You may love it, but your parents hate it, and usually there is nothing you can do about it. If you are trying to figure out why, here are some reasons why they might not altogether be very fond of Facebook.

1. They tend to believe that any social networking site is like an online dating service and someone so “young” should not be exposed to that.
2. They would much rather you spend your time reading rather than posting on walls.
3. Most people tend to dislike whatever they don’t understand. …click here to read more →

Virtual learning, aka elearning, has become very popular thanks to its flexibility and accessibility. It provides countless opportunities for those who are eager to learn whether they want to go for a college degree, a course, a PHD or masters degree or just enrolling in a program in order to raise knowledge or get certification.

According to the data available, minimum five million people are getting their higher education online. And this number is constantly growing. A wide majority of colleges and universities provide online courses for people who want to learn but can not attend the classes for some reason. There are also programs that assist in getting doctorate or associate degrees. Nowadays many businesses go for online training dealing with customer servicing in order to become successful. Online accreditation is now widely accepted.

Virtual learning is very beneficial. First of all, all classes take place in a virtual environment. Thus, you have your own pace and schedule. You study when you have time and computer access. All you need is to connect to the web and log in to the class. It is very convenient for teenagers, who spend most of their time at school and do not have much time. …click here to read more →

The value of the internet in childhood education and development has become far too significant to ignore. While many parents may avoid introducing their children to the internet until they are in their teenage years, it can actually be extremely beneficial to teach your child internet basics at a very young age. In essence, you can begin teaching your child how to use the internet as soon as they are able to read.

However, there are still many different safety concerns you must consider when allowing your child to have access to the internet. Most browsers and internet-based programs have parental controls that allow you to directly monitor and control your child’s activities. With these controls, you can guide your child to only have access to specific content. …click here to read more →

What have in common math and Halloween…? A cool teacher. Well better watch this video and see how this teacher transformed his class in a very interesting and funny one. I bet his students enjoyed this a lot.

Children will give up on playing outside and will choose wasting time on Internet. They are going to do this anyway so better find some nice activities that will at least shape their talent and extend their interest area. If you choose right activities, then your children will gains in intelligence, nonverbal skills, structural knowledge and long-term memory. After all, spending more time on computer is not such a bad habit.

For example if your child loves drawing then find specific tools for him and learn him how to use it. There are many free applications of this type with tutorials and demos for everyone. You can also search for tutorials that explain how your child can draw a house, or an animal. I am very sure your child will be enthusiast of this opportunity. …click here to read more →

There is nothing new in the fact that the society is becoming more and more dependent on computer and high technology. This wouldn’t be a bad thing at all if this would be for information, but lately, people are becoming dependent on computer for fun and entertainment too. And, unfortunately, children are included in this category too. Children do not play as older generations used to play. Today’s children spend a lot of time in front of their computer (because parents give them their own computers from a very early age) and in front of TV. Online games and video games took the place of old games. This is why you, as a parent, should be careful when choosing to purchase video games for your kids.

Image by Nico_s under CC.

Sometimes, especially when kids are young, having them play a video game can be a welcome break both for you and for them. But as they grow up their video gaming habits change. And this is something normal. They might prefer now to play with friends, participate in more challenging competitions and at higher levels. By the way, did you know that the average age of a gamer today is 33 years old? So, not only children play video games; people of all ages are playing games. Think that just like movies and TV shows, some games are simply not intended for young players. …click here to read more →

So here is how I see the “modern family”:

Father is coming home from work, takes off the coat, goes in his corner and open the computer to read the sport news and see the newest gadgets. The bigger son is in his room playing in network an “awesome game” with his friends. The little girl is dressing Barbie girls online because she can dress them faster then in real life and has more accessories. The mother is in kitchen preparing a quick dinner because she cannot wait to watch the newest episodes of her favorite movie.

You will think I am exaggerating. Maybe I am, a little bit, but nowadays families do not have one computer they have two or three. It is ok to have more computers and to be an active Internet user, but what I want to point here is that for people is a must to interact with each other. And if your children are playing online when do they go out to play with other children the old games? …click here to read more →

During September 21- 26, 2009 in San Diego took place the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma. At the conference took part Murray Straus a sociologist from the University of New Hampshire how was studying corporal punishment and its consequences since 1969.

His study revealed that “kids who were physically punished had up to a five-point lower IQ score than kids who weren’t”. The studies were made among 32 countries and in countries where spanking was applied, the average IQ was lower. Of course, the spanking effects are not visible immediately but have significant consequence on long term. A parent thinks that if he spanks his unruly children, their behavior will be better. And it will be… in that moment, but on long term is just a wrong taken measure. …click here to read more →

These days while I was searching on Google “how to h…”. I was surprised that the suggestions given were all related to hacking MySpace except the first one, which was “how to hard boil eggs”. It’s a funny combination but when you think that most of these searchers are teens, the fun is lost. If teens know how to hack MySpace, I think parents should also know.

Therefore, I made some research and I found out that there are three important methods about how someone can hack Myspace: using spy software, phishing and social engineering technique.

Spy software

It’s a very easy method but the difficult part become in finding the right application. These spy software are called key-loggers and can be hardware and software. The hardware key-logger is a device plugged inline between keyboard and computer, while software key-logger is an application that runs in stealth mode. Both are recording keystrokes and are sending reports with the activity to a specific e-mail address. …click here to read more →

Sometimes it’s not enough just to track websites visited by your child, you have to take further action like blocking these websites. You can block specific websites directly in the browser, or you can use specific tools or you can edit your hosts file.
I will take each method in part and I will describe it so you can follow these easy steps if you want to block the websites for your child.

Block websites in Internet Explorer.

1. Open Internet Explorer and in the menu bar click on the “Tools” and select “Internet Option”
2. In “Internet Options” hit the “Content” tab and in the Content Advisor area click on “Enable” button
3. Hit the “Approved Sites” tab
4. In the “Allow this website” field type the URL of the website that you would like to block and hit the “Never” button
5. You can add as many website as you want and you can also delete a website from the list by hitting the “Remove” button
6. To protect your changes you can enable the supervisor password in case someone wants to modify your allow/block websites list. To enable supervisor password after you added the websites in the Content Advisor area hit the “General” tab.
7. In User Option area check both boxes and in Supervisor password area hit the “Create password” button.
8. Type the password and hit the “OK” button …click here to read more →