School district and school based leaders who understand and believe in the power of parent involvement to impact student success (the research is overwhelming) face a new challenge and a fantastic opportunity. We must find new, effective ways to reach out to our parent communities, bring parents into our circle of influence and do all of this more cost and time efficiently. The great opportunity is to be able to use the tools we now have readily available to reach out to parents and involve them in the education and growth of their children. Here is a short re-cap on Tom Unwin's presentation. The link for the full presentation is available at the end of this article.

Tom Unwin is the CEO and President of JK Thomas & Associates, Ltd based in Vancouver, BC. Tom is a former district school administrator who has extensive contacts with state and district administrators across North America. He is an expert in professional development, a former teacher, elementary principal, middle school principal and high school principal. Tom has also worked at the school level in curriculum development and implementation, teaching personnel, leadership development, career education, adult education, international education, funding and financial planning, as well as implementing a wide range of district wide innovations. He worked in the Ministry of Education in British Columbia as a regional coordinator - working with school districts to implement policy and programs. Currently he is consulting with U.S. state educational leaders and Canadian educational to design their professional development initiatives for K12 environments - both in a web based format and traditional face to face venues.

Tom gave an excellent presentation on how to effectively be using the internet to benefit your school district and how to deal with technology. Often times, it's hard to break the thought process, "It's old, but it still works." The most effective way to get beyond this, is to teach administrators and teachers just how easy the new technology is to use. The internet or web, is the future of technology and if districts are not fully utilizing it, they will fall behind. One of the greatest forms of communication now is email. Tom posed the question, "Has email made it so we have more work or less work?" Most attendees agreed that while it did ease the work load, it increased the amount of work we had to do. Enewsletters and web sites are also growing forms of communication. Some of the most common barriers that appear when dealing with new technologies are: no computers at home, lack of understanding, and lack of support by superiors. Tom discussed some approaches to take when dealing with these barriers.

He also talked about the uses for an online meeting room. Such as being able to have live and inter-active meetings that can be recorded viewed later by anyone. Lots of districts face the problem of having low attendance by parents at meetings. An excellent way to increase numbers is to hold the meetings online at a time most convenient for parents. This is where JK Thomas & Associates would step in and help in any way they could.

This seminar was full of excellent ways to more effectively reach parents and over come the technology/communication barrier. Please watch the recorded session to hear everything that was discussed!

Note: Watch Tom's entire presentations online!
*Registered Viewers- If you want to view this 1 hour webinar again, simply Click Here to Watch!
 

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