Private Blogging and Social Media Parenting

One of the reasons why I have not blogged in so long is because I have been engaging in email lessons with my students’ parents.

It never occurred to me to use this correspondance as the fodder for blog posts. All this time I have felt like an epic blogging failure because I had not picked it back up after the birth of my daughter. But I have been blogging this whole time, just to a private audience.

My efforts have been to teach my parents augmented Cyber Safety lessons while their children are learning the same subject. I feel this two pronged teaching approach is the best way to keep my students safe.  Before long I realized that I have enough information for an entire website dedicated Parents

Below is today’s letter:

Good Morning Parents,

I had this in my Twitter feed this morning and I wanted to forward it to you as well.

As a parent I am definitely guilty of being on my phone while sitting on the couch with my kids, I am surprised that I have not come across social media parenting lessons before.

In an age where many of us are connected all the time, we begin to lose touch with the subtleties of face to face human contact. I noticed this myself while my son and I are having ‘our’ time after I put my daughter to bed. It is the only time of the day when it is just me and my son, and I am ashamed to say that I found myself often plugged into my phone rather than enjoying that moment of cuddling with my boy.

‘Social Media’ (being the tools we use like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube) have made all of us use ‘Social Networks’ (the people using the tool) to stay plugged in. Because of being plugged in citizen journalismhas taken off, like the example below.

It is rumored that Twitter was used to first to announce attack on Bin
Laden and then later his subsequent death. That example just goes to
show how social media and citizen journalism is changing our world.

We are living in amazing times, being “plugged in” is a natural part of our lives, but that makes it ever more in important to prioritize times to be “unplugged” with our children. Our kids will learn from our behavior more than anything we say.  I need to remember this the next time my son is asking for my attention when I am mid-text. Is it more important for me to answer that text? Or put the phone down and look into his big blue eyes.  And they are BIG blue eyes.

---