Is Facebook really that bad?

If Facebook really just a stalking ground for sexual predators?

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Vocational experience in education?

Edge challenges the politicans to think differently.

The world is changing rapidly but our education system is failing to keep pace. Edge wants to see practical and vocational learning at the heart of education alongside academic study to enable every young person to fulfil their individual talents and have access to many paths to success.

Over the last seven months Edge have been collecting people’s views and opinions through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TESConnect, blogs and via emails, online messages and at face-to-face events . Thousands  have voiced your support for our campaign to change education and help secure a better future for young people. The outcome of all of these messages is the first ever election broadcast generated completely by the public.

The broadcast (below)  was screened at the Houses of Parliament yesterday with key politicians from the three main political parties in
attendance.  Still time to have your say go to Edge and give them your thoughts.

Getting your kid out of bed

How to wake your little darling up without a slanging match.

Missed the first article read it here Teenagers and Sleep

Here are my suggestions for getting them up.

• Go in at least an hour before they have to get up and open their curtains – natural light is a gentle way to bring someone around from a deep slumber.
• Get a very loud alarm clock in their room and set it for thirty minutes before they have to get up. Put it somewhere where they have to get up to switch it off.Then, if they are not up, go in five minutes before they are due to get up and in a stern authoritative voice, tell them it is time to get up.Do this two more times and then leave them to it.

  On the last occasion tell them that you will not be coming in anymore.

  A side note here is that making them go to bed early to get up early may not be a solution. Melatonin levels (which induce sleep) kick in much later with adolescents and sometimes will not peak until one or two in the morning. So even though they may go to bed, their pleas of, “I can’t get to sleep!” may actually be true. They are just not wired the same as we are when it comes to sleep.

   

Improve your Parent/Teen relationship

First mind shift change to improve your relationship with your teenager.

I was asked to write some tips for parents surrounding my manifesto and, since there is so much in my manifesto I though I would take one point at a time and give parents some tips. My manifesto is designed to change not only the way we act towards young people, but the way we think about them and our relationships with them. To read the rest of the manifesto, go here. In the meantime, here is the first point.

First mind shift change to improve your relationship with your teenager.

Quick fixes will not fix the problem.

So many of the problems with our young people are systemic, yet we think that a quick intervention will “fix them”. We see a problem and we rush to fix the young person with a quick solution. People are so much more complicated than “quick fixes”.

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It’s easier to teach compliance than initiative

Wisdom from Seth

Found this on Seth Godin’s Blog and had to share it.

Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat.
Initiative is very difficult to teach to 28 students in a quiet classroom. It’s difficult to brag about in a school board meeting. And it’s a huge pain in the neck to do reliably.

Schools like teaching compliance. They’re pretty good at it. To top it off, until recently the customers of a school or training program (the companies that hire workers) were buying compliance by the bushel. Initiative was a red flag, not an asset.
Of course, now that’s all changed. The economy has rewritten the rules, and smart organizations seek out intelligent problem solvers. Everything is different now. Except the part about how much easier it is to teach compliance.

Really love this by Seth and it has really made me think of the definition between the two what do you think?

Teenagers and Sleep

Video games, mobile phones and TV are keeping children up at night, answers to a BBC questionnaire suggest.

Newsround sent a questionnaire to 1,000 children aged between nine and 11 at schools across the UK.

Most said they went to bed at 2130, but a quarter said bedtime was 2200 or later and half said they were not getting enough sleep and wanted more.

Health experts have linked a lack of sleep to problems with concentration, behaviour and school work. About half the children asked said they were staying up to play on computer games or their mobile phones or to watch television.

and in another report:

According to researchers, teenagers are suffering from what they call “night owl syndrome” because they do not get enough sunlight.
A study by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Centre in the USA concluded that teenagers were missing out on exposure to light, especially in the morning, and that this was upsetting their body-clocks.
The research was led by Mariana Figueiro, who said: “As teenagers spend more time indoors, they miss out on essential morning light needed to stimulate the body’s 24-hour biological system, which regulates the sleep/wake cycle.
“These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly under-performing on standardised tests.”
The study was published in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.

So what is the answer?

OK, here we go again, criticising the technology. How on earth can it be the technology’s fault and not the parents? If this stuff is keeping your child awake, remove it from their room. Surely it is that simple!

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