Say no to drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and...social networks?

It is interesting to me as a parent to see the change in the dangers we need to warn our children about.  When I was at school it was all about drugs, then it was smoking and more recently the ads on TV about alcohol and not introducing it to kids too early.  


I now have a teenager in the house and a pre teen, and the one thing that I am being told to talk to my children about...the danger of social networks and cyber bullying. 


The experts are right, we need to talk to our children about this, in fact all the above mentioned dangers need to be openly discussed, but how do we go about it? How do we prevent our children from falling prey to any of these dangers without sounding like over protective, boring parents?


I say go where the kids go - YouTube! There is a wealth of videos out there aiding parents to deal with these issues. Many produced by government bodies designed specifically for parents and teachers.


Here is one that has caught my eye a couple of times, for some reason I can't seem to embed it but click on the link and that should work.


How Cybersmart are you?

Google + what's the fuss?

I have been caught up in the wave of Google +, after my friend John mentioned he received an invite (after pestering many people), I couldn't help but get one too.  The fact that he was promoting this on Facebook had us all giggling a bit.

What is Google Plus? Well, Google + is Google's version of Facebook.  Yes, another social media tool for us to follow, join, tweet about and endure.  But I like it! It seems that those in education, who are into such tools, are happy about the fact that it offers more privacy and security and therefore may be more suitable for a school environment.  One aspect of t Google + is the ability to categorise people into different circles and thus not sharing everything with everyone.

Doug Peterson talks more about it here and it's implications for education.  There are many people tweeting about this and the reviews are positive for the most part. I have been enjoying having a look see but Jeff Gibbard's article Google Plus (Google +): The Painful Realization highlights to me some issues I had yet to realise.

I can see that if my friends and family made the move, that Facebook may play second fiddle to Google Plus but as Jeff points out that requires their family and friends to move as well.  

We will have to wait and see...in the meantime watch the promo video from Google.