Group items tagged

If you are a parent, teacher, or other adult working with children, this blog aims to help you learn, as much as possible, about helping digital kids grow into thoughtful, collaborative, and savvy digital citizens. The blog's mission is to provide context for adults - defining and clarifying digital world issues, 21st Century learning challenges, and those virtual environments and devices that children take for granted. It's not really about technology anymore. Instead it's about lifelong learning, collaboration, problem solving, and flexibility. Media! Tech! Parenting! examines or reviews three or four items of digital news and information each week, surveying newspapers, blogs, research, and magazines, as well as the media, safety, and educational websites. Blog posts, as often as possible, provide links pointing readers toward the sites or publications covered in blog posts. I am Marti Weston, the principal blogger on Media!Tech!Parenting! In my professional life I focus on learning in a K-12 environment along with all the digital world issues that challenge teachers, students, and parents. With more than 30 years of teaching experience I also support parents by teaching three-five digital education classes, leading question and answer sessions, and maintaining current resources on the school's website. My professional work centers on four areas: Coaching teachers and helping them develop learning environments that are rich with 21st Century collaboration and problem solving. Helping students learn to use digital tools appropriately, understand their digital dossiers, and move - carefully - along the digital citizenship highway. Providing teachers, students and their parents added context that helps them evaluate media and learn more about how media affect their world, Offering parents information about the always changing, fast-paced virtual world and suggesting effective parenting skills and strategies that will help children grow into stro

""Our teachers hopefully have hours and hours of support and training for integrating [technology] into the classroom, but what help are parents getting?" This is an important question posed in Educating Parents in the Siri Generation, a blog post by Carl Hooker that explores how "analog parents" can rise to meet the challenges of their "digital kids." It's this exact problem-the difference the learning environments that most parents experienced versus the ones in which their children are learning in-that formed the basis of our Smart Parents series and culminating book project (launching in August 2015). If you've been around the edu-innovation space for awhile, you've probably come across Carl Hooker-or @MrHooker as many of us know him. With a title like Director of Innovation and Digital Learning (Eanes ISD, Texas), he knows a thing or two about the next generation of teaching and learning. Here are some pearls of wisdom from his perspective as a parent and an administrator in a one-to-one mobile device district."

"Since many people are returning to school during the next couple of weeks, I thought I would re-visit and share some of last year's more successful projects in case you want to try one. Today's post is about something I tried last year with the goal of impressing upon my students how much they matter to others - in this case, their parents. What I did not realize was that I would also develop new and deeper connections with my students and their families with this project. The basic concept was this: ask parents to secretly record videos of themselves telling their children how important they are to them and what they hoped the children would accomplish in school that year. The parents would send me the videos, and I would use Aurasma Studio (here is a link to Aurasma tutorial videos in case you need it) to attach them to still images of the parents. When my students scanned the images with the Aurasma app on the iPad, they would see and hear their parents' videos. They kept the photos in their folders all year so they could scan them whenever they wanted, and as a reminder of their parents' personal messages."

"You'd heard about this parent from other teachers. This parent was a handful. Rude. Combative. Aggressive. Even litigious. In response, you worry, if just a little. You have enough to deal with, and butting heads with an angry parent-especially one angry just because-doesn't sound like fun. You don't get paid enough for that hot mess. So you keep calm and hope to ride the year out. Maybe they won't call. Maybe they'll skip parent-teacher conferences. You've even considered grading their child a little easier just to avoid the hassle of it all. We've all been there. Nothing can solve this problem, but there are ways to take the edge off so that you can open up the lines of communication and deal with the parent on equal terms so that they're child has the best chance for success."

"We've all heard of helicopter parents. But you may not have heard of the latest term for a troubling trend recently identified in parenting: lawnmower parents. Lawnmower parents go to whatever lengths necessary to prevent their child from having to face adversity, struggle, or failure. Instead of preparing children for challenges, they mow obstacles down so kids won't experience them in the first place."

"Educators and parents have something in common when it comes to the kids in their care: They are both navigating the treacherous waters of media, devices and children. Parents worry their children overuse screens, yet, they also fear that without the devices, their kids may fall behind socially, academically or be unsafe. Educators are aware that parents like the quick access to their children, and they also know smartphones offer opportunities for learning. Yet the devices can also be distracting in school. Many parents look to school leaders for guidance. They want recommendations for purchasing phones, using apps, keeping children safe and establishing screen time guidelines. Yet, schools tend to shy away from doling out this kind of advice.   Schools should reconsider this aversion. After all, the average age for getting a cell phones is now 10, which makes middle school the ideal time to share advice and recommendations for parents. Creating student smartphone guidelines presents an opportunity for educators to partner with parents and children about the use of devices and digital mental health."

"Remind 101 is a free service that allows you to send text messages to groups of students and or parents from your computer, your iPhone, or your Android phone. The benefit of using Remind 101 over Google Voice, which I used to use for this purpose, to text students and parents is that your phone number is not revealed and your students' cell phone numbers are not revealed to you. Students and parents have to opt-in if they want to be added to your text messaging list. Students and parents have to enter a confirmation code to state that they do want to be contacted by you through the service."

"Throughout my 13 years of teaching, I heard this common theme time and time again from parents: How can I help? The troubles they professed were varied and numerous (e.g., concern, frustration, bewilderment). They often included the following: I don't remember algebra. I don't like math. The way math is taught now differs from when I was in school. All of these are certainly legitimate. Although people use math every day, even when they don't realize it, they are not necessarily using all the same concepts they learned in school. And as the saying goes, if you don't use it, you lose it. I'm sure some parents don't know how to solve quadratic equations or remember what it means for a relation to be a function. And yes, math teaching today may differ from when parents were in school. But the idea behind new techniques is to encourage students to become better problem-solvers, not to confuse parents or change the concepts. So, believe it or not, despite your fears and feelings of uncertainty, you can still help. Here are a few tips to get you started. "

"Sleepless night and eyeball fatigue. Cyberbullying and profound device-separation anxiety. Research identifies harmful side effects of too much tech on teens with alarming regularity. But a new report from the Pew Research Center suggests parents are just as compromised by our portable screens. In "How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions," researchers not only compiled data on the behavior of tech-addled kids (they're on their phones from the moment they wake up!) or the concerns of hand-wringing parents (what do we do about the fact they're on their phones from the moment they wake up!), but on the behavior of parents, too."

"In many schools, educators are using connected devices to support personalized learning and collaboration. But when students are asked to use these devices for homework, new challenges arise. Parents often find themselves unprepared-or at least underprepared-for the new edtech landscape. After all, homework time already has its traditional, time-honored challenges. Layer on a digital component where kids may be tempted to use homework as a way to bargain for more connected device time, and parental anxiety is compounded. Indeed, in my work with school districts, educators, parents, and students, one thing is consistent: Parents want to help, they just don't know how."

"As parents, we all want to raise kids who are smart and focused, especially in a world where digital distraction seems to be inescapable. (Even tech titans like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have strategies for limiting their children's screen time.) Why? Because in the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: Those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves "indistractable." Becoming indistractable is the most important skill for the 21st century - and it's one that many parents fail to teach their kids. After years of studying the intersection of psychology, technology and how we engage with it, one of the biggest mistakes I see parents making is not empowering their kids with the autonomy to control their own time. Allowing them to do so is a tremendous gift; even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process. Parents need to understand that it's okay to put their kids in charge, because it's only when they learn to practice monitoring their own behavior that they learn how to manage their own time and attention. Teach them at a young age"

"If there is one piece of advice that is drilled into you as a new parent, it is to limit screen time. Bringing home our first baby, I may have not known how to effectively swaddle or change a diaper, but I did know, "back is best" and "no screen time for children under two." Yet, screens are something we as parents are constantly interacting with. In those early days of parenting, our parents laughed as we announced that we would not expose our children to screens. Yet screens are such a piece of our world. How could I expect a child not to find interest in the screens and technology that we interact with routinely? Does this abstinence approach to teaching new parents and those who work with our youngest learners do more harm than good? Does coding and computational thinking have a place in early childhood education? Yes, it certainly does. "

"Coding for kids (otherwise known as computer programming) is growing rapidly in popularity. While programming is offered in a small number of traditional schools in the US, a Gallup poll indicates that 90% of parents would like computer programming to be taught during the school day. Even in the schools that offer computer science in the classroom, the level of rigor has been traditionally low, and many parents have chosen to look for outside resources to provide coding instruction. In this guide, we provide parents with the answers to some of the most common questions that we encounter operating a successful kids coding academy, and we attempt to provide advice on academic approach, curriculum selection, and other resources."

"One question I get asked often is about flipping my Kindergarten class. If you have never heard about a flipped class read more about it here. The quick answer is I don't flip my class for my students. I simply haven't seen a need for this for my young kids. What I have been doing the last few years is flipping my class for the parents by using a classroom blog. This might not be flipping in the true sense of the word but it is as close as I have come. My goal is to use blog posts and videos to help parents understand the learning that is happening in our classroom. With that knowledge my hope is parents can support or even expand on that learning at home. I believe that informing parents about our learning is important at all levels, but especially for young kids."

"I've posted many resources providing parent engagement for teachers, and thought I'd bring them all together in a "The Best…." list. The resources listed here provide practical advice to teachers. You can see all my parent engagement-related "The Best" lists here."

"So you finally get the chance to meet one-on-one with your child's teacher - now what? Like a good Scout, be prepared: Educators agree that doing your homework before a parent-teacher conference can make a big difference. The Harvard Family Research Project's Tip Sheet for Parents suggests reviewing your child's work, grades and past teacher feedback. Ask your child about his experience at school and make a list of questions ahead of time to ask during the conference. Care.com - a website that matches parents with child caregivers - created a list of questions to print out and take with you. A good parent-teacher conference, experts say, should cover three major topics: the child, the classroom and the future."

"Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement?"

"Students with parents who are up-to-date on their child(ren)'s lives tend to perform better in school. Fortunately, technology offers a variety of ways that can save teachers time as well as keep parents engaged. Here are some notable tools used by teachers and parents."

"It's hard work to parent a teen. In a recent New York Magazine article, Jennifer Senior writes, "It's dicey business, being someone's prefrontal cortex by proxy. Yet modern culture tells us that that's one of the primary responsibilities of being a parent of a teen." Of course, it's no surprise that the last thing teens want is to have a parent looking too closely into their lives. It's a constant push-pull phenomenon for parents and for teens. One minute, a teenager can descend into grumpiness, isolation and solitude, and in the same breath, that teen wants a hug, affection and a laugh. And, when we throw social media and texting into the mix, the equation does not always balance out. "