Does your school offer on-campus education presentations for parents? You might have your admin and teachers periodically sharing information on your programs. Our Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) team has given a few information-sharing sessions with parents at the Washington International School. You can access them in the Parent section of our Library Website.
Sometimes these presentations can be rushed as there is so much information to share with parents. There can be limited time for parents to process the information to be comfortable asking questions. Attendance at these presentations can also be problematic. While it can be helpful to post the presentations online as we do, they still need all the verbal explanations of each slide.
As we are blending and flipping PD, staff meetings, etc., doing the same with these parent information sessions makes sense. Schools can do a video recording of the presentation sessions to post to the Web afterward. Another approach is to thoroughly blend the learning by creating screencasts and videoing the presentations ahead of time for parents to view before the day of the presentation. They then can attend the presentations or decide that they have all the information needed on the topic.
The value of blending by giving parents visuals and audio ahead of time is just the same as with their children. They have time to consume the information at their own pace to build their understanding while formulating questions. The questions can be posted to the school’s LMS forum to keep the discussion virtual.
Another approach is to blend the learning by requesting that parents view the presentation video to bring their questions and ideas to the on-campus presentation. This shifts the focus of the meeting time to a discussion and learning opportunity as the presentation has already been made.
