Parents’ Views towards Improve Parent-School Collaboration with Mobile Technologies

AbstractThis study underlines the importance of mobile technologies in school family cooperation process and is done to specify expectations of parents of children who go to elementary and primary schools at Nicosia in TRNC from mobile technologies and their opinions and capacity of mobile learning. In this study which is conducted in a survey model frame, 790 parents involved in the study group to specify parent's level of using mobile tools, their opinions on usage of mobile devices in an educational purpose and on increasing the school-family cooperation with mobile technologies. The conducted survey approved that majority of parents have computers, internet connection and they have membership to social networking sites. Starting from this point, especially in creating family awareness on shcool-family cooperation subject getting help from mobile technologies can be possible. Also as a result of the study, this is confirmed that parents use cell phones, laptops and Smartphone the most. This can be seen that parents have the technical background for improving shcool-family cooperation and family participation; however this is confirmed that the least used devices are personal digital assistants, tablet computers, portable playstations, media players and as a result parents need an education on the usage of these type of mobile devices. This is confirmed that parent's opinion on the usage of mobile devices in an educational purpose is generally positive. On the other hand, this is proved that the parent's opinion on school-family cooperation and family participation with mobile technologies are positive. Parents stated that they can take education and information from concerned people of school with mobile technologies on child development and education. Also they specified the necessity of communicating with mobile technologies to take school-family cooperation to an advanced level