The focus of parents attending the Chicago toy and Games exhibition earlier this month moved towards educational content, with four of the top 10 products having an educational theme.

“Learning games — where they don’t know they’re learning,” said Dorris Ho-Slomiamy of Rolling Meadows at the Chicago Toy and Game Fair in Schaumburg earlier this month.

“We’re interested in educational games,” said Kim Campbell of Chicago, whose children were exhibiting toys they invented at the Schaumburg fair.

Parents’ infatuation with educational toys doesn’t exactly extend to kids, however, as parents become more interested in the content of the games themselves. Perhaps the following quota

In this age of rapid communication’s we thought that some parents may like a little help to learn what some of the codes on text messages and computer screens mean!

Text Codes

POS Parent Over Shoulder

PIR Parent In Room

P911 Parent Alert

PAW Parents Are Watching

PAL Parents Are Listening

KPC Keeping Parents Clueless

Internet codes

WYCM Will You Call Me?

ASL Age/Sex/Location

MorF Male or Female

KFY Kiss For You

MOOS Member(s) Of the Opposite Sex

ADR Address

LMIRL Let’s Meet In Real Life

HAK Hugs And Kisses

ILU or ILY I Love You

KOTL Kiss On The Lips

SMIM Send Me an Instant Message

SMEM Send Me an E-Mail

WUF Where Are You From?

WYRN What’s Your Real Name?

Emoticons

Winking

:*( Crying

#-) Wiped out, partied all night

%*} Inebriated

%\ Hangover

:-d~ Heavy smoker

:->< Puckered up to kiss

:/i No smoking

The  opportunity to engage parents in the schooling process especially in literacy support is truly international as clearly described in the following article from the Tallahassee Democrat.

We’re known for beating the drum to bring out village support for children in our public schools. In recent months, we’ve championed the need for community partners to help bridge the digital divide, and mentors to help save struggling schools. 

But charity, as the adage goes, begins at home.

Which is why the parent-teacher organization at Bond Elementary merits special commendation for its efforts to engage more parents. After only three parents turned out for the school’s first PTA meeting this year, the group organized a Nov. 10th  rally to boost parent participation. It was attended by an estimated 700 parents and students; at least 70 parents showed up for a reading program seminar the following week.

Both Ursula Staten, vice president of the PTA at Bond, and Tamika Fields, president of the PTA at Pineview Elementary, point to perceptions of inaccessibility and inadequacy as factors that may keep parents and guardians from being more active in parent-teacher organizations.

“Some parents may be intimidated to talk with the principal and teachers because of their education levels,” said Ms. Fields.

As household demographics change, it may take increasingly creative outreach efforts such as the rally at Bond to empower parents/guardians, and to circumvent the pathology that impedes their involvement. Schools could try smaller in-home meetings, weekend gatherings and meeting in off-site locations such as neighbourhood community centres to draw more parents out.

Increasing parent visibility and activity on campus is no simple task, and our hats are off to the parents who work to motivate their colleagues. There are work schedules, kids activities and even traditional parenting paradigms to get around.

The PTA at Kate Sullivan Elementary, for example, encouraged more dads to get involved during their kids’ younger years by sponsoring a “Bring Your Dad to Lunch Day,” said Bob Prather, the school’s PTA president.

No matter how many mentors and community partners pledge time and money to aid our schools, nothing will replace the influence of moms and dads.

“Schools are made by how well they can get parents, mentors and volunteers involved,” Mr. Prather said.

That synergy begins at home.

A well proven fact states if you fire the imagination of children you also gain their attention – an essential ingredient towards efficient learning. A school in Nottingham has proven the point by adopting a central Harry Potter theme to lessons.

Maths has adopted a series of spells and codes to enthral and encourage. Science has included Herbology as a new theme, and teachers have been dressing up to set the scene.

It proves that education can be fun, and fun can be highly educational. By turning lessons into games much of the resistance to learning is removed and the results prove the effort to be well rewarded. Pupils at the Robert Mellors school in Nottingham have moved from the bottom 25% to the top 25% of schools in England in just three years.

A clear case of Learning in Disguise; Dona Chambers, the Headteacher said “They don’t realise we are ticking boxes in the National Curriculum during the games. It has had a phenomenal impact on the whole school. Because learning is so much fun, pupils want to be engaged”.

Supporting this form of fun activity is a large range of educational games used in school. They are now available for use at home to turn that boring homework session into a fun entertaining and imaginative approach to learning. And as the saying goes Practice makes perfect, or more appropriately in learning – Practice make Permanent.

Great new addition to our Modern Foreign Language portfolio. This Spanish language course is designed to enthral young children and adults alike as although children can rapidly learn at a young age adults will find they will learn Spanish as well.

Features Spanish children to create the ideal environment – children learn from children!

Great fun and a terrific hit with the reviewers New York Times and Times Educational Supplement

One of the best educational games we have seen for years. Brand new on the market is a fantastic hand held maths game based on MP3 audio technology. Children aged 6+ are asked maths questions with multi choice answers from over 100 maths topics. Bunja learns from your answers and slowly increases the level of difficulty as you improve your maths. After each group of five correct answers you can enter a chapter of an interactive adventure story set in the jungles of Borneo! To hear more you need to answer another five questions. MP3 makes this a sophisticated game, and Bunja can be heard through its built in speaker or plug it into your favourite headphones !

The dilemma facing many parents concerns the level of help they should give their children. In the UK the state education system has received record levels of investment over the past 20 years with billions of pounds being spend on a variety of teaching doctrines. Concentrating on the core subject of English, maths and science, strident efforts introduced to change the course of achievement have been disappointing.

Despite developments in technology and an acute awareness of the demands of a growing global economy little has been achieved to improve the standards beyond levels achieved 50 years ago. Whilst we have landed men on the moon, seen a supersonic airliner come and go, experienced the onslaught of mobile phones and pc computers, we have failed to provide a large proportion of children with an effective education. It’s not for the want of trying; teachers have endured a barrage of corrective initiatives tested over successive generations of school children which has proven to be of doubtful worth.

The lot of teachers burdened with adopting such measures, continually scrutinised on performance and dealing with changes in society’s attitudes presents a dour image. An emerging level of disruption seen in the classroom, influenced by changing values in society, impacts both on the class achievement and the resilience of the teacher. Reduced resolve shows in the number of trainee teachers leaving the profession within three years of qualifying, and at a senior level the growing gap in deputy heads refusing promotion to Headteacher.

The UK is not alone in this situation. Comments from English speaking countries globally voice similar concerns. A root concern is that average class sizes of 30 are not conducive to effective learning. The dominant performance of independent schools, with an average class size of 17 indicates achievement significantly influenced by the teacher pupil ratio. So what of the future? Having invested billions of pounds over 20 years there must be a better way, yet if it takes a generation to test an initiative, could we fail another generation whilst we wait?

Recently the UK Prime Minister stated the single most important factor in success or failure of children in education are parents. This pivotal theme ran through a major policy review by the UK government department responsible for education. If parents are the key what is their motivation?

Conventional homework is the current means of generating some form of lesson practice at home. But the nature of the text and exercise format is predominately seen as a chore by all parties and tends to exclude effective parental support.

Children spend 15% of their waking hours in school, leaving 85% as a target opportunity. If parents are the key then the home environment needs to be more effectively mobilised. It is essential that a child is also allowed to enjoy their childhood, and any parent adopting the role of learning mentor should ensure they induce an essential element of fun. Children learn more when their imagination as well as their attention is captured, something the 1:1 ratio at home can achieve equally as in class. Ironically the mechanics to activate parents in this role already exists. Modern educational resources developed over the past 10 years are predominately educational games covering the whole curriculum. But the time to play the games in class during the core teaching time can be extremely limited. Therein lies both the problem and opportunity.

Learning has been categorised by the National Training Laboratories into “See, Hear and Do” categories. Studies show the “See and Hear” function in class achieves 45% of learning retention, increasing to 75% through the “Do” process. The use of the educational games at home allows the parent to support their child in the “Do” activity – critically at the pace of the child and in a far more productive manner than conventional homework. The synergy to be gained between the school and parental support can achieve a quantum leap in results. Ideally advice from teachers to mange to learning journey by steering the home activities can improve the educational chances of countless children with minimum investment. Teacher’s teaching and Parent’s practice could become a maxim for the future.

Alistair Owens

From the article written for the USA forum