How to survive a tech savvy teen

This is always the first place we send parents
to find resources and look for family solutions

How Do You Prepare Parents for 1:1 Learning?

@joe_edtech
Common Sense Media Certified Educator

For the most part, we've done an excellent job of preparing our students to be digital learners, and an adequate job of preparing our faculty to be digital teachers. However, we frequently forget the steps we need to take to prepare our parents for life with a teenager with an with constant access to a mobile computing device. Here is an adaptation of a short article I wrote and published in previous iterations online. (I believe in Creative Commons, so if you like any or all of this, please feel free to adapt it and use it for your school or classroom. If you don't like it...don't tell me.)

Living with a Teenager AND a Chromebook

When your child was in elementary school, you probably got used to checking a folder every week and looking through all the worksheets and packets that had been graded and sent home. But now your teenager brings home a Chromebook instead of a folder. More than one parent has contacted me to say, “My kids are way more tech savvy than I am, and I don’t know how to check their Chromebook for their homework.” So, what now? This short article is designed to give you a few ideas of how to survive as a parent of a teenager with constant access to a mobile computing device provided by their school.

First, the best news is that whether your student is in a Chromebook classroom or a traditional classroom, the Infinite Campus or Home Portal is still the place to go to check on all of your student’s grades and attendance records. So, as far as a weekly check goes, IC is still the place to start. By the way, it is a good idea to know the grading practices of your students' teachers, and how often they update grades in IC. It isn't healthy or helpful to check the gradebook several times a day like a stock ticker. Usually a regularly scheduled weekly check is enough.

Secondly, Chromebooks offer all of us an excellent opportunity to have additional conversations with our teens, and you can always pass it off as simply being curious about the device as opposed to asking for information about classes and assignments. For instance, you can ask them if their teachers have a classroom website and if so, what kinds of things get posted there. You can ask them about the kinds of Internet tools they use in school. One of my colleagues plays a “high point / low point” game with her children. For the Chromebook, that game would look like this. “Tell me the thing you like best about using the Chromebook in school, then tell me the thing you like least.”

If you really are nervous because you feel like your students are more computer savvy than you are, take a look at Common Sense Media’s website. Common Sense Media is an independent, non partisan, non profit organization, and they claim their mission is to improve "the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology." On their website, you can navigate through App and Movie reviews, and check out their tips for keeping kids safe online.

Finally, if you really have concerns about how your teenager is using their mobile technology, you can contact their classroom teacher. Whether the question is about a grade, a classroom activity, or a homework assignment, it is always a good idea to direct your questions to your children first, and their teachers second. And you can usually find the contact information for the classroom teachers directly through the Home Portal or the school's web page.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

How do you prepare Parents for life with a constantly computing teen? Tell us in the box below.