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Back-to-school technology should enhance the experience

By Christopher Nelson, Source: Tribune Media Services

It used to be enough to show up to the first day of classes with a spiral notebook and a blue or black ink pen. Not anymore. Students of all ages are sporting touch screen this and HD that. On the surface, the kids might seem to be the only ones who are benefiting from this technology but look a little deeper. Parents can get something out of it as well.

Let’s say your little one is lucky enough to get hands on an iPhone or iPad. Sure, it might be a lot of power for a kindergartner to have in their sticky, juice-covered fingers but some applications can come in handy and can be very educational. A newer, digital reading application, MeeGenius!, is available online and for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The application benefits parents in all sorts of ways. Their blooming students are able read classic children’s tales, like Little Red Riding Hood and The Ugly Duckling, with the aid of new-age technology. With features like audio playback and word highlighting, the application makes easier to read along, helping to develop reading comprehension skills. But the coolest feature of the application is the ability to personalize books. Just by answering a few questions, the book is rewritten with your son or daughter taking on a lead role.

As your little guy or girl gets older, fairy tales won’t cut it anymore. They’ll want to read about dreamy vampires and shirtless werewolves or the lucid experiences of rock stars. That’s where Swaptree.com comes in. The website allows members to swap CD’s, DVD’s, video games and books. So when those once-coveted video games get boring, your kid can barter them for something they’re interested in. Users can swap a DVD for a book, a video game for a CD, a book for a video game and so on. And when summer ends, Swaptree.com can be used as an easy way for families to the recycle stuff they have and get the schoolbooks they need. Since you’re trading something and the only money coming out of your pocket is for postage, you’re getting a good deal on books that are necessary to any student’s classroom success.

When high school rolls around, a whole new myriad of problems will arise. As a parent, it is crucial to have the tools to help solve them. Instead of afternoons spent at the mall, the everyday lives of teens are growing more and more through social media. This has resulted in all sorts of problems, one of those being cyberbullying. According to the National Crime Prevention Center, more than 40 percent of all teenagers with Internet access have reported being bullied online. It’s a trend that GoGoSTAT Parental Guidance, a free Facebook application that allows parents to monitor their children’s online activity, hopes to curb. The application identifies risky behavior and alerts parents so they can act quickly, notifying them when pre-established “family ground rules” are violated, inappropriate text is posted, new contacts are made or photos of their children are uploaded.

Texting is also a serious issue that has taken on many different forms, two of those being texting while driving and sexting. And while technology may be to blame, technology is also working to fix the problem. Many companies are trying to make parents sleep a little easier. Iconosys has an SMS Replier, which sends a prewritten message out to people who text someone when he or she is driving. That way, they don’t feel pressured to whip their phone out and start texting as they cruise down the highway. Although the SMS Replier is available now for certain phones, it is not yet ready for the iPhone but should be soon. That’s great for texting while driving but what about sexting? There are some scary statistics to go along with the craze. 1 in 3 people have sent a sext message and 41 percent sent it to people they didn’t consider to be close to them. Even scarier, almost a quarter of teens think so many people sext that there’s nothing wrong with it. LG has started their online-based TextEd program so that parents know how to talk to their kids about sexting and what they can do to prevent it since there’s no way to be around when every text is sent out. It’s completely free and gives parents the advice they need to help their child through a growing issue.

New technology is a double-edged sword. It might have some problems but even newer technology comes out every day that tries to remedy situations that arise. If parents take the time to research and embrace intuitive technology that comes out, they can easily overcome the burdens that arose in the first place.

© 2010, Tribune Media Services