Tag Archives: digital

Two parent presentations on digital parenting coming up in Montreal area

Interested in attending “Smartphones, Sexting & Social Media: Practical Strategies for Parents?” There are two upcoming opportunities in the Montreal area on February 13th and March 1st. While both are free, they do ask for RSVP.

Join me on either date for a practical discussion about what you should know when it comes to kids and digital technology, and what you can do to promote safe, responsible, creative and productive use of these wonderful tools.

  • Learn what it means to raise a “digital citizen”
  • Understand how technology use has changed the way kids socialize, do schoolwork and sleep
  • Set up effective household rules to complement what they are learning in school
  • Create and enforce reasonable limits on use of digital devices
  • Keep your kids talking to you about what’s on their mind and what’s happening at school
  • Build positive online “footprints” for future school and job applications
  • How to (mostly) stop worrying by being prepared.

Featured session for parents
(LCEEQ conference)

When: Monday, February 13th, 7:30 p.m.
How: (Click here to register by noon Sunday, Feb 12th)

Where: Sheraton Laval (click for Google Map)

Sklar LCEEQ digital parenting kids

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Trafalgar School for Girls –
session for parents

When: Wednesday, March 1st, 6 p.m.
How: Open to the public. Please RSVP here. 
Where: Trafalgar School for Girls, 3495 Rue Simpson (corner Dr. Penfield)
Montreal QC  H3G 2J7 (Click for Google Maps)

Trafalgar Sklar Digital Parenting Workshop

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Teaching kids not to trust superficial identification online

CTV News

Click on image to view video.

CTV News interviewed me for this terrible story about a 24-year-old man who posed as a young girl on Facebook to lure 11 to 13-year-old boys into sending nude pictures of themselves. He would then coerce or blackmail them into sending more by threatening to expose them to their families.

Kids are often quick to take other users’ identities at face value. They don’t yet have the experience and judgement to question such things, or to anticipate this kind of deception. The person on the other end doesn’t have to be a pedophile – it can also be a school bully, or another student attempting a mean-spirited joke.

What can parents tell their kids? If your kids are online, you should bring up the subject of deliberate or mistaken identity switches. Let them know people can do this for all sorts of reasons, out of curiosity, for a joke, to bully someone or to gain someone’s trust to hurt or humiliate them. Tell your children it is unethical – and sometimes illegal – to pass as someone else just to gain their trust. All it takes is a stolen password or using someone else’s picture, and it’s difficult for other users to know what’s going on.

Remind your kids to maintain a healthy dose of suspicion if anyone online asks you to do something that makes you uncomfortable, or that is illegal. It is important that kids know it is against the law to share pictures of anyone under the age of 18 wearing anything less than a bathing suit. Even if he is your boyfriend (or girlfriend). Even if you send it willingly. Tell a trusted adult. And if they don’t do anything, tell someone else.

Most of the time this kind of deception involves a peer, classmate or acquaintance and not a sexual predator online, but the underlying lesson about the ease of deception online remains the same.

 

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Prosocial media – WeHeartIt.com

Image from a user WeHeartItTeens often get demonized by adults when it comes to their use of digital technologies and social media. We spend an awful lot of time talking about how it dominates their lives, replaces face-to-face interaction, fosters bullying and cruelty, etc. It’s just human nature to focus on the problems and downsides, I suppose.

But it isn’t fair.

The majority of teens use these tools in friendly, prosocial, creative and/or productive ways most of the time. That just doesn’t make for a great news headline.

Which is why WeHeartIt.com made me smile. The brand new social network gets little notice from adults, but it’s already garnered more than 25 million users, 80% of them under the age of 24.

So how does We Heart It work? It’s essentially a mashup of Tumblr (the popular microblogging platform that encourages use of images, videos and GIFs) and Pinterest (the theme-based, pinboard-style photo-sharing website). It’s a fresh, young, creative collection of images that link to other places on the web, with a positive spin. Users are encouraged by the site to curate collections (or “canvases”) of hyperlinked images that you love, or that inspire or move you.

We Heart It collageFollowers can choose to “Heart” someone else’s post, which then automatically cross-posts it to one of their canvases. There are no comments allowed, so as to discourage negativity or bullying. Users can tag photos, but don’t write descriptions the way they would on Pinterest.

Kids are interested in the next big thing. Facebook is increasingly crowded with their parents, grandparents and nosy prospective college admissions officers and employers. They are constantly on the lookout for fresh new ways to curate an online personality and share it with friends.

So is WeheartIt.com here to stay? Only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s certainly of enjoyable to see a popular site that’s all about sharing and encouragement.

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