Parental Support
Parentsplace publishes online newsletters and provides two chat groups for parents...
Links
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-afraid-about-information-highway/dp/B0006QTR1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=120926158
8&sr=1-1
Pregnancy & Parenting publishes online guides and provides chat groups for parents. The topics are wide-ranging, such as nutrition and aids for single parents. If your parent body has limited access, you could download material for students to take home.
The Everything You Need to Know....book introduces parents to online terminology, equipment, safety information, activities and resources (organized by age group). As a professional, you might want to share this with your parents.
The University of Illinois-CI hosts the National Parent Information Network with trends in child development, home activities, access to experts, and model programs.
The Children's Television Workshop has placed its parents magazine online. Not only are there activities for young children but also archives and articles on perhaps as many as 100 topics for parents. The quality of this publication is very high. We can see another model of telecommunications: parents can turn quickly to a topic for advice when a crisis, such as the loss of a loved one, occurs rather than frantically searching through old magazines.
The Childrens Partnership publishes a guide to the information superhighway. It explains the Internet and includes family activities. The Guide can be purchased or downloaded from the site.
Family.Com promotes 40 parenting publications and the site is cluttered with ads. On the other hand, excerpts from magazines, such as an article about the war on phonics, tackle current controversies and explain the background and decision points very clearly and without too much of the bias found so frequently elsewhere.They are a big help in translating sometimes complex educational issues into language which parents can understand. This process is just as important for well- or less-educated parents.
While controversial, many people have taken up the banner of promoting "child safety" on the Internet. WiredKids will be helpful but parents (that is why this listing is posted here)need to put their own brand on the issue of balancing freedom v. safety.
Annotation
Online services and other groups will begin to offer more publications and exchange opportunities for parents, because their role in education is receiving increasing attention by the media. Coordinating resources between the school and home is another important dimension of school-home partnering.
