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Editor's Notes

• #2: I am Dion Lim, I am CEO NextLesson, we are an online curriculum developer. Today’s topic, of course is Preparing Students for the Age of Technology or maybe more to the point for many audience members … What the F*** do I do about screen time?
• #3: Despite having three children, I am not particularly well qualified to talk about parenting, at least according to my mother. I counter that in addition to my 12 years of experience being a parent I have 46 years of experience being treated like a child. Hee hee the more I tell that joke, the lower my therapy bills are.
• #4: So instead of talking to you like the unqualified expert I thot I would share some of the questions I have pondered and some stories as a Fellow sojourner
• #5: Number 10. Here’s a picture of Archimedes demonstrating the power of leverage. Doy me PAH stoh, kai than gahn kiNAso. Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth I found a desire early in my life to try to make the world a better place for as many people as possible. I surmised that my biggest points of leverage were influencing people and applying technology. Later on I also grew to appreciate setting policy. If you want to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people everyday, you could strive to be President of the United States, or you could builds a technology company. I think the latter is more doable, more fun, faster to impact/scale and something you can do with your friends. The companies that I have helped cultivate; Sina.com, Epinions, SimplyHired, NextLesson are used by 500M people a month. Ali’s portfolio of investments would be probably be larger and over a billion people have seen Kurt’s movies. My current startup NextLesson started just last year reaches 50,000 teachers and 2M students, Alameda just licensed for 10,000 teachers and 225,000 students. Technology is a force multiplier Dohss moy pah stoh, kai (rhymes with "pie") tahn gahn kee-nah-soh
• #6: Number 9. What’s my use of technology? + Here’s a framework I came up with that you may find helpful. + At the highest level there is creational usage: I’ve listed a few websites that help you create or cultivate the skills to create things. Let me point out a few you may not have heard of: Inkscape is a free professional quality vector graphics software as powerful as Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator my kids use it for their graphic and laser cutting design work. Google Draw is another great, easier to use one. TinkerCad is free 3D modeling software you can learn to use in one day. + The next level is functional: what’s important to note here is that there is some really straightforward utility in this large bucket. + The bottom level is recreational: what’s important to note here is how a lot of technology can span categories depending on how it’s used – except for my favorite one which I noticed is missing here, ESPN. + I encourage you to spend some time with your children categorizing your family’s usage and deciding on the general principles and ratios by which everyone self-governs. My final two data points for you here are + There was a recent article you may have seen that highlighted that Steve Jobs minimized the exposure of his kids to technology. + Terry Smith, a 5th grade science teacher at Havens worked for one of UC Berkeley’s top neuroscientists, Larry Lowery. His research indicated that when children did 3 dimensional play they established an order of magnitude more synaptic connections than 2D. + Personally I have ascribed to both these philosophies. Doesn’t mean you have to, of course. The bottom line is that I have found it helpful to see screen time in more nuanced ways – Not all screen time is created equal.
• #7: Number 8. Is my technology building or hurting relationships? Is it bringing enjoyment or suffering to those around me? + On the last slide one of the uses of technology I mentioned was connection. I want to take a moment to highlight its importance. + I encourage great use of technology for connection. You want your child to be very adept at building their network. + Referral hiring is only going to increase over time. Ernst and Young has seen an increase from 28% to 45% of their non-entry level hires through referrals from in the last few years. Any adult who has looked for a job recently can attest to this. + Exhibitionism is not relationship building + In the Web 1.0 days I started a young entrepreneurs group call Round Zero that included twenty something nobodies who would become the founders of Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, EventBrite, WorkDay, just to name a few. Your network is your safety net and your ladder. HR executives rated referrals the #1 source of quality candidates, ranking an 8.6 out of 10.
• #8: Number 7. Am I fostering a culture of creational Technology? I met Matt Bardine, a founding teacher for TFA and the most expensive SAT tutor in the world at $800/hour. On the topic of improving reading, he moved my thinking around the fact that the intervention of reading to your child everyday is much less powerful than building a culture of reading. Compare having your parent read to you for 15 minutes every day before you go to sleep to an environment filled with books where you discuss the big ideas from the latest books you’ve read fluently using terminology like denouement, story arc, thesis. Where you have regular family reading times, your parents host a book club and people recommend books to one another. Culture is more powerful than interventions. Few specific tips for you: get involved with Piedmont Makers, regularly attend Maker Faires, join Hacker Scouts, subscribe to wired magazine or MIT technology review, send your kid to a Galileo camp. Nod to Glenn Tripp. You live in Maker Central. I want you to realize you are the equivalent of living in Hollywood and saying I wish I could find a way to get my kid involved in the entertainment business
• #9: Number 6. Are we collaborating on our use of and approach to technology. I know many authoritarian household who are very proud of the strict control of technology in their household. There are a couple of challenges I see with this approach. One is that teenagers for all of humanity have shown the will and need as well as the resourcefulness to evade their parent’s authority. I can tell you stories of kids buying second phones to put outside their rooms, logging on to neighborhood wifi’s, borrowing their friend’s phone. The second and more important factor is that when we send our children into the world on their own, I think we set them up for a lot more enjoyment of life if they have fully developed self-regulation. The boy who covertly plays video games becomes the man who looks at inappropriate content at work. These are often the notorious strict-upbringing kids who go nuts their first year of college. Your character is who you are when no one is looking. We don’t have any specific rules in our house for technology. I encourage families to generate principles or guidelines and if the kids feel like they need a rule, then have them come up with it. The cliché, people support what they help build. For what it’s worth, we have no rules in our house due primarily to the fact that we have created a creational technology culture. Vices grow over time, not decline. Develop self-regulation. Principles instead of rules Kids can evade, will be on there own soon enough, Rules in our house - none, but recently developed one with Atticus to help him Your character is who you are when nobody is looking Help your child develop their own strategies for self-control mindfullness, 10-min rule ways they evade - when they are ceo of a top firewall firm, you can tell them you made them who they are, same can be said if they become a criminal hacker Your children will find a way around your blocks Authoritarian parents vs. authoritative parenting logging in to a neighbor’s wifi, multiple phones, Releasing child into the wild with self-regulation character strength and strategies how to make decisions that foster enjoyment vs. suffering finding right fit governing principles vs. rules input
• #10: Number 5. Am I culitivating self awareness about the use of technology, is closely related to the previous question. The mindfulness revolution is full bore upon us. I am a huge fan because I think it empowers people with choice. Collaborating with your child on solutions will be difficult if they have minimally developed self-awareness of their feeling and motives. Are they experiencing flow or addiction. And one corollary is that I think it’s important to minimize stigma and judgment of your child’s feelings and needs. The websites that generate the most suffering such as anonymous websites whisper and ask.fm prey upon the judgment and stigma that students feel at home or in their community. I encourage you’re a family to Accept the nature and work towards the desirable. One anecdote I can share is that when my daughters started middle school there was an explosion of google chat activity with photos and comments that stripped us very quickly of our parental innocence. Our response was to just observe how our daughters responded and to validate their universal needs for social interaction, novelty seeking and understanding. We also helped them connect the impact of this technology on their other aspirations. What choice would be most consistent with what you aspire to be. A few weeks later, I asked them about Google Chat and they said they had turned it off because they felt it was a distraction.
• #11: Number 4. When is privacy appropriate? Everyone can agree to respect the privacy of a child’s journal (except maybe an older sibling). And on the other end, we can agree that a child cocooned in their room doing something illegal is what we all want to avoid. I encourage your family to discuss this topic. While we expect increasing levels of privacy as we get older if you are hiding your screen, be mindful that it is likely you are doing something that is inconsistent with the person you aspire to be Every family should decide the line for themselves. But I encourage your family to agree that Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Germs die when exposed to sunlight. Atticus agrees Louis Brandeis early 20th Century Supreme court Justice
• #12: Number 3. Is my use of technology a privilege, entitlement or responsibility? This question really gets at an important distinction. Fruit Ninja privilege vs. Quizlet or Google Docs – something they need for their education. A useful guiding principle is all privileges come with responsibilities. This guidelines gives your family a mutual framework for evaluating behavior. I tell my kids that if the responsibilities for a given privilege are too onerous, I am happy to help them simplify their lives.
• #13: Number 2: Am I modeling a growth mindset towards technology? This question highlights the challenge I often hear which is how do I teach children to be technical when I am not not technical. I think of this as illiterate parents wanting their children to be literate. The good news is that learning is becoming democratized more and more every day. Code.org, code academy. Let me sum it up in just one word: You can do it!
• #14: Number 1. Am I modeling technology usage? Try to model usage and similar ratios between creational, functional and recreational technology that you want your children to follow Are you present when you are with your children? How much recreational technology are you doing? A good friend confessed he was fasting from games on his phone during Rosh Hashanah. Two summers ago I bejeweled by way through seven cities in China. Recently I gave up ESPN on the throne. Bottom line: Be the person you want you children to be … at least until they go to bed.
• #15: I will be publishing this as an article complete with resource links on Huffington Post. Follow me or Email me if you would like to be notified. Sunshine is the best disinfectant Creational Technology Use technology to create value Privileges always come with responsibilties Blue light tells your body it’s day If you feel like you want to hide your screen, you are likely doing something that is inconsistent with the person you aspire to be You’ll have plenty of time to watch TV at the nursing home