Anne Collier and Larry Magid of Connect Safely.org have released a timely new booklet, A Parents’ Guide to Facebook. This link will take you to a site where you can not only freely download the PDF booklet, but also an interactive at-a-glance chart with recommendations for how teens should configure their privacy settings with links to the pages on Facebook where they can actually change those settings.
It’s designed to help you understand what Facebook is and how to use it safely. With it, you will be better informed and able to communicate with young Facebook users in your life more effectively. That’s important because 1) if something goes wrong, we want our children to come to us and 2) as the Internet becomes increasingly social and mobile, a parent’s guidance and support are ever more key to young people’s well-being in social media and technology.
If you are a teacher teaching Internet Safety, it’s important to get parents on your side – the side of safe and knowledgeable use. Sharing this kind of information proactively with parents BEFORE a crisis is crucial.
Besides this new Parents’ Guide to Facebook, Connect Safely provides other excellent information about youth, social media, and how to stay safe using (not banning) the Internet in homes and schools.
I love the 2 points from the book!
I’ve written a couple posts about ‘Facing Facebook’ as a teacher, and also did a presentation to parents on ‘Raising Digital Kids’: http://raisingdigitalkids.wikispaces.com/ …Which I thought I’d share with you.
The page: ‘Engaging with kids’ on that wiki is filled with questions for parents to ask themselves and discuss with kids. I think too often parents go to ‘blocking’ as a defensive mechanism because they have not thought through the alternatives or had any kind of meaningful discussion with their children. When it comes to relating with kids today about their use of these social tools that “all my friends are on”, knowledge really is power!
I have been following you since the Seatlle conference.
Thanks a lot for sharing this information