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"No one app or setting can keep your teens safe online, which means you need to start talking to your kids about your concerns."

"Down a locker-lined hallway at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis, Zac Felli, a junior, walks to his first class of the day. He wears tortoiseshell glasses and is built like he could hit a ball hard. He has enviable skin for a teenager, smooth as a suede jacket. Over one shoulder he carries a slim forest-green and tan messenger bag that would have been social suicide in 1997. But 1997 was the year Zac was born, so he wouldn't know anything about that. A squat, taupe monolith flanked by parking lots, Lawrence Central smells like old brick and floor polish and grass. Its gleaming floors squeak if you move your foot a certain way. The school has existed on precisely this spot of land since 1963: maroon block letters over the door, tang of chlorine from the indoor pool. None of that has changed. Here's what has: After Zac turns the doorknob of Room 113 and takes his seat in Japanese III, he reaches into his shoulder bag, pushes aside his black iPhone 5S and Nintendo 3DS XL, and pulls out his Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet with purple detachable keyboard, which he props up on his desk using its kickstand. By touching a white and purple icon on his screen, he opens Microsoft OneNote, a program in which each of his classes is separated into digital journals and then into digital color-coded tabs for greater specificity. And then, without a piece of paper in sight and before an adult has said a word, he begins to learn."

"Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive, so much less self-aware than grown-ups? Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically "teenage" behavior is caused by the growing and developing brain."

"Juan Carlos Galindo, a Wheaton High School ninth-grader with attention-deficit disorder, always had difficulty managing academic demands when he was younger. His mother, Virginia Munoz, a single mother of four, regularly found her son asleep with homework in his lap. She knew he was struggling, and she worried he would become a checked-out, rebellious teenager. In seventh grade, however, Juan Carlos was invited to participate in a maker learning partnership between Parkland Middle School in Rockville and the KID Museum in Bethesda. The maker philosophy emphasizes hands-on, self-guided projects to build kids' technical skills and confidence through tinkering, inventing and designing."

"Not sleeping? You might need to turn off blue light on your phone. This week, I was interviewing John Medina, author of Brain Rules, for a future episode of Every Classroom Matters. He made the offhand comment, "blue light wreaks havoc with your brain." We've known this since 2006, This Psychology Today article can help explain why your teenager may be awake ALL NIGHT."