Host a Family Tech Night
Dr. Bruce Ellis - bellis@tcea.org - @DrBruceEllis
Get your parents more involved and let them know the great things that your students are doing by hosting a family tech night. Join us for all the details.
What is a Family tech night
A Family Tech Night is a campus-wide event in which:
Students get to share how to use various technologies
Students get to showcase content and products they created via technologies
Parents and students use technology together for fun and learning
Parents get to be the learners
Activities
Scavenger Hunt - Create a scavenger hunt to encourage parents to participate in a variety of activities - not just their child's stuff.
Use Goosechase to create a fun, virtual scavenger hunt. Make it so that many can win by awarding prizes to anyone or any family with over a certain score...instead of just the top person on the leaderboard.
Use Actionbound to create mobile adventures and interactive guides for smartphones and tablets.
Use Google Forms to create a digital scavenger hunt. Here is tutorial for making a scavenger hunt for the classroom but you can modify the activity for parents to encourage them to explore and investigate what you have going on at your Family Tech Night. If Digital Breakouts are more of your style, then check out Tom Mullaney's Digital Breakout Template site for lots of information.
Digital Projects - Have each class work on a digital project that they will showcase at the Family Tech Night. To make it easier give them a list to choose from such as...
Use Story Spheres to create interactive experiences. Parents use their phone along with virtual goggles to view the experience in 360°.
OpenShot Video Editor - Download this free video editing software and have students put together their own video montage of what their class is about.
Educreations - Have students create tutorials for their parents or teach them to use Educreations to make a tutorial while they are at the Family Tech Night. Consider having a iPad cart to use for this activity.
Tech Tutors - Have a location where parents can go to learn to how to use a variety of tech tools that the students use throughout the year. This could be learning to create a quiz in Google Forms, add to a Visitor Sign-in that is made in Google Slides (each family adds a slide to the deck and then fills out fun information about their family), or add a piece of trivia to a large Google Drawings map.
Quiz Rooms - Have several rooms or areas set up for parents to play a quiz with their child...or against another family. Here area few quiz sites to consider using:
Geoguessr - How well can you and your family figure out where you've been dropped in the United States (or the world)? Create one account for everyone to use. Consider getting the pro account ($1.99/mo) for extra fun and features.
Kahoot! - How well do families know history about the school and/or community. Create a Kahoot! and have them compete to see who wins.
Plickers - If you find you need to go low-tech, then use Plickers for parents/students to participate in a quiz
Content Curators- These guides are set up in different parts of the school and help parents/students explore and curate specific content that they can access later from home, school or work. Consider having sites based on content areas such as math, science, physical education and exercise, reading, social studies, art, music, etc. Each room should have a Wakelet collection that is added to. Parents/students search for meaningful content, students locate their favorite online sites, etc. and they work together to add it to the Wakelet collection.
Coder Crew - Consider having areas set up to teach parents how to do coding. Instead of thinking high-level coding, look for coding apps and programs that will allow a noobie to be successful in a short amount of time. Here are a few good ones to consider:
Blockly - This block-based programming is done online. You can start out super easy and easily progress. Have your students go through the track and identify different places that would be suitable for parents to try.
Scratch - This online programming tool can also be downloaded to Mac, Windows, ChromeOS and Android. Consider making "recipe cards" to help parents accomplish different tasks.
Offline Coding - You don't have to have computers to learn programming concepts. Consider choosing a few offline coding activities for students to demonstrate and explain. This is great for early learners and easy for parents to see how it is coding. You might even make it into a game for parents to play.
Exit Ticket - Use Padlet to create an exit ticket in which each family adds to before leaving. They can share their favorite part of the evening, add a photo of their family with the school mascot, and/or give a shout out to their child.
