Terms of Service and Modeling Responsible Behavior

Terms of service are an interesting problem for teachers, students, and parents. The terms of service for many online tools popular for educators to assign to students require users to be 13 years or older, but that part seems to be forgotten sometimes when teachers are assigning useful tools to younger students. As Jennifer Carey, a director of academic technology at the Ransom Everglades School in Florida points out in a blog post, just forgetting about these terms of service – just giving them a “wink and a nod”- can model behaviors that run contrary to the advice parents and teachers give kids about other kinds of sites that also require users to be 13 or older. In her post, Carey advises teachers to read and understand the terms before asking students to sign up for services that may violate federal statutes that regulate student information. "Anytime you are considering an online tool or service, it's important to ensure that the security of your students plays a key role in your decision," Carey writes. Parents also need to pay attention to the tools their children are being asked to use.

Lessons on Concentration

Do your children have trouble staying on task when they have a homework assignment that requires them to go online? Research shows they are not alone and that if students don’t learn how to concentrate and shut out distractions, they’ll have a much harder time succeeding in almost every area. To that end, schools should include lessons on how to concentrate to help students stay on track amid numerous digital distractions, says psychologist Daniel Goleman, who has written books about social and emotional learning. Goleman calls for digital-free work periods during the day and lessons on mindfulness practices. "It's about using the devices smartly but having the capacity to concentrate as you need to, when you want to," he said.

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.

PBS Play and Learn App Aims at Making Math Less Intimidating for Parents

In a recent study, PBS found that 30 percent of parents felt anxious about teaching their children math skills. However, 84 percent of parents surveyed believed that it was important for children to learn with at-home activities. So, as part of their Ready to Learn Initiative, funded by the Us Department of Education, PBS has added an app called Parents Play and Learn that includes 13 themed games for parents of 2 to 8 year olds to play with their kids. The Math information that can be learned via the app includes basic counting, measuring, and estimation. On the literacy side, the app focuses on vocabulary, letter recognition, and rhyming. Additionally, the app leverages push notifications that offer parents teaching tips. Parents, who opt-in to the program, receive messages three times per week.

Getting Your School To Connect With Parents Digitally

Lisa Nielsen, a public-school educator and administrator, writes in a blog entry that cellphone and voice services can help educators and parents build the home-school connection. In her post, Nielsen recommends the phonecasting service iPadio, which can help teachers create podcasts; Voki, which allows people to develop and share recorded messages using an avatar; and Google Voice, which provides free phone numbers. This is worth bringing to the attention of someone at your children’s school.

Educreations: iPad Lessons

Educreations has free computer and iPad software that helps students create and save iPad reports and study notes. The production may include photo slides, diagrams, animation, and audio. Students may also find the Featured Lessons section featuring lessons in mathematics, science, social studies, English, world languages, and the arts useful as tutorials, as well.

Haiku Deck—Presentations Made Simple with an App

The free app Haiku Deck gets applauds from publications such as TIME and The Wall Street Journal. The word is that using the “fiendishly simple” Haiku Deck, you and your kids can create beautiful presentations (called decks), which are both clean and concise.  Be sure to browse through Haiku Deck’s Gallery of Featured Decks, especially Book Reports: iPad Style. Decks can be shared on Facebook and Twitter and through email—and it’s fun to use.

Video Blogging 101

Ever wondered how to become a video blogger? A couple of recent posts on the New York Times Personal Tech section reveal some dos and don’ts as well as discuss examples that work and those that don’t and why. It could be helpful if your kids are charged with making a short video for a school project.

Judging Social Media Sources

So, your child is doing a school project and wants to include some information they found on a social media site. How do they gauge whether the source of the information, which probably lacks the traditional credentials of an established journalist or researcher, has any merit? In an article in the School Library Journal, librarian Joyce Valenza suggest four sites where kids can obtain some measure of how many people follow the site and what they think of it, as well as gain some insight about establishing their own positive online presence. She writes, "While these tools may be useful in exploring the influence and perhaps expertise of others, they also have growing importance in how our students will be measured in the world of business. Exposing them to these tools is a first step in getting them to think about their own social influence and in managing their e-reputations and developing a personal brand. They may sometime prove as important as the business card, the resume, the CV.” -- A great digital literacy lesson in the making.

Homework and Mobile Devices

More than a third of tweens and young teenagers in the United States said they are using smartphones to do homework, according to a survey released recently, with Hispanic students using them at a higher rate than African-Americans or whites. So, maybe they really are telling the truth when they say they are doing their homework when on the phone. Of course, there was no grade correlation with this survey, so who knows?