Travel Diaries of a Web 2.0 Newbie

Everyday an Open House

Now that our 5-year old has been sucked into the conveyer belt of school life, we have realised that we are both control-freak parents:

- ”What did you do at school today?”
- ”Can’t remember.” (which means, “I don’t want to talk about this just now, I want to play, stop disturbing me.”)
- ”Did you do reading?”
- ”Yes.”
- ”What book did you read?”
- ”Can’t remember.”

and so on.

We want to know what our child has been doing at school, and it not to be a big black hole that he disappears into at the start of the day and reappears from at the other end with no insight into the adventures, or otherwise, that he has been through between these two points in time.

So to have the opportunity for him to show us his work, via internet resources created while at school, would be great. Even better if we could see the work of all the other students in his class and compare it to his. Then we could progress to being ultra-competitive and pushy control freak parents!

I liked the description in this post about the ”delight of the students as they drag their parents by their shirtsleeves through the school, the classroom, their work — pointing out everything that is important to them… The students become the teacher, the leader, the tour-guide. It’s their world. They are proud. They are energized.”
When our son finished school at the end of last year, we got all his books home and he spent ages showing us the things he had done, and we got stories about happened at his table while he was drawing this dinosaur, or what happened the day he drew that dinosaur (actually, there were a worrying number of dinosaurs mentioned – maybe we should work on broadening his horizons?). But he loved showing us all that he had done, and we could see and point out to him how much his work had changed and improved throughout the year. Viewing his work was, for us, much more than just looking at what he had written in his books: it gave us a much more detailed view into his wider school experience. So, if we could get that insight into his work on a more regular basis, and he could share his work with us more often, then the strong connection between school and home that is mentioned by the writer, would become easier to maintain.