Q: Our daughter's high school is offering an online literacy workshop for parents, so we can help teach kids how to use the Internet for homework. However, my daughter knows way more than I do; she's on Instagram and other sites a lot. Why is the school offering this?

A: Just because she's social-media savvy, it doesn't mean that your daughter knows how to choose the best websites for her research report on the early days of the U.S. space program; nor how to distinguish among accurate sources on diet and nutrition and those with a point of view to push.

A recent study released by the New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut shows that, despite the fact that today's teens are digital natives -- strong in social networking, texting, video and gaming, they are incredibly weak when it comes to using the Internet to gain new knowledge, says Donald Leu, the lab's director.

The ability to read on the Internet to learn information is a critically important new area for schools to teach, Leu says.

"There's a big difference between online reading and offline reading," he explains. "Online reading isn't simply taking a passage from a book and putting it on a computer screen."

Online reading is using the Internet to read, evaluate and learn new information -- skills that students need in an increasingly digital world.

Leu calls these new literacies "online research and comprehension" skills. They include:

-- Reading to answer questions and solve problems. This means knowing how to effectively frame or define a search or a question.

-- Reading to locate online information. This means teaching students how to query search engines and quickly scan sources for relevancy in a sea of information.

-- Reading to critically evaluate online information. "Kids tend to use the first hit they get when they research a subject, without thinking about where the information is coming from and whether there is a vested interest involved," says Blanche Warner, a library manager in Naples, New York.

-- Reading to synthesize vast amounts of information. Once, students took notes from print sources on index cards. Now students have multiple media formats to research -- from YouTube videos to slideshows to online journals. It takes practice for students to make sense of varied information on a topic and to use it effectively.

-- Reading and writing to communicate online information. Leu wants students to "become well-versed in communicating in multiple modalities" and creating and sharing work online. He'd like to see more schools promote blogging and provide students with email accounts and wiki access.

He encourages district literacy leaders to engage students in far more online reading and to use school librarians trained in online research to lead instruction.

Meanwhile, Warner says, "It makes a huge difference when there is a librarian in the school who can teach students how to evaluate sources of information and foster these other online reading skills."

So sign up for the workshop. "Parents have a key role in this," Warner emphasizes. "It's important to reinforce at home what students learn at school."

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Our local school is awful. Some parents in our district saw a movie about using a "parent trigger" law to shut down a failing school. I'm not sure how much work that would entail and if it would make a difference. How common are these laws and have they been successful?

A: California passed the nation's first parent trigger law in January 2010. Since then, six other states -- Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Ohio -- have passed some version of parent-trigger legislation. The National Council on State Legislatures reports that at least 25 states have considered it.

Parent-trigger laws allow parents to become deeply involved in the management and decision-making in their children's school. They spell out processes parents can use to organize and act to improve a school, such as removing the principal and faculty, converting it to a charter school or even closing the school altogether and reassigning students to better-performing schools.

The movie those parents saw was probably "Won't Back Down," a 2012 story of two moms (one a teacher) who use a state law to take over their kids' struggling school. It is loosely based on events in a California district.

While the laws (and the movie) have been successful in drawing national attention to parents' frustrations in challenging a school's history of underperformance, very few schools have been affected. California is the only state in which parents have successfully used the law to force changes at a failing school.

Changing a school from the outside requires robust leadership, organization and planning. The Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution (parentrevolution.org) trains parents in organizing, building knowledge of what works, and fostering relationships with teachers, administrators, school boards and other constituencies in the community to bring about change. It offers support to parents in any community working to improve schools, whether or not they are in "parent trigger" states.

Another group, Parents Across America (parentsacrossamerica.org), supports parental empowerment, but opposes parent-trigger processes because they are divisive and likely to cause more problems that they solve, says Rita Solnet, a founding member based in Florida. She has extensive experience in involving the entire community in improving schools.

"Parents, grandparents, retired educators and local citizens can partner with schools to improve the quality of public education," she says. "That creates goodwill among citizens versus the divisiveness, turmoil and uncertainty inherent in a parent takeover."

Last year, Los Angeles schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines affirmed the district's support for allowing parents to petition for sweeping changes in failing schools.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, "Cortines said he saw no reason not to allow parents the chance to change their schools under the trigger law if they so desire."

He explained that "it is a part of giving parents a choice. If they want to do something, I need to support it."

Still, while Cortines has given encouragement to concerned parents, he has urged patience in tackling school reform efforts.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Our school is urging parents to give their kids more access to computers at home so that they can practice their keyboarding skills for tests given this spring. My middle-school-age son is an accomplished Minecrafter and gamer, but a really poor typist. Why does he need to know how to type to do well on a computer-based test?

A: If your son excels at Minecraft, he'll do fine on test items that require a student to "drag and drop" a correct answer, but he needs to polish his typing skills for the short answer and essay responses.

The old "fill in the bubble" multiple-choice tests are now as rare as carbon paper. Today's computer-based assessments make use of a range of digital capabilities to help kids "show what they know."

Created to align with Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the new tests are more nuanced and don't look for one right answer. They are packed with open response questions constructed to test whether students can think critically, analyze and solve problems, write a cogent essay and provide thoughtful, short responses to questions.

In other words, the tests give students opportunities to demonstrate their thinking -- something everyone agrees is hard with multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank items.

Most states assessing the CCSS use one of two test providers: Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC, parcconline.org/for-parents) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (smarterbalanced.org).

Each organization provides sample practice items for each tested grade on their websites. For example, a sample seventh-grade PARCC English test item asks students to read two passages about electricity, watch a short TED Talk video about building circuits with Play-Doh, and then write an essay, explaining their thinking with evidence from each source.

California educator Corinne Burton visits school districts around the country in her capacity as president of Teacher Created Materials, an education publisher. She says teachers are pushing to get students up to speed in keyboarding.

"We're seeing this all over," she says. "After years on the decline, keyboarding classes are coming back. Schools are setting instructional standards for keyboarding and beefing up their programs to get students ready for digital testing. Parents can help."

Burton has successfully used Typing.com and some online games with her own kids to prepare them.

She suggests that parents ask their kids' teachers which test provider their school is using.

"Go to the provider's website and try out with your kids the sample test questions at the appropriate grade level," says Burton. "You'll not only get a sense of how they'll fare at typing with time constraints, you'll see what skill and concept mastery the new standards expect of students."

In life, there are no multiple-choice answers, says Jeff Nellhaus, director of policy, research and design for PARCC. "You have to construct your own answers from your own knowledge and drawing on other sources to get information."

The new tests are designed to measure students' ability to do just that. It would be a shame if poor keyboarding skills prevented your son from demonstrating what he really knows.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)