how this issue is beneficial to students. For example, I will mention, "Parents who monitor their student’s school work and daily activities, communicate frequently with teachers and help develop their children’s plans for education or work after high school have children who are more likely to graduate from high school and to pursue post-secondary education" (Henderson & Berla, 1994). Hopefully, this makes students more eager to have technology improve parent involvement.
My next step will be to do more research on how to get students to support and appreciate this idea. I will also do more research on the different alternatives for parent access like having partial, regulated, and selective access. I agree that these regulated accesses should be available for students in upper grade levels, like 9-12 grade. I am looking forward to digging deeper with this project and I hope my audience enjoys my topic!