Parents as Partners is the blog of Canadian Lorna Costantini.

“I am a former trustee, a parent advocate, family studies teacher and a realtor. I recently helped facilitate a parent involvement project with the Niagara Catholic District School Board and the Board wide Parent Involvement committee, the Niagara Catholic Regional School Council. The project involved a focus group of parents and educators developing resources and program to assist parents and teachers form strong working relationships while supporting student learning.a forum for parents and educators to discuss issues related to parents and schools. “

A blog, abbreviated from ‘web log’ is an online diary, a journal in which one person posts their opinions and – generally – invites other people to comment, perhaps sparking a discussion.

The great thing about the blog format is that the blogger can not only say what they want as often as they want, but can easily add video, audio, photos, forms, downloadable files, links and more.

Lorna Costantini’s latest blog post, on 17th October, started like this:

Parents use the internet to get back at teachers.
A principal’s worst nightmare is the havoc a disgruntled parent can have on their own reputation, the school’s reputation, a teacher’s reputation or even the reputation of a student. It is hard enough when the chatter is spread through the parking lot but take the attacks to the global stage and there is no end of stress and anger with one-sided and biased viewpoints filling the pipe.

Read more at http://www.ourschool.ca/

Ms Costantini participated in an online discussion on 19 October on the topic of both encouraging and moderating parent engagement with schools in an online environment.

Listen online or download the audio at http://www.edtechtalk.com/node/4575

Incidentally, EdTechTalk itself is a great resource: http://www.edtechtalk.com/.