I’ve been a fan of Dave Winer’s concept of the un-conference ever since I first heard about it. I’ve talked about it before here and tried to garner interest in a Leopard release Chicago Unconference here.

The format is ideal in that it doesn’t place anyone’s agenda or pre-conceived notions above those of anyone else in attendance at the conference. This is exactly the type of environment I think we (educators in general and education leaders specifically) need to hash out this relatively new cornerstone of education. Parental involvement has always been touted as a key indicator of student success, but until recently most educators have given it lip-service publicly while dreading it privately. This is all changing in the post NCLB world where the incentives for parent and community input and participation in the education process means more than smiling faces and happy places.

The push toward voucher based education is getting stronger and stronger all the time. It is probably just a matter of time until it becomes law and policy in some form or another (beyond the failing schools clauses of NCLB). The fact is that we are now having to compete for our students, and their parents’ tax dollars.

I propose that one of the most powerful ways to keep the students in the desks and learning, and keep the tax dollars coming in (for public schools) is to take the social buy-in of the private school parent and supporter and mimic, then escalate it in the public sector. Allow parents in, be transparent in decision making, have avenues for meaningful input beyond annual satisfaction surveys and parent-teacher conferences. Make parents and community members true partners in building the image of the school, the brand of the school.

One of the most powerful ways technology is used these days is to increase communication, increase visibility, and to allow for groups to collaborate in asynchronous modes to solve problems, remove distance obstacles, and raise brand awareness. Why aren’t we leveraging these social tools to help us meet the goals of gaining support for our school and school programs with the community. We need to reach out to them before we need their help. We need to ask them to participate in the mundane things so they don’t feel like they are only approached for big or emergency ideas that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

I know there are schools and individuals out there who are successfully employing social media strategies to reach out to their school communities and I think the rest of us need to listen and learn to what is working, what is not, and to build on the base that is out there. The perfect format for this is the unconference.

I’m putting out the call here for educators, technologists, and educational technologists who are interested in working on putting together an “Ed-Tech Unconference on Using Social Media to Reach Stakeholder Communities”.

If you are interested in helping to put this together or just participate as an attendee, please contact me, tweet me, or leave a comment.