Your Child and Social Networking – How to Get off on the Right Foot

Everyone’s talking about and on social media – posting selfies on Instagram, tweeting opinions in 140 characters, liking and sharing statuses and videos on Facebook and building professional networks on LinkedIn – we seem to do everything with one eye cocked on social networks. Why should kids be any different? They come with their share of sociability after all, and a need to talk about everything they see and experience, so it’s natural that your child should be curious about whatever social network happens to be currently popular among his or her friends and school mates. As our family lives are affected by social media, we need to know more about it.

“The kid never stops txtn” by Alex Gaylon licensed under CC BY SA 2.0

Networking for Kids – The Need for Vigilance

More than 70% of tweens and teens below 17 are active social networkers and more than 5 million Facebook users are not yet 10. These statistics strike terror into the heart of the bravest parents and rightly so. Toddlers with Twitter handles may be cute but most children are poorly equipped to deal with the predators, stalkers, pedophiles and cyber bullies that populate the underbelly of the virtual world. Burying your head in the sand and refusing to recognize the dangers of social networking simply don’t work. Here are 3 important tips you can use to make it a safe, age-appropriate and pleasant experience for your child.

1.      Allow them to explore kid-friendly websites

Just because they’re under 13 doesn’t mean you should bar your kids from exploring the virtual world. There are plenty of kid-centric websites that offer fun educational games and Role Playing Games where players can chat and interact with like-minded peers. These websites are designed to keep kids safe by blocking the exchange of personal information, inappropriate language and real life contexts – all potential sources of danger your child will definitely encounter on social networking sites meant for adults. Just make sure you do your research before allowing him to sign up. Steering your child in the right direction is as important as steering him away from the wrong one.

2.      Set up limited accessibility

Allowing your child to join social networking sites is fine. What is NOT fine is letting him have unlimited, unsupervised access to social media. Too much screen time can be detrimental to schoolwork, hobbies, real life friendships and family ties. How much is too much? 30-45 minutes a day is more than enough for teens, tweens and younger children. Set and manage the websites your child can visit; monitor his requests and set appropriate restrictions on games and apps. If he uses mobile devices, install parental control aps. Some social media sites have child-friendly privacy settings but you can’t afford to let your guard down.

3.      Make them aware of online dangers

Social networking is a great way for kids to connect with family, friends and class mates. But cyber bullying, identity theft and stranger danger are very real threats that come with the territory. And sometimes, online “friends” can be wolves in sheep’s clothing. Teach your child to take these precautions when he’s online:

·                         Not post his full name, address, school or date of birth
·                       Accept friend requests ONLY from people he knows in the real world
·                       Upload ONLY appropriate pictures, videos and posts
·                       Report bullies immediately

4.      Play Multi Player Games with them

A good way to ease them into the online world is to play along with them on Multi Player Games or Cooperative Games. There are special “Parent” Accounts which can be used. A good thing to do is check the age suitability of the content on a game. Games which involve cooperation in playing, mirror real life and builds a sense of sharing. Inbuilt controls in games, allows parents to make sure that they are around while it’s played. Sites like Common Sense Media have game reviews which are very useful.  

The most important precaution you can take to keep your child safe on social media is to talk to him about it; the earlier the better! 

Educational Gaming- what’s it all about?

Dave Warfield, Head of Game Design at VFS, announces the Award for Outstanding Educational Contribution by Vancouver Film School is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Sometimes an enemy becomes a friend. Gaming is one such entity. What was frowned upon by many as an addiction which was bad for kids is now becoming the favoured learning tool. The inherent addictiveness of popular games is in itself the attraction for folks who teach. They want to know - what makes a game so addictive that people can play it for hours on end?  If students kept at a subject with that much interest, the learning curve would become history!

History of Play

Historically games have been used as a means to learn. The young in the wild play with older members to learn the ways of their kind. Chess was commonly used to learn about strategy. Kriegsspiel, a game created for training Prussian officers was played by volunteers during the civil war. Friedrich Frobel called his Play and Activity institute a kindergarten, setting the foundation for modern day education of our young.

The creation of Edutainment

Games came on to electronic devices a few decades ago. Educationists who saw the interest kids had in gaming understood the potential of bundling a game with learning. Games can be intrinsically learning with a dash of entertainment or largely entertaining with some incidental learning. With all these bridges happening, educational entertainment morphed into ‘edutainment’.

Music, video, TV and now Games

Edutainment first became popular via music and video with shows like Sesame Street and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Many TV shows became games. Then many games introduced elements of education. Games can help kids learn concepts, understand subjects or even pick up a skill.

A billion dollar industry has mushroomed around the gaming industry. Even as casual gaming is cultivating a wider audience, the educational gaming industry is using high tech to reach kids and hold their interest. Interestingly, our classrooms, teaching and evaluation methods are changing to keep pace with this change.

The cons

Even as gaming is gaining a strong foothold, there are those who worry about the psychological and social side effects of gaming. That is for another day.

Top 5 educational games and apps for kids

Photo by – babbagecabbage

Educational games have captured the Windows, Android, and Apple platforms with their versatility and educational content. We have compiled our favorite educational games and apps for teens that we think are currently the best!

 

myHomework

Available on iOS, Windows, and Android platforms, myHomework helps kids to organize their homework and other related work by giving them space to record homework assignments and projects, keep track of responsibilities and schedule extracurricular activities. The educational app can be accessed from any remote location making sure that the teen’s assignments and projects are always available, even during group studies. The date reminder tool in the educational app helps kids to keep track of their assignment deadlines.

Spore Origins

This great educational game is unfortunately not available on Android, Windows and iOS being its chosen platforms. The biology game requires players to survive as a multi-cellular organism in a tide pool in an hour long play. The educational game is divided into 18 separate functions with the player eating smaller organisms and avoiding being eaten by bigger organisms. After every three levels, the player is given a choice to upgrade to an organism in any four of these categories - perception, attack, defense, and movement. 

Psychobabble

Popcap.com originally developed the online education game as a video game – Psychobabble. The original game required players to choose words from a word bank and create sentences, phrases, in teams, and enter the answers in a chat room that was a part of the game. Due to the cost and time of monitoring these chat rooms for racy content, the game was eventually discontinued. Today the educational game is back in a new avatar! Available on the iOS platform, the game offers a variety of options to build one’s vocabulary and quicken the brain’s association with words. 

Fit Brains Trainer

Developed by Vivity Labs, the educational app is only available on Apple iOS. It’s just the right app for teens who find it mind boggling to deal with and balance busy schedules and developing hormones! Brains Trainer ensures their minds stay sharp amidst the chaos! Just a few minutes every day on the app can boost teens’ brain power, memory and problem solving skills!

Space Chem

Space Chem, developed by Zachtronics Industries, is available on all the three platforms of Google, Apple, and Windows. The educational game is loosely based on the chemistry and the principles of chemical bonding. The player is required to produce one or more specific chemical molecules by programming two remote manipulators called “waldos”.

With these 5 educational games apps, teens will soon learn that learning is as fun as sending IMs on smart phones and tablets!

5 Ways Educational Games Outdo Teachers – The Effectiveness of Educational Games

Educational games have come a long way. From being an unknown concept endorsed primarily by their makers and a few stray voices, they have gradually proved their worth in classrooms and homes across the world and won the appreciation of parents, teachers and kids. What is it about these games that make them so popular? A lot of research has gone into the effectiveness of educational games, and the results are pretty interesting.

 Photo by Erik (HASH) Hersman

According to modern research, educational games by their very design are able to do certain things that most classroom teachers cannot. Here are five areas in which educational games outperform teachers:

1.       Educational games give instant feedback

Instant feedback is an important contributor to a positive learning experience. For kids doing well, it provides reassurance and motivation to continue performing well. For kids who are performing a task incorrectly, it prevents them from learning the incorrect procedure and encourages them to attempt a different approach. The same feedback when provided after a delay cannot reproduce the same results. However, teachers rarely provide test results or even corrected assignments immediately after the students turn them in. Educational games, on the other hand, respond to every input with feedback on the player’s performance.

2.       Educational games keep kids engrossed

Being focused and involved during lessons greatly impacts how well a student retains information. However, students find it difficult to remain alert and involved throughout the school day, in part due to the teacher’s inability to make lessons interesting for the students. In direct contrast, educational games give great importance to engaging players, and keep them engrossed for hours on end.

3.       Educational games do not threaten a child’s self-esteem

Many kids feel threatened by the learning atmosphere in classrooms where mistakes are looked down upon or ridiculed by classmates and teachers. Children are afraid to make mistakes, and this limits their enthusiasm to try and learn new things. In educational games, mistakes are never laughed at. Kids are constantly given motivation and positive reinforcement when they are working on a task, and this gives them the self-esteem to try newer and more difficult tasks.

4.       Educational games recognize and reward achievements

Educational games have a multi-level reward system that rewards every achievement of players, whether big or small. This allows players to see the results of their efforts and motivates them to try harder and aim for bigger rewards. It is nearly impossible for teachers to monitor every student’s performance so carefully, forget rewarding every small achievement. 

5.       Educational games provide a customized learning experience

In most classrooms, teachers teach the same lesson to the entire class, catering to only a few of them. Students familiar with the concepts end up bored, and those who have difficulty understanding it end up frustrated. Educational games customize every lesson according to the abilities of the player, moving to more complex lessons or providing extra practice with the same lessons based on the player’s performance.

Keeping students engrossed, customizing lessons, monitoring progress and providing constant feedback and motivation are just a few of the ways that educational games help kids learn scholastic skills. These innate characteristics of educational games are what make them so effective and have earned them a permanent place in many students’ learning experience.