I’m a parent in the Somerville public schools, and a professor. I’ve worked for years on helping people talk about educating young people in diverse settings. Now, I’m learning how technology can help.
On the OneVille Project, our hunch is that supporting kids in the 21st century takes an ecosystem of communications between the folks in a young person’s social network. It takes face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting or parent coffee hour), print communications (like a handout in a backpack), and electronic communications (imagine a student emailing his teacher about an assignment, or a basic social networking tool supporting students in running communication about homework.).
As a research team, we’re trying to understand the existing ecosystem of such communications about kids in Somerville. And, we’re testing new tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between key folks in kids’ social networks. Check back in with us regularly to see what we’re finding out!