Top Ten Tech Skills for Teens

With all that teens are learning as they use digital devices and the Internet, it is difficult to sort through what they actually need to know. Cindy Donaldson in her article on Education.com (August 2013), polled companies in Silicon Valley to find what their leaders thought were skills all teens should master. The skills recommended are typing, word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, eMail, electronic calendars, Netiquette, social networking, basic computer upkeep, using Internet searches properly for research, and use of databases. Other skills suggested related to blog making, photo processing, and making a Web page. 

It seems to me that using critical and innovative thinking skills, learning to work collaboratively, and adapting to new technologies should be added to the list, for these skills will certainly be needed.

Are You Distracting Teachers?

It’s difficult for all of us to fight the urge to check email, text messages, social networks, and/or app info on our cell phones, computers, and other digital devices. Schools often have rules against teachers making and answering personal calls while they are teaching, but do parents contribute to the problem for teachers?

Peter DeWitt in his Education Week article, “Do You Check Your School E-Mail Too Much”, reminds parents to recognize that teachers have lives outside of school and expecting instant answers can distract teachers from their jobs. We’ve talked about this before in this blog and in articles on this site. Make sure you are respectful of a teacher’s time when emailing and let them know when an instant answer is not necessary.

Advocacy Groups Alarmed by Gmail’s New Segregation of Social and Promotion Emails

Gmail shook up users’ e-mail recently, moving “social” and “promotion” e-mails out of the primary inbox and into their own tabs. The promotions tab has some digital activists and non-profits up in arms because it lumps together advocacy e-mails with commercial marketing requests and essentially exiles them to an inbox ghetto. Sure, the promotions tab isn’t quite the junk mail folder. But, it’s natural to assume e-mails sent there will get less attention than those routed to the primary inbox.

Online Etiquette

Part of keeping yourself safe online is watching what you say no matter the social media you choose to use to express yourself. Keeping that in mind, take a look at this list of 6 Rules for Making a Great Virtual Impression. While these are rules for making a good professional impression, there is some spill over into what to do in daily communication. Rule #6? Know when to pick up the phone when more clarity is needed. This is good to remember as the school year approaches.

Don’t Text and Drive

The National Safety Council estimated that roughly 200,000 crashes in 2011 involved texting; and an AT&T Wireless survey found that 75 percent of teenagers say texting while driving is “common” among their friends. In an attempt to educate the public about the dangers of texting and driving, America’s four largest wireless carriers have financed a 35 minute documentary by filmmaker Werner Herzog , “From One Second to the Next,” and released it online. AT&T will take the lead in distributing it to more than 40,000 high schools. As the school year approaches, think about taking the pledge to never drive and text and urge your teens to do so.

Tiptoeing Around – The Parent Teacher Digital Relationship

An article focusing on the perils and pitfalls of the parent teacher relationship appeared recently in the Times and much of it focuses on the power and limitations of the electronic communication. The pros of using such communication are rather obvious – they are timely and can be asynchronous accommodating both the teacher and parent’s schedule.  Most of the drawbacks, of course, center around  miscommunication including texts and emails sent off in anger that escalate quickly into something that might have settled quickly face to face or on the phone. Bottom line – the best advice is to use email sparingly in any kind of dispute.

Interacting with 150 of Your Closest Friends

Two recent and, at first glance, seemingly unrelated articles reveal some interesting things about social networking. There has been a lot of interest lately on the part of social networks in the work of psychologist Robin Dunbar who asserted, based on his studies done just prior to the dawn of intense social networking, that the human brain is hardwired to cope with social groups of about 150 people. Some networks, such as Path, embrace Dunbar's work and limit their users' contacts accordingly; others, such as Facebook, see such social limits as challenges to be overcome. But perhaps Facebook should be paying more attention (or, perhaps, they are). In another recent article, researchers have strongly suggested that the people Facebook users interact with most tend to be their closest real-world friends. The studies authors say that the findings contradict the commonly held truism that people use Facebook to stay in touch with those with whom they would otherwise lose touch. They say that this just indicates that Facebook is just another space where our social lives take place. Further, they say this is a reminder that if Facebook (or another social network) is a space where our friendships occur and develop, we need to think about what the contours and limitations of that space do to us.

Looking to Change Your Email Provider?

Looking to change your email account, but you’re afraid of privacy issues? Take a look at “It's not crazy to pay for an email account” on the USA TODAY  site. Google’s Gmail has its merits, but knowing that no one except your correspondents are reading your messages is not one of them. On Gmail, automated software scans your email account and sends out advertisements that match the results. Kind of creepy.

Becoming a Gmail Power User

Want to block app developers from accessing your info just because you are a Gmail user? Did you forget to log out of your Gmail account on a public computer but don’t have time to go back and logout? Who is that John Smith who keeps sending you emails? Find out how to solve these problems and more by catching up on "How to become a Gmail power-user".

Multitasking Lowers IQ

According to researchers at Kings College of London “constant exposure to e-mail and other multitasking-friendly technology temporarily lowers IQ by 10 points–or about as much as skipping a night’s sleep and more than twice as much as smoking marijuana.” Hallowell’s book, CrazyBusy, suggests that multitasking with texting, emailing, tweeting, networking, and such is like “playing tennis with two balls.” Researchers at the University of California studied a group of professional people. It seemed that they could only remain on a task for about eleven minutes before they were “called” by some sort of digital messaging. After that, it took them twenty-five minutes to get back on task. Market research indicates that company workers waste 2.1 hours of work a day because of multitasking.  Dr. Hallowell says that with so much to do, so much information, so much “blabber” and multitasking, all of us look like we have ADD. Consider how all this relates to our kids, who are multitasking even more than most of us. The answer is not to unplug them and ourselves, since multitasking is a part of our world today, but instead to learn to use our tech tools wisely. It all starts with a conversation!