April 4th 6:30 – 8:30 pm Parent of kids in grades 4-7? Don’t miss this presentation. The presenter will blow you away

Hopefully the title will have gotten your attention and the invitation is sincere both as a school principal but also and more importantly as a parent of 2 children ages 10 and 13. Yesterday morning Mr. Jesse Miller, an expert in social media, came and spoke to our grade 6 and 7 students  and their teachers, providing us with the good, the bad and the ugly about  social media (Facebook, twitter, etc…).  Even before the presentation began, he provided me the names of several children whose facebook accounts were of concern to him as a media savy professional and parent. Of course my first reaction was ” How did you get this information without a password?” Jesse just smiled and proceeded to show me content that as a parent made me shudder. The content brought a lump to my throat.   

Jesse’s presentation, albeit directed towards the children had many implications for parents and our lack of understanding of the world of social media. He was able to demonstrate in real time, almost every facebook page that our children had posted on line. This informaton included content (which he blocked out), photos of the students and additional personal information. This was all in the public domain and there was no magic or anything illegal in obtaining this content.

One question Jesse asked the students was how old they were and proceeded to add one more one word question  ” Facebook?”  The children immediately knew that this meant Jesse was asking their ‘fake’ facebook age which they knew by the terms of use agreement had to be 13 or older. Very few of our students are 13 yet well over 70% of students have a facebook account. The children were shown every facebook site that was connected to Yennadon. They were shown every photo he was able to obtain in a short period of time.  Needless to say, there was some nervous faces in the crowd. There were some nervous looks and the occasional embarrasing smile.

Jesse Millar’s message to the children was simple yet complicated for a young pre-teen or early-teen child to comprehend. His message was that everything you do on any social media is owned by the company that produces the media. The information is public even if you have deleted a post or site and it is on the web forever, even after death.

Jesse Millar’s  presentation blew me away. This is information that we as parents and for myself as an educator need to be more aware of. I know we are busy in the evenings…..we all are.  This is my invitation to you. Please come.

Parents of Grade 4 – 7: bring your child along and learn together (no siblings please)

When: Wednesday April 4th, 2012     What time: 6:30 – 8:30pm     Where: School gym   

RSVP to Yennadon school  by Friday March 30th with numbers attending (so we know how many chairs to set)

Yennadon’s Library – The Hub of Our School

I have written a lot about the various happenings that make Yennadon a great place to be. Yet I have neglected to write about one of the hubs of the school. The school library. We are fortunate that the designers of our school, likely with the unput from our librarian, placed our library at the forefront and at the centre of our building.

Having a great location may be great for real estate, but as far as a school library is concerned,  its what you do with it that really counts. In this regard, our library, its facilities and our teacher -librarian, Mrs. MacQuarrie offer fabulous services to almost 600 students. Did you notice I used the term teacher-librarian? By no accident our librarian is first and foremost a teacher. Curriculum is what she does best and uses the library as a service to support teachers in our school with the resouces they need to bring the classroom’s  curriculum to life. She fosters a love for reading by endlessly trolling for the latest and most up-to-date literature in the hopes that children will be inspired to become life-long readers and by  sponsoring our school’s Bookfest Book Club, Mrs. MacQuarrie brings together children from all intermediate classes to discuss some fabulous authors.  Our library is open daily for students to return and sign out another book and when she is not available, Mrs. MacQuarrie (Yes it is Mr. MacQuarrie’s wife but we wont hold that against her) has an army of parent and student volunteers trained to help students find what they need. With limited funds, Mrs. MacQuarrie, raises thousands of dollars through a series of Scholastic Book Fairs whose funds are used to supplement levelled guided reading books and keeping library collections up to date.

Gone are the days of our youth where the library was manned (or womaned) by some old fossil whom heaven forbid, would permit even the faintest of whisper. The library was a place to be avoided. Books were never to be moved or removed from shelves. Yennadon’s library, thanks to Mrs. MacQuarrie’s competence and dedication have made our library a very dynamic hub of our school.  Enjoy the photos!

ps. I forgot to mention that she manages to do all this in just three days each week!