|
|
July 11, 2012
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
This is Part 2 of my 4-part Bing Summer of Doing blog series. If you just got here and missed Part 1, let me explain. I’m the Bing Summer of Doing ‘expert‘ of the week. Part of this awesome responsibility involves blogging about the word of the day. Today’s word is unplugging. The irony of writing about unplugging while plugged in doesn’t escape me, but if I wrote on the back of this envelope, you wouldn’t see it, so…
 Bing Summer of Doing – Pull the plug and.. DO Winnie-the-Pooh said, “Sometimes I sit and think. And sometimes I just sit.” He also called himself a bear of “little brain” but I disagree. Just “sitting” is the best thing you can do at certain times. And if you’re just sitting in a park, on the beach, on a fallen tree in a forest… you’re probably in a good place, mentally and emotionally.
I’ve noticed that it’s summer. Funny how a whole season can sneak up on you like that. Actually, it’s more scary than funny. Sometimes, my time on the computer seems endless and I feel like I live in a casino – no windows or evidence the earth is turning. But I see that it’s beautiful outside (yes I do have a window) so I’ve decided to unplug. Not forever, just for some significant part of each day – as a way to grab back some balance in my life.
What am I unplugging from? How about these three things for starters? Negativity. Routine. Technology.
Unplugging from destructive emotions: Instead of marinating your soul in anger, frustration, jealousy when the mood strikes, how about simply recognizing the feeling? And then… take a few slow deep breaths. (INHALE s-l-o-w-l-y and evenly through your nose. Relax your jaw and open your mouth.) Then EXHALE s-l-o-w-l-y and evenly through your mouth. Repeat. …. again. Again. Now smile (a half smile will do). Good. You’ve just unplugged from an upset and hopefully you’ve done it before causing any damage. Nice going.
Unplugging from routine: Routines offer security. They can also be fun and creativity drains. Fight back by changing something you’ve been doing automatically every day. Try a miniscule shake-up like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand. Dang, unplugging from your routine could be as simple as sitting in a different place at the kitchen table. Or skipping the table altogether and taking your salad or sandwich out on the front steps. There are so many ways to dance through your day, why not make up some new moves? When you do, you’ll find your usual dance partners have to come up with some new moves of their own.
Unplugging from technology: Life isn’t virtual. It’s real. Simple truth. So easy to forget. Years ago, a storm blew out our power for 5 days. No school. No computers. No work. Me and David and the kids read aloud from a big book of obscure folktales. We paused at crucial plot points and took turns guessing what could happen next. We acted out alternative endings. We played Crazy Eights by candlelight. We roasted marshmallows. We all shared memories from childhood. And by the second or third day, we were eating outrageous ice cream sundaes for breakfast (hey, we couldn’t let all the Chunky Monkey melt, could we?). I was more than a little disappointed when the lights came back on and we all plugged in again. But you don’t need a power outage to take a healthy break from social media and the rest of it. I’m not saying you should become incommunicado for a week and freak out your friends and family. I’m just saying that by spending most of your waking hours with your head in a screen, you miss a lot of the juice of life. That’s just a waste, because the real stuff — the shared joys and disappointments between friends and family — need to be experienced face to face, not just via text and FB posts.
So I’m unplugging today. When I mentioned this to David, he said, “So you’re not going to do anything?” Wrong! I’m going to do plenty of stuff… not sure what yet, but I know, for sure that I’m not going to check my email 75 times. Tweet. or Surf. Just for today. And see what unfolds when I push back the digital infringement and make some room for other things. I’ll report back later. In the meantime, how about if you slowly take your hands off the keyboard, step back from your computer and go outside and play with a friend?
February 20, 2012
By Jayne Clare
Jayne Clare, Special Education teacher, and Anne Rachel, artist and Early Childhood educator, co-founded Teachers With Apps. These two lifelong educators are committed to “… helping parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators and anyone else, wade through the vast number of educational apps being introduced on a daily basis. Remember, not all educational apps are created equal.” A few weeks ago, at Jayne’s invitation, I visited with her 5th graders via Skype. First time I’d done it that way and it was a total blast. Here’s Jayne’s report from her side of the giant screen.
 Wow! That's really her! Electric Eggplant just recently released Middle School Confidential Book 2: Real Friends vs. the Other Kind to the app store. I’m a new teacher to this age group; twenty plus years in an elementary school simply can not prepare you for the hormones raging in the intermediate school setting! So glad that I came across this awesome resource when I did, February with 5th graders is an eye-opener! I’d been sharing MSC with small groups of tween students and using the Smart Board with larger groups by hooking the iPad up with a cable. This was part of the field-testing involved prior to writing a review for Teachers With Apps (TWA). Although I had worked with several grade levels, it quickly became obvious that our 5th grade students were really benefiting from spending time with this app. The experience helped the students with their growing pains by opening up dialogue that may not have taken place otherwise.
It started out innocently enough, I emailed Annie with some positive feedback after field-testing the app and we exchanged a few emails. David Fox, her other half, asked, “What do you think of the idea of doing a Skype call with Annie during class time? The students can interact with her, ask questions, etc…” Of course my answer was an emphatic YES, but being a public school teacher meant that I would need permission from administration. That was easy to obtain, so back to Annie to set a Skype session for Friday at 1:00pm EST.
As the week progressed, my students continued to become more familiar with MSC characters and had even picked their favorites. Friday arrived! For morning work, the kids all wrote out questions and/or comments to share later in the day. I scrambled to get the technology in place for our Q & A with Annie. Nervously, as one always is when using technology for a lesson, I practiced a Skype call with my TWA partner and got the lay of the land set up for the students. They were going to be tighter than a can of sardines, if they were all going to be seen. I wondered how they would sit so closely without some kind of problem erupting.
One o’clock arrived and somehow all the kids managed to squeeze into the allotted space as they waited anxiously to meet the author. The computer rang and there she was, Annie Fox, bigger than life on the Smart Board! The first question was asked and in the time that it took to respond, the room became silent. You could have heard a pin drop. One by one the students took turns asking questions and Annie answered with clear, concise, commonsense answers. She shared some of her own insecurities as a child and you could still hear a pin drop. More questions were asked and answered.
The woman on the screen, who so gently and so naturally took in all their woes and comforted them with sound, soothing advice, mesmerized the group. Out of all the responses given, one resonated with me; she told our most mature student that she should take a vacation from that friend, which was such simple yet profound advice. As our session came to a close it was evident it had gone extraordinarily well. The kids sat through the first bell of 9th period as they said their goodbyes, only to find out that Annie had grown up and gone to school not far from where we are in the “Hamptons”! There were hoots of “Go, Long Island – Go New York!” as the students filed out of the classroom.
“Awesome. That was awesome,” my co-teacher Maggie exclaimed and yes, I agreed, it certainly was!
Thank you Annie, what day works for you next month?
UPDATE: Through the end of March, I’ll do a free Skype classroom visit, to any school that purchases Middle School Confidential books and/or apps.
February 5, 2012
I often hear from teens bitterly complaining about parents who snoop through their email, playlists and text message exchanges with friends. In case you just thought: “Aren’t I paying for this technology? Don’t I have the right to know everything my kid’s doing with it.” Yes you are. And no you don’t.
If you feel like you’re ‘losing’ your t(w)een because s/he’s always online, do something smart about it. Set reasonable limits and offer positive face-to-face family time to balance teen time in Digital World. But don’t lose sight of the plain fact that teens need the connection with their friends, so don’t feel threatened by it. Get to know their friends. Be interested in what’s going on without an obsessive need to know. If you don’t have probable cause for snooping into your teen’s life, don’t. You’re jeopardizing the foundation of every healthy parent-child relationship, i.e., mutual respect.
When our kids are little we call all the shots. But when they reach the tween years, they’re programmed to test our authority to tell them what to do. You may need to rethink the boundaries you’ve had in place for their first decade.
In case you’re a bit fuzzy about personal boundaries, this may help:
- Your 5 year old says ‘My tooth is loose.” You stick your hand in his mouth and give that baby incisor a jiggle. No problem. But if you try to stick your hand in your 13 year old’s mouth… Boundary alert!
- Your 11 year gets her first period. You congratulate her and give her everything she needs to take care of herself. Good parenting! But if you insist your daughter tell you the start-date of her period each month so you can write it down in a book… Boundary alert!
- Your 14 yr old enters with a dark cloud overhead. He mumbles something about how his stupid coach won’t start him in tomorrow’s game. You immediately call the coach and give him an earful. Boundary alert!
Now you the get idea, right?
We teach respect by setting boundaries and by being respectful. When our kids are disrespectful, we respectfully remind them they have crossed the line. When we disrespect them, we teach nothing positive about the value of respect. Snooping into your teen’s personal stuff without probable cause is a gross sign of disrespect. In that moment you’re violating your kid’s trust. When your son/daughter finds out (and they will), they will blast you with their outrage.
For the record, I’m fine with kids being outraged. Gets their blood pumping and their attention focused on an actual human being instead of a digital facsimile. Good parenting isn’t supposed to win you popularity points. In fact, good parenting sometimes results in kids temporarily resenting the hell out of us! So bring on the anger. You can deal. But if the kid’s outrage is justifiable, then you may have painted yourself into a corner and damaged your child’s trust in you.
We all want our kids to grow up to be responsible and trustworthy. Part of our job is living and teaching by example. How does snooping teach kids to be trustworthy? It doesn’t! All it really does is make teens more secretive. And in case you forgot how crafty you were at that age, let me remind you that any teen can and will beat any parent in the game of “Whose life is it anyway?”
Teens have the right to some privacy. And with it comes the responsibility to act in ways that reflects your parental teaching. A person of good character makes ethical choices even when no one is watching. That’s what you ultimately want from your children.
How do they get from here to there?
You think I’ve got all the answers? Ha! There’s no one right way to parent, but there are plenty of WRONG ways. Assuming it’s your right to know the content of your kid’s every text msg is one wrong way. Not because kids won’t like it but because a healthy parent-teen relationship respects boundaries.
August 31, 2011
 Guess you'll have to lie about your age by Rosemina Nazarali
KiwiCommons.com
Kiwi Commons is a late-breaking news, guides and information weblog dedicated to providing readers with the most relevant and up-to-date resources available on youth Internet safety. Kiwi provides readers with a broad range of thoughts and opinions from various experts, including their own Kiwi Expert Panel, to real life stories of the youth affected by these new challenges like sexting, scams, cyberbullying and predators.
It comes as no surprise that a good portion of Facebook users lie about their ages. It does come as a surprise, however, that almost half of all 12-year-olds in the U.S. use social networking websites, despite the site requiring a minimum age of 13.
With no mechanisms in place to detect when a person is lying about their age, there’s no telling who or how many under-agers are actually using Facebook. However, Facebook has taken notice and is kicking out about 20,000 users each day, many of whom are among the 12 and under crowd.
“Facebook uses various methods to identify underage accounts, including the monitoring of information placed on the site and community reports from other users,” said Facebook’s Chief Privacy Advisor, Mozelle Thompson.
With this, however, comes an array of new questions, this time for the parents. Would you let your child lie about their age to sign-up for a social network? This is the hypothetical question that has been burning up the Internet since last week, and many of the differing answers are quite surprising.
“Not only are kids lying about their age, but more often than not, parents teach them to lie about their age,” said Danah Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft.
So I became curious. I wanted to know what parents on the Internet were saying about the matter, and what the justification was for either allowing or not allowing their kids to sign-up for Facebook.
Crisntina Flores, a 44-year-old mother to an 11-year-old boy said she did allow him to sign-up for Facebook because she feared he would sign-up behind her back anyway. Her son, Jake, told Facebook he is 15. “It’s not like there’s a legal limit for being on the Internet,” Flores said.
15 of 30 students in one of Jake’s fifth-grade classes are all on Facebook. “It’s lying — and about age,” said the class’s teacher, Aundrea Kaune. “What happens when they want to drink beer?”
“Allowing kids to lie by creating a profile with a false age…is a different issue than allowing activity online that, frankly isn’t even appropriate offline,” one parent, Cameron Sullivan, told the DublinPatch. “Some of my contacts on Facebook have middle-school kids whose pages are open to friends of friends. I don’t have time to waste monitoring other kids’ lives online, but on the rare occasions that I venture to their kids’ pages, I am grateful for the parents’ ignorance. The ability to see what kids are posting online provides a window into the goings-on of some middle-school kids.”
Another parent, Kari Kulac, who let her fourth-grade daughter sign-up for Facebook is starting to question her decision. “It’s only been a couple of months, but I’m unsure whether I should let her continue, not because of safety fears but because it is yet another time suck that has to be monitored along with all the other frivolous electronic pastimes (TV, etc.). I’d rather she be running around outside,” Kulac said. “The benefits, I suppose, are the social enjoyment she has getting to better know my out-of-state side of the family, including my 87-year-old grandmother.”
But it’s not just Facebook kids are fibbing on. Victoria Lai, a ninth-grade student in San Francisco, said she signed up for Yahoo! Games when she was just in the second-grade. “I always say I was born in 1986, not 1996, because it’s just one number different. Easy to remember.”
Victoria’s father, Brian Lai, says that kids “have to experience using the Internet. It’s the future.” He added, “it’s not good to lie, but you can make an exception.”
May Jay Hoal of Yoursphere brings up a point. “Parents can’t forget that Facebook was created by adults and for adults, and the adult culture that lives on Facebook is usually one that we likely wouldn’t expose our children to in the ‘real world.’”
One thing many of these Facebook users who aren’t quite honest about their age don’t realize, is that once you’ve signed up with a certain birth date on Facebook, it cannot be changed. So unless you plan on opening a new account after you hit the age of 13, you’ll be stuck appearing as the wrong age you originally input for a very long time.
After reading what all the parents had to say, I went to Kiwi Commons expert, Doreen Nicastro, to find out how she felt about young people using Facebook before they were ready.
“From both a developmental and safety standpoint, no kids under the age of 13 should have a Facebook account, period end of story,” she said. “Parents are being manipulated and bullied by their own kids to get access to social networking. The fact of the matter, it’s against Facebook terms of agreement for kids under the age of 13!”
Nicastro suggests that the adults start communicating with each other. “Parents, schools and law enforcement in communities across the world need to come together and discuss the rules of the social networking road. New tools require new rules. The problem is that schools are shutting it down, parents are too busy and stressed to get engaged, and kids are running the show.”
While parents and young people continue the ongoing argument surrounding social media use, Facebook is looking for a solution for their under-age users. They are currently considering creating a safe social network for the 12 and under population — a place meant just for kids and a way to dissuade them for signing up for Facebook before the required age.
We want to know — would you let your kids lie about their age to engage on social networking websites like Facebook?
— Older Posts »
| |
Facebook
Twitter
