parent . thesis

CBS Evening News series

I caught CNET Editor at Large Brian Cooley on the CBS Evening News report last night, "The Secret Lives of Teens." In the second installment of this three-parter, which featured a tug-of-war between a daughter and her mother concerned about her risky online behavior, Cooley observed that, "This is just the return of the Cold War, with different players. Instead of the U.S. and Russia, it's Mom and Dad versus Joey and Bill." Cooley talked about parental control technology but added that, "In the end, this points back to the parenting relationship, and it moves away from technology when you really have to make a difference in their lives...you cannot rely on software."

I agree with Cooley's conclusion. Online safety for teens is a complex issue that cannot be covered in one blog post, but the CBS Evening News series gave me a lot of food for thought. They posed the question, is parental spying on teen Internet use an "invasion of privacy or smart parenting?" and I wish the CBS series had given more consideration to the possibility that digital spying is a misguided parenting practice.

This has felt like a heavy week all around, so I wanted to wrap it up with a little levity. My favorite article this week was Michelle Slatalla's New York Times piece, "These Naughty Gifts Don't Clutter a Closet." She put the utter absurdity of Facebook applications into perspective, as she described the various virtual Naughty Gifts that one can send to friends, "thigh-high black platform boots...foil-wrapped condoms, black thongs and cans of something called Mr. Whipped Cream."

You see, in real life I've been talking to mom-friends quite a bit about Facebook, and everyone is confused about what standards to use to judge your own kid's behavior when it comes to online personae. Most parents find they have to settle for something decidedly less dignified than they would normally accept.

After all, if you get a call from the principal saying that your teen was "throwing poo" at school, that would be cause for major alarm. But for teens online, it's just another fun way to say hi. Slatalla turned the tables on her family by in some very un-mom-like behavior on Facebook herself.

The end of civilization as we know it? Probably not. Michelle Slatalla gives me hope that parents might even survive with an intact sense of humor.

Teens may be reacting with horror to the idea that Facebook is now open to everybody, so their parents may be showing up to butt into their social network.

I find myself on the other side of that equation, wondering "Why would I bother joining Facebook?" Fast Company recently discussed Facebook's growth, noting that "60 percent of the site's users are not in college networks, and the fastest-growing demographic is 25 and over." I had to laugh a bit at the broad swath covered by this statistic. Age 25 is a relatively recent college grad who is probably experiencing social networking as part of their peer experience.

As for those of use who are over age 30...well, let's say that no matter how wired we are, we did not exactly make a seamless transition from a yearbook to Facebook.

The battle between parents, school, and teens over cell phones involves many levers to push and pull. Now AT&T has added a new twist: for $4.99 per month per line, parents can add on customized controls through the new "Smart Limits" service. Phone options include limiting talk time, text messages, instant messages, and Web content and downloads.

Teens naturally balk at the idea of limits, but there are many advantages to making these controls available.

Over the past several years I have watched in dismay as the budgetary consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) force schools to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward education. I have seen in my own neighborhood a "successful" school reduce its science instruction down to 20 minutes a week for 1st-3rd graders because of fears that a single child's lack of performance on a standardized test might result in a budgetary take-down. Mr. Holland's Opus was a poignant and sadly prescient story of a bureaucracy that had its sites set far too low when it came to determining what was best for the child. Today, the Mr. (and Ms.) Hollands of America are being systematically underfunded as schools scramble to meet unrealistic criteria that make little sense for any child that has a human dimension. From my perspective, No Child Left Behind has taken a bad situation--a chronically underfunded educational system that disrespects and discards teachers by failing to pay a professional wage--and made it worse by forcing administrators to deny virtually any educational opportunity that is not directly tied to a question on a standardized test. What can we, as a tech-savvy people, do to give teachers the support their need? What support can we give so that they can provide their students with an education that is relevant in the 21st century? Can progressive-minded people form a PTA so strong that we can reverse the damage of the the NCLB Act and give our nation's youth the education that our democratic government presumes necessary for proper function?

I only watch Oprah when Amy says "Michael, you have to see this episode." One day she told me I had to see Charles Best and his new idea called Donors Choose. The idea was simple: set up a website whereby teachers could solicit donations for their classrooms--mats in the classroom so that Kindergarden students could have "a place of one's own," a digital camera so that students could take pictures of natural environments visited on field trips and thereby write more accurate narratives of their observations, a table saw so that a class could build sets for their drama productions. These donation requests can then be funded (to initiate or complete matching grants) or fulfilled by donors excited about the particular request, the type of classroom environment, the location of the school, etc. It's like a CraigsList for educational philanthropy. And what's really cool is that 100% of the donation amount goes directly into the classroom in the form of goods purchased by and delivered by Donors Choose. This is important because if the money went to the school, the school would likely be forced to allocate the money into "more of the same" rather than what the teacher has clearly and rightly identified as a need in their own classroom.

When most people think about educational philanthropy, they think about Gordon Moore's $600M donation to Cal Tech, John Werner Kluge's $400M donation to Columbia University, and Sidney Frank's $100M donation to Brown University. Heck, when billionaires like Larry Ellison can get national attention for not giving $115M to Harvard, what can we mortals do?

I hear you asking "What good is $10,000 going to do?" Or half of that. Or half of that. Or half of that. Or half of that. Well, when teachers in America are being forced to pay for pencils and papers out of their own pockets, and when those teachers are rarely earning a living wage, suddenly a $60 donation or a $100 donation makes the difference between no pencils and pencils. When students in high school math classes are expected to purchase $85 calculators and 80% of the students qualify for food assistance, a $1250 donation can bring into the classroom the tools these students need to stay with the program and succeed, rather than failing for lack of financial resources and dropping out. And for people who don't have enough to fund an entire donation request themselves, Donors Choose helps people contribute to a project, thereby starting a financial match or find a project that can be fulfilled when the final matching funds are provided. In this way, even $10 can make a difference that the donor can be sure about.

Two years ago, Donors Choose expanded to have a state-wide presence in North Carolina and I elected to have money deducted directly from my paycheck to flow into my Donors Choose account. Though it is relatively small money, the constant deductions every two weeks give me a nice little balance I can use to fund teacher requests that interest or excite me. And, unlike money donated to a school fund that can be siphoned off to other budgets, Donors Choose money goes straight into the classroom in the form of the materials teachers request: pencils, paper, digital cameras, etc. The genius of making it easy for first-time philanthropists to give, using Web 2.0 technologies to match requests and donors, and the delivery of goods in a form that cannot be re-appropriated gives the donors a true satisfaction that their gift is being received. And it gives the teachers a sense of empowerment that somebody is listening and willing to give them a chance to be successful in their classroom. The letters of thanks that donors receive from the children really prove that the system, so broken in so many schools, works for Donors Choose.

So check it out!

And now, a personal appeal...Right now, Donor's Choose is one of five finalists competing for a match of up to $5M sponsored by American Express. As a Card Member, I have given Donor's Choose my vote. If you are a Card Member, you might want to review the five finalists and consider whether Donors Choose is deserving of your vote. But whether you vote or not, I encourage you to look at how Donors Choose delivers 21st-century transparency and integrity to the educational philanthropy process, and I encourage you to think about how this transforming technology can be used to improve your child's classroom environment. Even if you do not have a child in a school participating in a Donors Choose program, think about how your direct involvement in meeting simple, basic teacher needs can improve the overall scholarship and success rate of other children and other teachers who, all together, form the larger graduating class to which your child belongs.

To me, the ability to participate directly in the success of students, teachers, and schools across the country make Donors Choose a PTA for the 21st Century. And with Donors Choose, we can restore to the teachers the materials and support they need to give children the education that every child deserves. An education...you know...for kids!

Now I have heard everything. On top of all the duties that moms are supposed to do, some are now babysitting their kids' Webkinz online pets while the children are away at summer camp.

In the world of overintensive parenting and martyred moms, can we all agree that spending a half hour to an hour a day caring for pretend critters is a good place to draw the line at ridiculous demands that are made of our time? (Of course there is no mention of dads being asked to take over this ridiculous "duty.")

Webkinz never die but they "get sick" and need medicine if they are ignored. This costs virtual KinzCash that kids earn by answering quizzes and playing on the site.

If parents want their kids to learn responsibility by caring for their Webkinz, I say this should include the responsibility of feeling a hit in their pocketbook when they need someone else to care for these "pets." In our larger society, mothers face major economic hurdles related to the fact that our caregiving labor doesn't "count" in any official way. Let's not let our children get away with the illusion that caregiving is free.

Moms, claim back your time and let that KinzCash account go to zero.

SUCCESS: Spectrogram of Bat Calls, to 48 kHz

(Credit: Michael Tiemann)

I don't know about you, but there was a lot of excitement at the Tiemann household when this image popped up on the screen. It meant that nights of field work, evenings of programming, and a weekend of multimedia production all pointed at one, inescapable conclusion: my crazy bat project was a SUCCESS and the promise I made to my daughter was KEPT!!

First things first. If you have been following this blog, you know that a week ago I had the crazy idea of trying to record bats. After finally having an opportunity to use my aforementioned SONY PMC-D1, and after spending another few hours trying to convince myself I had captured something, in the end I felt a bit like one of the members of the Warren Commission looking at the Zapruder film and asking "you want me to make a finding based on this?" If I was going to convince my daughter that we had, in fact, captured and identified bat sounds beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was going to take more than a few suspicious noises of post-processed audio before I could be satisfied that the burden of proof could be met. In the days after my first blog posting, things were looking fairly bleak for the project, but I was determined to prove that with a little technology (a little more than you might suspect), I could, in fact, make good.