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Stay Safe on Social Media

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3 Easy Tips to Make Sure Your Kids are Social Media Safe

Whether it be Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, social medias can be really fun way to interact with friends. As much fun as they can be, we need to always remember there are real threats to using these tools. Social Media can be dangerous too. So, how do we protect ourselves, and make sure our kids are protected too? Here are few things you can do to teach your kids about social media safety.

1-Don’t let young kids roam free

First things first, if your child is under the age of 13 make sure all of their accounts and passwords are connected to your device or computer. You should have total access to them. I’m not saying you should log on and read their messages, but you should be able to block or unfollow anyone that you feel could be a danger to them. It’s important to trust your kids, it’s even more important to make sure they are safe. Remember, there are some nasty things on social media, and you never know what is really happening if you don’t have full access to the your children’s accounts. So be smart, don’t allow your kids under 13 to have full and total reign over their accounts.

2-Stay private

This allows only your friends to be able to see what you post. REMEMBER: IF YOU ALLOW PEOPLE https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/17/do-not-track-web-privacy/TO FOLLOW YOU THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW, YOU ARE NO LONGER PRIVATE. Make sure you monitor the people your child allows to follow them. If you don’t k
now who they are, ask. Being social media safe, means constant check ups to stay social media safe. If you have any questions on how to make your social media accounts private, this should help.

3-Parody accounts are a wild card

Accounts that are created for memes and other funny internet things are usually accounts trying to build a large following to earn money through ads. Make sure you know what parody accounts your children are following. Once these accounts have a large enough following, they will often post inappropriate content for an easy buck. Don’t fall into the trap of a couple stupid jokes just to put your child in risk of seeing something that they shouldn’t. Remember being social media safe means preventing the problem before you have to deal with the problem. Don’t let social media teach your children about the birds and the bees.

We’d love to hear about other ways to protect our kids on social media. Leave us a comment and let us know how you do it! Being social media smart is a joint effort.

 

 

 

 

 

kids-school

Internet Safety; Is Your Child Safe on the Internet?

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6 Tips to Help Parents Understand Proper Internet Safety

The Internet can be a dangerous place. Without the proper precautions, your child’s safety could be at risk. With one click even kids can access things that would give most adults a stomach ache. So how can you make sure that what they are viewing is safe? The best way to combat the dangers of the internet is to know what they are! Your kid’s internet safety should be the number one goal. Here is a list of the best ways to make sure that your children are safe while using the internet .

1. Computer location is key

Make sure the computer is located in an area of non-privacy, like the front room or kitchen. This prevents kids from wandering the internet (like clicking random links) without parental supervision. Kid’s internet safety depends much on how daring they are willing to be and they are much less likely to take chances if someone else can see what they are doing.

2. Be a part of their cyberworld

Know what types of social medias and forms of entertainment your children are using. Follow their social media accounts and check their posts and the comments on their posts somewhat regularly. Make sure you know who is commenting and liking their photos and posts. If you don’t know who someone is, ASK!

3. Account privacy is most important

Teach your kid not to share passwords, even with their best friends. You never know who else will find out. Keeping information private is the best way to say safe on the internet. Teach your kids to logout of computers, even if they are personal or home computers. Also make sure to check your search engine settings. Most search engines allow parental controls that will help narrow the list of possible choices that appear when your children are surfing the internet.

4. Keep up with software

Use antiviruses and pop-up blockers. There are plenty of free or pay-for-use pop-up blockers and antiviruses available on the internet. Antiviruses keep your computer safe from bugs and malware. This is just like putting up a fence to keep your toddler in the yard. It’s a precaution if everything else goes wrong.

To find that best antivirus for windows, click here. Of the top ten, nine are pay-for-use, however, if you’re budget is tight there is a free one too.

Here is a link to the same site but for Mac computers. All on this list are paid, but fear not, here is another link for free mac antiviruses.

5. Don’t just ban, understand

One in four children see porn by the age of 12. Try to understand why this is and make sure you stay in constant communication with your children about what they are viewing on the internet. If something goes wrong on the internet, don’t react by blaming your child. Instead, make yourself available for conversation if anything that they stumble on makes them uncomfortable.

6. What is put on the internet stays on the internet

Make sure that your kids know that whatever they put on the internet, even if deleted later, is still on the internet. This makes anyone think twice about whatever they think they want to post to the internet.

Let us know what you think about this list. If you have another way of keeping your children safe, let us know. Together we can make the internet a child friendly zone!

#kidsafeinternet

Test Scores VS Skills Set. What’s Better for Homeschoolers?

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I was at lunch with our Founder and President, Seth Iorg a few months ago and we were speaking to a gentleman who works for a highly reputable online charter school. (I won’t mention the name). But he started to tell us about how this notion that “it’s all about test scores (i.e. ACT’s, highschool exams, SAT’s, etc. ) ” is coming to an end. That all these big wigs and prolific school board of directors, associations aren’t even mentioned schools exams anymore. But the phrase they use now is “College and Career Ready”. Helping kids of todays day and age become ready for college and know exactly what they want or need to study OR prepare them for the careers of the future.

This had quite the impact on both of us. We then decided to coin the phrase underneath our logo and it has now become our company motto! We want to provide a REAL coding (computer programming) PATHWAY for youth so by the time they turn 16-18 years of age, the child knows where to invest his/her time. Is it to pursue college? Is it to go directly into a career that may not require college. Whatever it may be… the parents will feel confident that their good money is not wasted.

Simply Coding, Inc. has been designed around this concept. We put kids in a real coding (html, css, javascript, java, python, etc.) and allow them to create THEIR on portfolios on github of their projects and games to show to future employers, internships, and so much more!

 

Top 5 Things Learned at Great Homeschool Convention

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Just got back about a week ago from our first Great Homeschool Convention. It was a great time meeting all the wonderful parents there that passed by our booth and to see their passion they have for their kids. What great Great Homeschool Conventionchristian beliefs and friendly people. We learned a few things on our adventure:

  1. WE LEARNED parents want family discounts for our online coding pathways for youth. UPDATE: We have now implemented this and you can add family members to your regular monthly membership and you can always downgrade later if one of the kids don’t like the computer programming kind of thing.
  2. WE LEARNED that homeschool parents are awesome and really care about the skills that their children will learn.
  3. WE LEARNED that every child needs coding! The more and more we think about it, Level ONE is such a must-have for any type of job/career. We looked on monster.com and couldn’t believe the requirements of random jobs that want to see html, css, javascript on the resume!
  4.  WE LEARNED that age is not a great indicator of whether a child is ready to do computer programming or not, but that “typing” is the key component! If your child can Nitrotype 15 words per minute, then he/she will have a good experience learning coding. Usually this is around age 10 if that helps!
  5. WE LEARNED that Twix was the preferred chocolate at our booth, and Baby Ruth came in dead last!

To Your Child’s Success,

Dustin