iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

As physical distancing becomes a feature of students' everyday lives, social media has emerged as an important outlet for them to stay connected with friends and family. At the same time, not all students have access to the support they need to learn how to use social media in a way that's healthy. And for students from lower-income families, online negative experiences are more likely to spill over into their offline lives. Yet, having a conversation with young people about how they use social media can be a daunting task.

To prepare young people for the real-life digital dilemmas they will face on social media, Common Sense Education and a group of researchers at the Cornell Social Media Lab co-developed Social Media TestDrive. This online simulation allows middle school students a chance to explore a social media interface without actually having to create a social media account.

On math worksheets, numbers are usually neat and tidy. In the real world, not so much. Whether it’s polling data, analysis of investment options or calculations for timed traffic lights, real-world math can be messy. “If you give those kinds of numbers in homework you’re a mean teacher,” said teacher Victor Hernández. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to worry about that complaint much. Hernández works at Science Leadership Academy, a public magnet school in Philadelphia, where students gather and apply real data to hands-on projects throughout the curriculum. In January, Hernández and two colleagues shared some of the benefits of project-based learning with math teachers attending EduCon 2020, SLA’s annual school innovation conference.

Vape pens are easy to conceal, they're easy to confuse with other electronic gadgets like USB flash drives, and they generally don't leave lingering smells on clothes. All these things make them appealing to underage users, and confounding to parents. Gone are the days when sniffing a teenager's jacket or gym bag counted as passive drug screening. Now if parents want to know if their teens are vaping nicotine or cannabis, their best bet is a good old fashioned conversation.

And with news of an outbreak of life-threatening vaping illness sweeping the country, and vape use at an all-time high among teens, the issue feels more urgent than ever. Here's what to say — and not to say — to help your child deal with peer pressure and misinformation, and stay safe.

To a remarkable degree, a single company is front and center in one of the biggest public-health crises facing the country: the sharp rise in vaping among teenagers and young adults. In 2018, 30% of the nation’s 12th-graders reported vaping nicotine at least once in the past year, according to a January 2019 study sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study said the increase in vaping last year was “the largest ever recorded for any substance in the 44 years” that it has tracked adolescent drug use.

"Addictions to electronic cigarettes are derailing the dreams of promising young athletes, leaving them struggling to breathe, keep up with their teammates and find motivation to practice.

Take Cade Beauparlant, 18, of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Beauparlant first laced up hockey skates when he was just a few years old, and fell in love with the sport. "Hockey was my life," he told NBC News.

His abilities on the ice developed rapidly. Hockey coaches and recruiters had their eyes on Beauparlant starting in middle school.

"He was such a hard-working, motivated, skillful young kid. He was our best defenseman," Paul Yameen, Beauparlant's high school hockey coach, said. "As soon as he started [vaping], everything changed."

Beauparlant said he was introduced to e-cigarettes during a sleepover with friends in eighth grade. He began "Juuling" in ninth grade, referring to the Juul brand of e-cigarettes, by far the most popular among teens.

Within a year, Beauparlant said he was "extremely addicted," to Juul pods. One pod has roughly the same amount of nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes, according to Truth Initiative, a nonprofit organization that advocates for tobacco cessation."

This summer, a new California law goes into effect, aimed at supporting media literacy in my home state's school systems. Effective July 1, the statute requires the state Department of Education to provide online resources on media literacy for use by school districts. And some U.S. senators have reportedly floated similar legislation at the national level. These efforts can't come soon enough, given how fast unreliable and provocative online information is dividing the country and challenging the very stability of our democracy.

Laws can only go so far, however. We need to get teachers and parents involved in grassroots efforts to promote media literacy at all levels of education. If you have a high school student in your household as I do, it's time to talk with other parents, reach out to the social studies department, and get organized. If you are a teacher, you should either embrace whatever proactive measures your students' parents want to make or be the first to encourage such a coalition. We need leadership on both sides.

Look up from this screen right now. Take a look around. On a bus. In a cafe. Even at a stoplight. Chances are, most of the other people in your line of sight are staring at their phones or other devices. And if they don't happen to have one out, it is certainly tucked away in a pocket or bag.

But are we truly addicted to technology? And what about our kids? It's a scary question, and a big one for scientists right now. Still, while the debate rages on, some doctors and technologists are focusing on solutions.

"There is a fairly even split in the scientific community about whether 'tech addiction' is a real thing," says Dr. Michael Bishop. He runs Summerland, which he calls "a summer camp for screen overuse," for teens.

As the labor market tightens, businesses are on the hunt, looking to fill jobs with young people coming out of schools and colleges. While there’s been a lot of talk about the demand for technical capabilities among this burgeoning pool of labor, employers complain that students lack fundamental skills: things like being able to collaborate, communicate, think critically and interact effectively with coworkers.

In response, some states have added requirements that schools teach these skills, sometimes referred to as “soft skills” or “employability skills.” States are adopting online curricula, or in some cases, developing their own programs from the ground up. But some education experts argue that too much of the burden for training people on the professional skills they need is falling on educators. For this training to be truly effective, they say, schools also need help from local industries to provide rigorous real-life workplace learning experiences. Programs like Prepare Rhode Island can offer an ideal way to get kids into the workplace, while sharing the responsibility for their training with employers, experts say.

Teens credit social media for helping to build stronger friendships and exposing them to a more diverse world, but they express concern that these sites lead to drama and social pressure

"Social media platforms are central to every aspect of teens' lives, from how they stay in touch with friends to how they engage with politics. And constantly refreshing their social feeds can feel simultaneously positive and negative: Teens say social media strengthens their relationships but also distracts them from in-person connection.

Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences sheds light on teens' changing social media habits and why some kids are more deeply affected by -- and connected to -- their digital worlds. The report is a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 kids age 13 to 17. And because it tracks changes from 2012 to today, we can see how teens' social media use continues to evolve. Read the full report."

Until recently, Facebook had dominated the social media landscape among America’s youth – but it is no longer the most popular online platform among teens, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Today, roughly half (51%) of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 say they use Facebook, notably lower than the shares who use YouTube, Instagram or Snapchat.

This shift in teens’ social media use is just one example of how the technology landscape for young people has evolved since the Center’s last survey of teens and technology use in 2014-2015. Most notably, smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis.

Download the full report

“I’m not a reader.” It’s a common refrain Julia Torres, a teacher-librarian in Denver Public Schools, has heard throughout her 16-year career. She’s seen students tear up books, throw them away or check them out only to immediately return them all because they didn’t have confidence in their ability to read.

As a librarian, Torres feels strongly that libraries should be spaces of liberation, places where students can develop a love of reading at any stage. Reading is a skill that everyone can grow to love, but too many negative experiences during a child’s literacy education can result in trauma that appears as boredom, apathy or even anger. When a student has a poor experience like being shamed for their reading choices, they can begin to associate reading with painful feelings of insecurity, humiliation and/or toxic stress. These negative experiences can start as early as kindergarten and go on to impact a student’s self-image throughout their entire educational career. 

Along with countless other sobering repercussions, COVID-19 jeopardizes kids’ physical activity at a time when the emotional benefits that exercise provides are sorely needed. With school closures, suspension of team practices and the imperative to stay home and away from others, children and teenagers (and their agitated parents) will have to find other ways to keep moving. This is especially important now, as a global pandemic with potentially catastrophic repercussions has a way of igniting fear.

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• Anxiety about the effects of social media on young people has risen to such an extreme that giving children smartphones is sometimes equated to handing them a gram of cocaine. The reality is much less alarming.

• A close look at social media use shows that most young texters and Instagrammers are fine. Heavy use can lead to problems, but many early studies and news headlines have overstated dangers and omitted context.

• Researchers are now examining these diverging viewpoints, looking for nuance and developing better methods for measuring whether social media and related technologies have any meaningful impact on mental health."

One evening last week, I collapsed into bed after homework was finished, lunches were packed, and bedtime stories were read and happened upon an impassioned Los Angeles Times op-ed by high school political science teacher Jeremy Adams. In it, Adams decries his students’ lack of interest in reading and places the blame squarely on smartphones. My kids are still young, but I’m always thinking of how to instill in them a passion for books, so I read on...on my smartphone.

Playtime. Downtime. Family time.

According to Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, these three factors — or PDF as she calls them — protect kids against a host of negative outcomes, strengthen resilience, and bolster students’ mental wellness and academic engagement. 

If you have a teen or tween, you have likely heard of Tik Tok, which is actually an app called Music.ly reinvented. If you are a teacher, check out my  Music.ly post (about possible applications in the classroom which are relevant for Tik Tok) which I wrote when it was first popular a few years ago.

I first learned about Tik Tok’s popularity when my daughter would have her friends over and spend HOURS rehearsing and recording dance numbers. I have to say I loved it! She would often complain about how some of her friends just hang out on their phones when they come over, and this hanging out on the phone is entirely different.

Like any social media site, there is potential for awesome as well as potential for danger and so the platform in and of itself is not EVIL. Over the past few months I have been talking to parents, and 9 and 10 year olds have discovered the app and are pressuring their parents to get it.

"The patterns of daily life in the U.S. and around the world have been forever altered by the ubiquity of mobile technology. To truly understand the impact of technology on family relationships, we need to dig deeper into the media habits and attitudes of parents and teens worldwide.

The New Normal: Parents, Teens, Screens, and Sleep in the United States

The latest addition to the New Normal research series explores how smartphones and other mobile devices have changed families' morning and evening routines and in-person relationships. For the first time, parents and teens reveal their habits around screens and sleep, from where they keep phones at night to how often digital notifications wake them up (and why). Take a look at the infographic for a summary of how devices affect daily life for parents and teens today."

In decades past, students needed little more than paper, pencils, and time to get their schoolwork done. For the vast majority of students, that's no longer the case. Most schoolwork these days necessitates a computer and an internet connection, and that includes work to be done at home. One federal survey found that 70 percent of American teachers  assign homework that needs to be done online; 90 percent of high schoolers say they have to do internet-based homework at least a few times a month. Nearly half of all students say they get such assignments daily or almost daily.

When it comes to teens and social media, it’s not all pressure and drama. But there is a fair amount of both — apparently outweighed by the benefits of teens feeling connected and supported.

A new Pew Research Center study of youth ages 13 to 18 released on Wednesday finds teens credit online platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook with strengthening friendships (81 percent), letting them interact with a more diverse group (69 percent), and feeling as if they’ll have support during tough times (68 percent).

Teens do report downsides, but at lower percentages. Negatives include feeling overwhelmed by all of the drama (45 percent), pressure to only post what makes them look good (43 percent), and pressure to post content that gets lots of likes and comments (37 percent).

Overall — and by what Pew calls “relatively substantial margins” — teens tend to associate social media use with positive instead of negative emotions.

Amazing inventions, activism and tons of genius delivered by an awesome group of kids and teens.

As teachers, we all have assumptions -- and likely some opinions -– about teenagers and social media. But are those assumptions correct? Well, now we have research to help us find out. This week, Common Sense is releasing its latest research report, Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences, a deep dive into the social media habits of American teenagers.

This research is the second wave in an ongoing study tracking teens' attitudes about social media; we released our original report in 2012. Back then, Snapchat was just a fledgling start-up, and Facebook was a top choice for teens. But how -- and how much -- teens use social media has evolved almost as quickly as the technology itself. This year's report doesn't just tell us about teens today; compared with our original data, it shows us just how much things have changed.

It might seem like teens are using social media more than ever (it's true -- they are!). Teachers work with teens every day, so it makes sense that we have our own opinions and anecdotes about their social media use. But it's important to remember that our personal perceptions about social media might not always reflect what our students experience online. And that's why this research is so important. The results of this latest study help us question our assumptions and start addressing real issues that help our students.