Frontline - Growing Up Online

Thanks to Leslie's heads-up, I watched the TPT Frontline program, "Growing Up Online", last evening. It was fascinating. It was an open, honest look at teenagers' use of social networking sites, both at school and at home.
From the school point of view, it's evident that there are teachers who are eager to embrace new technologies and feel that we need to meet the students where they are; we need to be entertainers or we won't keep their interest or attention. But there are also teachers who are "dinosaurs" who feel that students still need to have slower, quieter time to carve out answers and think things through. I suppose that most of us are somewhere in the middle and that subject matter makes a difference, as does access to technology.
From the parent point of view, the producers interviewed several families who had different approaches to their children's internet use. The mother who was the PTO president and who monitored her children's every move on the computer, even asking them for their passwords, alienated them to the point of damaging their relationships. The parents who learned of their daughter's secret on-line life as a goth glamor girl ended up working with her, supporting her, and having some good communication. And the parents who were completely oblivious to the fact that their son was being bullied online, made the discovery after his suicide.
The message from the program was that it's a different world from the one in which most of us grew up, and we had better learn to deal with it. It's much more useful and productive to have open access and communication; the internet isn't going away, and our kids are going to continue to socialize online. The more we can be involved, in guiding, directing, and teaching, the better. But we also can't smother.
I plan to set up a display at parent-teacher conferences tomorrow, and I'll have this program running on my laptop. It's available for viewing at www.pbs.org, and in addition to the actual program there are expanded interviews and other resources for teachers and parents. I recommend checking it out.