Not to mention that sometimes logging into a platform or accessing the messages, emails etc. wasn’t possible.

Every school has been trying to manage this situation in the best (?) possible way, trying to keep up the pace they had when meeting students in their real classrooms. But that’s not possible.

Everyone who has been working online for some time knows that communication channels need to be clearly defined and accessible to all, at all times, that for live classes we have to give (and receive!) clear instructions, safe links, and enough time to connect. Not everyone has super fast internet connections.

Dear everyone – colleague, teachers, educators, friends…. – please adjust the pace of learning, teaching and working!

We had a break (Easter), but after every kind of break we need time to readjust to this all. What seemed to be a sprint at the beginning, is a marathon: therefore we have to lower the pace and focus more on how we can make sure we all get to the finish line!

Last week I have spent more than 23 hours in online meetings, sessions with clients etc. not counting the time to prepare the meetings and sessions and all the admin that comes with running your own business.

I know it is possible to schedule them in a way that there is no overlapping. For my scheduling I use Acuity (but there are many other tools of course!) where I make sure I have buffer zones of 20 minutes that allow me to stretch, get some fresh air, drink or eat something in between meetings. Some of my colleagues spend 4 hours or more in a row, sitting in front of their screens, up to 16 hours a day. That’s simply not healthy! Although I think that I managed to keep up a good pace and manage to organize it all in the best possible way, I feel like my (brain) muscles are sore from this all. In addition to this all, the “emotional” aspect of this all ask our “emotional” muscles (I can’t find a better way to express that “feeling”; please share a better definition of this in the comments) are constantly stretched, highly alert… exhausted.

After several weeks of online work and learning, we should all assess what works, what doesn’t, and speak up! Let colleagues, organizers, managers, teachers, friends etc. know so that we all can “breathe” and go through this in the healthiest way.

For me it is clear that last week was an exception. This week I have scheduled less meetings, I spend more time outdoors and include workouts in my daily schedule. – And I think that my children need the same kind of time offline too. They won’t be learning less, and, honestly: we can’t compare the end of this year’s school year with any other one before. It is different, schools need to find ways to assess the progress and take the circumstance into consideration. Why are some worrying that “this generation will once be labelled with “those who graduated in the COVID19 year””: that’s our reality, that is how it was in other times too (war times come to mind – there are still people who minimize the effect of this pandemic or avoid thinking of it). – So, let’s adjust the pace!

Everything we’re doing needs to be enough. We are all doing our best giving the circumstances and bars should be lowered or somehow changed.

How are your teenagers doing after all these weeks of remote learning?

How does this all affect them, and you?

Please share in the comments.
And I’m off for a break – but will be back in… 20 mins or 30… hm… not sure …

Chia Suan Chong, an English language teacher who has made her mark on the field of ELT internationally and who is an inspiration to a lot of teachers, and author of Successful International Communication, held a brilliant webinar Doing the Communicative Approach Online: Motivating students to speak, where she explains how to motivate and keep students motivated when holding online synchronous lessons, i.e. face to face in real time.

Remote learning is not home schooling!

Keeping teenagers focused and engaged when learning remotely is not the same as home schooling!

Some parents had the impression they would need to become teachers in order to help their children keep on track, but this is not the case when we talk about remote learning. During remote learning, teachers and educators are still in charge of providing the necessary input and support to the students.

Although younger children might need some more support from their parents – either to set up the computer or device they need to work with, or with staying focused – older children rather need to learn to not get distracted and get side tracked by chats with friends, gaming, tiktok’ing etc.

Having a clear schedule and routine helped many families make it possible for their children to keep on studying. I know that families with children with special needs had to face many more hurdles! Especially when the parents needed to get some work done at home too. I heard though that some schools who already provided support for these students, also had special educators take care of them remotely.

How to improve even more…

What many schools and teachers need to consider though during COVID19 is that studying at home with all the family under the same roof, requires other routines and demands another kind of concentration from our children. Especially when they need to share the same table, room and sometimes computer…

I observe that schools have adapted the daily schedule and are not requiring children to sit in front of their devices for 6-8 hours in a row, but prefer quality over quantity.

Three or four hours per day is enough for a school aged child and student to study through an online device. – Our children also need time to process what they are learning independently, and they need to get the chance to apply and exercise what they’ve learnt.

And, how Chia Suan Chong mentions in the video, it is important to vary in the style of teaching and keep everyone engaged.

Connecting online … and offline

Teenagers who are familiar with learning online already to some extent, this change in the last weeks hasn’t been a big challenge. Obviously they miss their friends and the daily interactions with them, but they can “meet” via facetime, skype, zoom or other platforms. In times of social distancing in real life, we all use to socialize more online, and we should be thankful for having this option. I am very much aware that this online socializing is not possible for every child around the world right now, and I wonder how they are coping with this. A friend who lives in a country where the internet connection works only every now and then and only during a few hours per day, told me that they are spending time on the balcony, chatting with neighbors and those who take walks in the street. For the rest, they can’t do much more than playing board games, read books and draw, do what I think we all would have done should this pandemic have happened 20 or 25 years ago.

I hope your teenagers are all doing well and found a way to make the best out of this situation. – Keep safe & healthy, and #stayhome.

My questions for you:

• Do you know if the children who need some more support in your school received it also when they had to start studying from home?
• How was this organized?
• What would you suggest could have been done differently in your specific case, for your child and situation, to guarantee remote learning?

If you haven’t checked your kid’s phone yet, then it’s probably high-time you do it.
Although there’s nothing wrong with letting your kid use a smart phone, you also need to know how much liberty you should give your child. Too much of anything, particularly at a young age, can be harmful.

In guiding your child, here are the 10 apps you should be checking on his phone:

1. Snapchat

Snapchat is one of the most popular apps today. In fact, even celebrities use it. It’s an app that allows users to send pictures and recordings to their friends and set a time limit on how long these files will last. Unfortunately, with a false sense of security, kids can easily be encouraged to send things they shouldn’t be sharing.

If you see this app on your child’s phone, it’s essential that you re-iterate that what goes on the internet tends to stay there for good. There are apps that can actually capture his images before they get deleted.

2. Whisper

Whisper enables its user to create anonymous confessions through texts superimposed on
images. Although it sounds harmless at first, this app actually allows sharing of geographical location and messaging as well. Sexual predators can use it to lure trusting and innocent kids to meet up with them.

3. YikYak

YikYak is a social media channel that allows you to read posts from people within your area and to comment on them anonymously. These features are what make YikYak popular for cyber bullying. It can encourage kids to post derogatory comments on other kids and not get caught.

4. Vine

Vine allows users to post and share a 6-second clip of anything they want. Unfortunately, this app doesn’t have any strict rules about pornography and violence. Although it has an age requirement, it doesn’t have a solid way of verifying a user’s age. Because or how accessible its videos are, it’s easy for your children to view pornographic and adult contents on their feeds.

Aside from this, the app also enables its users to talk to anyone in and out of their friends list.

Since people can create an account under a false name, you’ll never know who your kid is really talking to.

5. 9Gag

9Gag is commonly used for finding and sharing memes. The risk with this app involves its
images not being strictly moderated. They can involve sexual, explicit and aggressive contents which are the exact things you don’t want your kids to see.

6. Tinder

Tinder is a dating app that has a 17+ rating. It allows users to find and hook up with potential partners within the same area. When a person flags another one, they’ll be able to connect instantly. With this, it’s also possible for a pedophile to create a false account to get in touch with unsuspecting children. Aside from its threat to your kid’s safety, Tinder also creates the impression that good looks are very essential in connecting with other people.

7. Instagram

Instagram is similar to any other social media sites in that it’s also widely used for cyber bullying. Aside from this, the app can also reveal your kid’s location. It even has the option to include his phone number in his profile page.

While these things can seem harmless, the idea that your child can be sharing personal information can mean a big security threat. Although there is an option to set profiles to private, you still won’t know who’s really following your kid’s page.

8. Kik

Kik is a messaging app that allows a user to send pictures, videos and other multimedia contents to another person without leaving a log on his phone. Because of this, Kik is often used by teens to share nudes and provocative messages without their parent’s knowledge. Since it doesn’t leave a log, a lot of sexual predators also use it to lure teenage girls.

9. Blendr

Through Blendr, a user can send private messages, photos and videos to another person within his area. The app doesn’t use any authentication rules to verify a person’s identity or age.

Because of how free people can use the app, it’s commonly used for flirting and hooking up.

10. Ghost apps

These are the apps that are disguised as harmless applications to hide explicit and sensitive files. Most of the time, they look like calculators and calendars but once you open them, you’ll be prompted to key in a password.

For a parent, it’s essential that you create a strong and trusting relationship with your child.

Letting your kid know that he can easily reach out and talk to you can greatly limit the chances of him looking for other people’s attention. It will also help lessen the chances that he’ll hide things from you.

Rose Cabrera writes for TopSecurityReview.com. To know more about her in-depth security guides and essential home safety tips, you can check out more of her works by visiting the site’s home security blog.

Ute’s tip:

It is fundamental to establish trust with your child and to take time to discuss these topics in detail, ask and answer all kind of questions so that the situation is clearly understood. Parents often tend to become very strict when it comes to security issues which can lead to misunderstandings and failure in making children understand, forcing them to hide things, which, as a result, makes them at a higher risk on getting into trouble.

When you find these apps on your kid’s device, before deleting them you should be very clear in explaining to your child why you need to uninstall them.  They should understand the importance of safety and the dangers of these apps.

Other than deleting and explaining, you should also follow these things:

• Restrictions by age can be set up in your kid’s device to make sure they’ll only be downloading apps suitable for their age.
• Monitor the apps on your kid’s smartphone and make sure there aren’t any “hiding app”.
• If your kid already has a profile on the said dating sites, explain to them why it’s not appropriate and safe for them. Then, ask your child to take down the profile.
• Disable GPS feature in the device and make sure the camera isn’t turned on.
• Set limits and teach your kid about responsible use of technology. (from topsecurityreview)
  

When children reach a certain age, parents want them to learn about what happens in the world. Many parents struggle with the way news are presented on TV. In fact, pictures and the way news are presented in the evening news can be quite traumatising. A great alternative are online news sites for children, where children and parents can choose the kind of news they think are appropriate and get more information about some topics in a child friendly way. What I personally like about online news is the choice to either read or watch the news.

Like in many multilingual families, my children like to have access to news in different languages. As I’m far from knowing about online news programms for children in other languages, asked some parents from the Multicultual Kid Blogs group to share news sites they recommend for children and am glad to share this here below.

Danish:

Rita Rosenback recommends the Danish site Kidsnews. You have to subscribe to the magazine, but the news videos are for free.

Dutch:

The Dutch Jeugdjournaal is a news programm for children that goes live every day at 18:45 and can also be watched online. There is also a Jeugdjournaal app that permits you to access news in a child appropriate format on mobile devices.

English (British):

Amanda van Mulligen suggested the BBC site for news. This site is very interesting not only for news but also for general information about different topics.

Another site that my children like to visit is the First News Site.

French:

Annabelle Humanes recommends the real paper newspaper that has also a news website. This website is, as far as I could see, without videos, therefore children need to be able to read to access the news.

Isabelle Barth points out that in France and in French-speaking countries, there is no News Channel just for children. But they have few channels just for childern an they have news in their programs. These channels are: Gulli, Tivi5mondeplus and canalj.

German:

On the German tivi site, children can watch news and choose the topics they’re interested in.

Italian:

The Italian site Bambininews offers news for children who already can read. In fact, there are no videos available (so far). Also, some Italian newspapers publish news sites for children, like Il Giorno. The TV channel RaiGulp offers also online access to some series and news, but, as far as I know, there is no video news programm online.

Norwegian:

And on the Norwegian site nrksuper children can access the news that are also aired on TV online.

Portuguese:

For Portuguese, Annabelle Humanes‘ husband recommends the Folinha de São Paulo, a website or supplement from an adult newspaper. It is Brazilian.

Russian:

Anna Watt recommends two Russian websites, one for a younger audience and one for 10-16 year olds and older.

Spanish:

The Spanish site educatumundo is an educational site for children, parents and teachers. Under noticias you can find several topics, written for children. These news are not available on video, but maybe there is another site that offers news clips in Spanish?

Swedish:

Rita Rosenback recommends the Swedish site SVT, where children can watch the news.

***

Of course, these are only a few online news sites for children and I really would like to extend this list. Therefore, I would really be glad if you could recommend any further online news sites for children in the comments section here below (indicating your name and, if you have one, your website). – Thank you very much!

©expatsincebirth; board games

Last year I did write a post about 10 indoor activities to do with children during this time of the year and last week I published a post on AngloINFO about Things to do in The Hague area during Autumn Holiday. This year we did decide to spend the Autumn Holiday at home. I must confess that I usually don’t plan a lot in advance because I prefer deciding day by day what to do, and I like to have some more quiet days where the children have to figure out what to do with the things we have at home. During the last decluttering, I did find several games my children didn’t touch or play with in months. I gave away some of them, but others were waiting to be played with or to be used. My children did several board games and now I know precisely which ones are “out” and can be given away soon.

©expatsincebirth

©expatsincebirth; Lego

We did visit Lego World in Utrecht and the Museon. After each visit they were inspired and did build a Lego-Museum in our attic and write long texts about what they saw and discovered. Children often like to reconstruct experiences they had (not only during holidays). This can be outings like we had so far or longer travels. My children often do it by building, drawing or writing something about their experience.

©expatsincebirth

I like to watch them writing. And I love to listen to their stories. They often come up with great ideas about what to do next or how to do it different the next time. I really learn a lot from my children. The way they talk about what they see and experience allows me to see the world through their eyes. And in their stories I can read much more than only “the story”. I can understand what kind of things make them upset, what are the things they like (and dislike) and make them happy, where their interests are and what they really don’t care about. – I learn to read in between the lines.

©expatsincebirth; Paco and the deers

Of course we managed to do walks in the surroundings every day – which is a must because this fall is really mild and sunny. We have a lovely Kinderboerderij in our neighbourhood and our dog has some deer-friends he never forgets to greet when we walk past the fence. If they are not close to the fence, he “calls” them and waits until they come closer.

When we don’t travel during holidays, I also want my children to get bored. I want them to learn how to deal with this feeling because I consider it important for them to be able to figure out by themselves what they can do. Usually they come up with very good ideas. During this break, they haven’t been bored (yet) and I’m very glad to see that they take decisions by themselves concerning their activities and how to spend their time. I love listening to their discussions about the pro and cons. My role becomes more and more the one of a spectator – and an admirer.

I did write about summer chores for children earlier and my children use to have them also during shorter breaks. The first days they need a reminder but then they get into the routine of helping in the household. – These breaks are supposed to be breaks also for us parents. In our case, we’re already happy that we don’t have to prepare lunchboxes every morning or that I don’t have to drive the kids to school and after school activities, but I think parents also deserve a “break” from other daily chores. Involving children in the life and work at home is also part of our task as parents. We want them to become independent one day and capable to do all those things we often tend to do for them. – I also do it when they go to school, but only because I consider that during school time it’s more important for them to focus on the school. But when they’re at home, we all have to take our responsibilities like a team.

©expatsincebirth; Wii breakdance

Of course, the electronic devices are part of our lives too. Every day we discuss about how much time we are allowed on the device, doing what, how long? What do we have to do in order to gain some “online time”?  Games, exercices (maths, science and spelling etc.) and Wii sports and dance and stop motion are allowed about 30 mins, but every supplementary time must be earned. How? By making things that need to be done: all kinds of household chores like folding laundry, tidying up and taking care of the dog (etc.) and some extra tasks that come to our minds.

We all do love reading and since my children now all read in different languages, it’s a real pleasure for me – as a declared bibliophile – to watch my children devour books after books in different languages. – And as my time on electronic device has expired (for now), I’ll go back reading my books.

How did you spend your Half Term Break – if you had one – or how do you spend school holidays when you don’t travel?