Working with parents

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Permalink Reply by Danielle on April 28, 2009 at 4:28pm

My own child is not very "technology savvy". I want him to be, and he'll dabble, but it's not his favorite thing to do. He's much more of a dress up and play Batman or shoot hoops kind of kid. With that said, he's on netTrekker right now. In science he's learning about magnets, but it takes him longer to learn than others. So he came home, logged onto netTrekker, grabbed some cookies, and settled in to watch a movie from Dr. Rob the Magnet Man, play an interactive game, and I just heard him ask his cousin for his headphones so he can do read aloud. I don't have to sit right next to him while he's doing this portion of his homework because I feel comfortable with the sites that he'll pull up. Plus, it meets his learning needs. A regular search would be too confusing for him.

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Permalink Reply by Marilyn Olson on February 10, 2009 at 10:54pm

Stevie,
I'm glad to read about all of your different ideas for reaching parents and encouraging them to use NetTrekker. I think information on our school website and maybe an evening to show parents its capabilities would work well at my school. Our Area Education Association put out a pamphlet about using NetTrekker. I should check and see if I can copy it to give to parents.

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Permalink Reply by Stevie Kline on February 13, 2009 at 2:43pm

Hi Marilyn,
I just got another request to do a NetTrekker presentation for a PTA meeting for one of the school districts we serve. I really get excited about having a chance to meet with parents and share NetTrekker. I think sometimes my enthusiam helps them to get excited too. Plus NetTrekker is so user friendly!
One thing that seems to help get parents interested is to ask them something that they would like to find, something that will help them to help their kids. I also do a Google search and then a NetTrekker one to show how using NetTrekker for educational sites is so much easier and faster too and one doesn't have to worry about the quality or safety of the site.

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Permalink Reply by Cathy Chavez on March 20, 2009 at 6:58pm

I work with parents in El Paso. We are already gearing up for summer school. During summer school we hold different sessions for parents. I travel to different schools and show parents how to use netTrekker. Since we have a large non English speaking population, the read aloud feature has been a big hit. Parents are now using netTrekker to learn how to speak English.

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Permalink Reply by Danielle on April 28, 2009 at 4:30pm

A thought- if your school has a reading list, you can copy and paste that list onto a User-Defined Template and save it in a folder. Then you can add a few sites that might enhance some of those readings. Put that folder in the school or district folder for students to access over the summer.

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Permalink Reply by Dawn Crawford, M. Ed. on April 29, 2009 at 8:40am

Danielle -

We developed a Summer Best Practice approach last year that helps schools and districts think about all the creative ways to use the subscription over the summer for kids and parents. One of the things we have seen a lot of interest in is Summer Reading. I am attaching the flier that we send out to schools to help explain some of these ideas.......enjoy!
Dawn

Attachments:

• nTdi_summer_best_practice.pdf, 328 KB

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Permalink Reply by Angie Maccani on April 22, 2009 at 3:37pm

An area of netTrekker I always point out to parents is the Features > References. Here a parent can find links for Math Help to the Zip Code finder! Tabs of Elementary, Middle School and High School all address some same and some different links, check out the References as see all these great links.

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Permalink Reply by Karyn Fillhart on April 30, 2009 at 2:00pm

My district has had parent summits on Saturdays with sessions on a variety of topics including netTrekker. At the most recent summit for our Latino families, one mother stopped me and said, "Where has this been?!?!"

Since the sessions were only 30-40 minutes, I concentrated on the English Learner section, Hotmath, the Standards search, and how to do a search and refine it. I also created a blog of website links (most found through netTrekker) that I shared with them for helping their children. One principal already asked me to do a parent night at her site in the fall.

Probably the most well received was the Hotmath link. Hotmath and netTrekker both provided a WOW factor!

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