Recipe:
1. Computer with audio and usb headsets; internet access and a free Skype account.
2. Create a Skype account register at Skype
The user id you create will be used to connect the other members of your group. WIth this setup you will be able to communicate from one computer to anothercomputer to any where in the world for free.

3. Setup a conference call.
Open your contacts list.

From the menu bar at the top of the screen, select call. From the drop down menu select conference call.

In the conference call widow, Select the contact from the list and move the contact to the second window. Continue to add contacts until you have all the contacts you wish to join the meeting.
When you have finished select start. The conference call will begin and you can start your meeting.

Send your meeting agenda to all the participants by email. You are all set. You can forget about the babysitter.

The biggest issue for me is the barriers that teacher and parents face in using Web 2.0 tools. Computer skills lacking, rationale not understood and not enough time. It has to be easy! One parent suggested a play book of how to roll out a collaborative online classroom when people have limited experience and skills in using web 2.0 tools. Parents and teachers can then easily understand how to use this medium to connect with each other and support student learning.

I see the need to create a demonstration for three different things.

1. How to set up the online classroom using a ning
2. How to interact using a ning
3. How it works to support student learning.

I feel very strongly that this process should be authentic and hands on. When parents and teachers can experience the process the safety issues can be addressed and the benefits will be clear. Parents and teachers have learned how to use email and upload pictures to the Internet. With careful planning I believe a “walk through the process” approach will promote the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. For the moment am going to collect some resources to use.

1. I like this video and how it describes where to start setting up a ning network.

2. How to interact ( example TBD)
3. Demo site. Secure. Request to join moderated. (TBD)

If you have any guidance or suggestions, please let me know what you think works best.

One of the barriers to effective partnerships is little and poor communications. There is great potential for technology to facilitate communications and offer learning experiences for every one. But there are a lot of questions to be answered before structures can be put into place.

Who is in charge? What can be said ? What applications should be used?
Who will pay? what training is necessary? What security and protections are necessary? Who will take care of everything? I went through the process of addressing these questions, searching for answers, connecting with those people who were currently using good communication practices and finding solutions so I thought I would record my experiences and the solutions I found worked.

Who is in charge? What can be said?

If you start out with the approach that this is a joint effort, then the team is in charge. Some people equate being in charge as having the power to spread information regardless of the content. Although that certainly may seem to give an advantage or position of power, if communications do not respect the members of the team, the ensuing conversations will work against the team achieving the intended goal. In this case, making good things happen for children. All good efforts to use technology are wasted if the intent of sharing ideas and working together is to assume a platform that is intended on attacking and embarrassing individuals. I’ve seen parents and teachers assume the power position, misuse the communications to escalate and inflame communities and people suffer as a result. While working on the Student Learning a Parent Focus parent involvement program, I came across a Handbook produced by the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education and this section has good information about facilitating discussions.

What applications should be used? Who will pay? What training is necessary?

There are numerous free web based software applications available for parents and teachers to access. If you have a computer and access to the internet you can be up and running with a web page in a matter of minutes and the only fees are your internet service provider charges. The training part is covered here in some of the screencasts and the help and FAQ sections for the applications you are using.

The tools I am going to identify can be used freely and by most people so there is the freedom to do what you want when you want.
These 4 are my favourite free tools.
Blogger.com - can be used as your own website. Refer to this section
ustream Live broadcasting application with chat function.
wikispaces. use to create a shared web site
Skype Free Voice over protocol services. Free telephone calls on the internet. You can have a free conference call for up to 9 participants - computer to computer voice calls.

Some school Boards offer internet services for teachers to use to connect with their students. Some teachers are using the same services to communicate to parents. But the norm is that there is no time or money allocated to developing online communication resources and on top of that there is the fear factor I talk about in this post

Here is an example of a Blogger.com web page created by Matt Montagne a teacher at the University School of Milwuakee.
Two examples of teacher wiki’s for parents http://parentworkshop.wikispaces.com/ and http://mstechnology.wikispaces.com/Parent+Ed
A parent workshop presented on ustream

I am still in the process of making screen casts to explain how to set up and use a wiki as well as ustream. This a simple video to explain wikis

and here is a video about twitter.com