Getting Ready To Go Back To School

By Author: Arsenalo
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Getting ready to go back to school in the good old days of, say, 1997 meant a few trips to the mall and the stationery aisle and a quick check of the bus route. This year, for many parents, there are some new things to remember: The teacher's e-mail address, the school's website and which night online homework help chat will be offered. "The 1999-2000 school year will be the one where the majority of parents really feel the Internet's influence on their child's education at the everyday level , " says Jonathan Carson , chairman and CEO of the Family Education Co . , which offers a parenting website at www . familyeducation.com and a framework for local schools to create and maintain their own sites.

This year promises to show a quantum leap in the spread of school technology: Parents in many districts can expect to be able to Thomas Sabo Charms check the school lunch menu, read class notes, see activity calendars and view nightly homework assignments—all online. The schools are wired, says Carson. 'A majority of parents now have access and the educators ...
... are ready to go."

Over the summer, parents of high school German students in Ithaca, N. Y. got to be part of a class trip to Europe, through their home computers. The class brought a digital camera and laptop with them to Germany and documented their visit on their web page. Harry Ash, father of 16-year-old traveler Brian, found it reassuring to see his son's smiling face from half a world away. Before their kids left parents had checked the site for scheduling information, a list of activities and advice on cultural differences.

When it's designed well, a district, school or classroom website can change the relationship between the parent and the school, says Cynthia Lapier, Ithaca's director of information and instructional technology. "The more you can involve parents in school, the better." Lapier says. "The technology gives us another way to reach them, especially parents of secondary school students, who tend to be less involved."

Ithaca high school physics teacher Stever Wirt gets e-mail from parents regularly, some from moms and dads he believes might otherwise not pick up the phone with a concern. Using software called Blackboard Courselnfo, Wirt conducts online chats with his students often reviewing for a quiz or discussing homework problems.

The way things are going, by the end of this year, many parents may be fully converted—and in fact dependent upon their schools' technological capabilities. At a recently wired school in Novi, Michigan, the school webmaster was Thomas Sabo Bracelets just a few hours late posting the lunch-menu calendar on the website. In that time, more than a dozen parents called him by telephone to request the information. "A year ago, it never would have been there," says Carson. And now parents are finding it's tough to get by without it.