What Parents Need to Know About Catfishing

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

This is my last post on this topic for this year (I know, it's officially not even summer any longer) but I do already have plans to pick it back up for next summer so definitely stay tuned!

Today I'm talking about Catfishing!

What I know about catfishing is that it is telling someone one thing (or maybe many things) that end up being lies (usually it's in the form of taking another persons image and using it as your own).  You could be trying to convince them to send you money or fall in love with you.  In my opinion the only way it's different from online grooming is that when you think of online grooming you are typically thinking of it happening to a child and the person on the other end wants to meet up with them.  In catfishing the person on the other end is hesitant to meet up because they know their lies will be exposed.  And yes, this what I've learned based off of watching the MTV show "Catfish"

You can find this poster, free to download at National Online Safety.

If you suspect you may be being catfished and want to find out there are some steps you can take

1)  Google Image search.  Did the person send you any photos of themselves?  Search them in Google and see where else they pop up.  You can also do this if you suspect your photos are being used by someone else.

2)  Invite them to send a very specific photo that will be hard to find online (like holding a paper with something written on it).

3)  Are they willing to chat with you?

4)  Are they willing to video chat with you?

Whatever you do and no matter how good of a friend they appear to be if you have uncertainties do not send them anything.

I've talked about a lot on topics similar to this over the course of the last few months.  

You can find all of the other topics here:

Instagram

Fortnite

App Store

Age Ratings

Screen Addiction

TikTok

Momo

SnapChat

WhatsApp

YouTube

Live Streaming

Reddit

Minecraft

Online Grooming

Roblox

Twitter

Twitch

and like I said, stay tuned for June 2020 when I restart this series again with a bunch of new topics!

This Week At School

This week at school I...

I went to a soccer tournament and spent all day outside.  Luckily it wasn't too cold (although I definitely wore gloves and a toque most of the day) and the rain held off until the bus ride back to school.

I went to a different colony school (but one that I had been to last year) and taught middle years.

I went to a kindergarten classroom and quickly realized that kindergarten is tricky this time of year... routines are being drilled into them so much they definitely do lose their minds when anyone strays even the slightest from their routine.

I had a half day turn into a full day.  The teacher that I ended up covering for the in the afternoon was also away for the morning but they couldn't find a substitute teacher for her (so I think someone else covered the couple of classes she had in the morning).  I doubt anyone thought there would be a substitute teacher shortage this early on in the year!

I was a French teacher... very little French was spoken.

I was in a classroom with a student teacher!  Huzzah!  These always make for easier days.

We played some Silent Ball and Snake.

Needless to say it was a busy week at school (and I've already got quite a bit booked for next month already too).

Book Creator

If you're like me you will remember creating your own books when you attended school using paper and pencil crayons but it seems those days are behind us now and the more technology one can incorporate into their projects for students the better!... at least from a students perspective.

Cue Book Creator

I was in a classroom last year that was using it and just got around to looking more into it and well... I'm impressed!

There is a free version which I'm assuming should be sufficient for most classrooms as long as you don't exceed 40 books (which for most classrooms I've been in means maybe 1 or 2 books per year unless they are getting deleted).  There are also options for paid per year subscriptions which allow you to store more books if your budget allows.

There is also a read to me function... which sounds exactly like a robot but for those that are struggling with reading it could be a great option.

If you watch the video you can see examples of what you can all use the Book Creator program for... personally I think I would use it for book reviews and maybe even a digital portfolio.

What would you use it for?

What Parents Need to Know About Online Grooming

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Online Grooming!

This one is a scary one...

I'm going to do the poster say it all (as it does) which you can find free to download at 

National Online Safety.

What's most concerning to me?

1 in 4 kids said they had been sent a message that made them feel uncomfortable.

It doesn't need to be a long drawn out process and a meet up could be arranged in less than an hour.  Do you know what your child was doing online in the last hour?

The biggest thing to remember is to check privacy settings on your child's apps and devices.  It can't totally eradicate the problem but it's definitely a start.  And remember, a lot of the apps and sites that I've already talked about can all play a roll in child grooming (Twitch, Live Streaming, Tik Tok, Minecraft, Roblox, WhatsApp, Twitter, Fortnite, SnapChat, Instagram, Youtube)

Last week I talked about what we all need to know about Reddit.

This Week At School

This week at school I made my way back to one of the colony schools I frequent (in fact, this was the only school I went to this week).

It seems that the class sizes have gotten smaller and many of them have discovered a love of reading (which I love to see as last year many of the middle school students couldn't be bothered to read). Needless to say it was a pretty fantastic few days of work!  They even sent me home with a pumpkin cake one day.  Yum!

Otherwise, I'm still doing my best to recuperate from my sinus infection. I feel great (for the most part) the only problem is my right ear (which feels like there is just a lot of pressure around it). Last week my doctor told me there were no new developments in my ear so I'll give the medication another month to hopefully make that better before making a return to the doctor.

We went to the lake (likely for the final time this year).

And I picked a bunch of tomatoes, peppers, and chilies from the garden (everything but the chilies we'll be using to make some spaghetti sauce soon - the chilies I'm going to trade with a friend for part of her aloe plant).

Also, if you are wondering why I'm not announcing a winner for the free subscription to the Calm App it's because I didn't get a single email (don't worry, I'm not too upset). If you are looking for a free subscription it's still very much available all you need to do is email me at confessionsofamodernday@live.com and I'll pick my winner by next week!

How to Write a Summary Paragraph

I was in a classroom this past year where the teacher had her students writing a summary paragraph and her way of writing it was different from what I've seen/done in the past.

Typically what someone will suggest when summarzing something you've read is to read it, put it off to the side, and then put it into your own words.  Sometimes it works and sometimes its VERY similar to the original.

Well, here's what this teacher did.

We started off by watching a video on Youtube

In case you aren't taking the few minutes to actually watch the video (it's really not all that important anyway)... it's on indoor gardening.

After watching the video the first time each student comes up with 2 questions they have about what they watched.  No one had to answer the questions they just had to ask them (or write them down).  So something like "I wonder...." would work wonderfully.

Then we watched it a second time but this time we took some jot notes while watching.  Because it was the first time they had ever done this I also took some jot notes on the board and if they didn't take enough notes they could borrow some of mine.

Here's what my jot notes looked like:

Jot notes for summary paragraph

Then we picked 3 powerful words that summarizes the video (you can see ours at the bottom of our jot notes: Indoor, Plants, and Winter)

I modeled the actual writing of a sample paragraph for this class and this is how it goes:

1) Start your paragraph with a question (choose one of the 2 you wrote down earlier)

2)  Make a sentence about at least 4 of your jot note points

3) End your paragraph with a sentence that includes all 3 of your powerful words.

Here's what we came up with together:

Summary Paragraph

We wrote our sentences based off of the jot note points that were starred.

Do you have any sure fire way to get kids to summarize their reading (or in this case their watching)?

What do you do?

What Parents Need to Know About Reddit

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Reddit!

I haven't scrolled through Reddit much but I have a little and from what I've seen it appears to be a site where people post topics and others comment on them or add to the story.  I'm assuming there are millions of topics and that once you are logged in on the site anyone can see and comment on anything.  I can't see the site being super popular amongst younger kids or teenagers though.  Of course because anyone can post there could be inappropriate topics for young readers (much like the rest of the world wide web).

Sorry, I know this one is blurry, you can find the actual PDF version of this on National Online Safety

What I didn't know about Reddit

You can pay for a membership.  I guess some people are just really bothered by all the ads and likely use the site frequently that they can justify paying for the membership.

You can also give gifts.  I guess if it's you are really enjoying a topic?  The poster didn't say if the person being gifted the money (which is recommended to start at $20 actually gets the money... but I'm assuming they do).

You can turn off adult content which will hopefully hide a lot of the more inappropriate topics for young viewers.

Be careful what you believe.  Since anyone can post it is largely everyone's own opinions and bias'.  Not only this but fake news could easily be spread (and believed).  It's like the new Wikipedia (or was I the only one ever told not to believe everything you read on there?).  Regardless, it's always good to form your own opinions on things and double check things before you go around making claims.

Last week I talked about what we all need to know about Live Streaming

This Week At School and a Free Calm App Membership

I know this is a long post folks but make sure you at least scroll down to the bottom to look into how you can get your own free Calm app subscription (it's a $60 value!)

Well folks it didn't take long for this substitute teacher to get her first subbing job!

... and it just so happened to be on the 2nd day of school these kids had this year

... and it just so happened to be home economics and art so all of the classes were new to her on this day.

Needless to say there were definitely parts of the day that were a bit of a gong show.

I had 40 plus students show up to my room for art at the end of the day which seemed not right at all so I called down to the office for some help deciphering what the problem might be... turns out I had 2 classes of art in my room (so double the students).  Naturally I sent half of the class on their way to their actual class.

In art I had my students doing 2 different name drawings (a graffiti name and a name tangle)  here were the teachers examples that she sent me via text.

name graffiti

name tangle

I'll get into what the instructions are in a later post (but it may not be until next year *gasp*)

In home economics I had one class of cooking (we made biscuits) and one class of sewing (I introduced the class to them).

I can't say it was a great day.... but I was still [sort of] suffering from my sinus infection in the form of what seemed like a lot of pressure on my ears.

Luckily, while I was at that school on Monday another teacher asked if I would come back for her the following day and thus began my official busy week!

Next up I was teaching grade 7 ELA which was a pretty easy half day...not much to report here.

Then I managed to book myself a day at another school as a "teacher vacancy"... which ended up being cancelled the day prior by the person who made the job.  Which is disappointing because...

Pro tip: If you want to find a way to meet a lot of teachers (and their classes) all in the same day search for a teacher vacancy!  You'll likely be in at least 4 teachers classrooms and get to spend time with their classes in their classroom (so you'll know if you want to come back!)

Everyone and their mom has been posting "back to school" pictures of their kids well... here's mine

Finally, when I wasn't working (because lets be honest I wasn't working every day this week)

I made some apple muffins here is the recipe and they are delicious!

Although there is a few alterations I would make... cut the butter you need for spreading on top of them to an 1/8 cup and also cut the cinnamon sugar down by a bit too... because you will have leftovers and that's just wasteful.

I also made some peanut butter chocolate ice cream!  Which I regret to inform you was not that good... we'll find a better one and eventually link that recipe!

And I visited the doctor again in the hopes that I would regain proper feelings in my ear

There is one last thing I wanted to throw out there before I closed off this post.  A few weeks ago I mentioned how Calm was offering free memberships to educators (a $60 value) and they offered me another membership for my readers (ideally an educator but I'm not going to know if you aren't one).  So, if you are interested in one please email me at

confessionofamodernday@live.com

I'll pick a winner from those that email me and announce it here and on next weeks TWAS post.

Although, my guess is I don't actually have THAT many readers and even fewer will have made it all the way down here so if you are seeing this late and I haven't posted a winner please email me... you may not be too late [maybe]!

I'd be interested to know how you would use the app in your classroom.  I've been working my way through the 21 Days of Calm (I'm on day 7) and to be honest I'm just not sure how calm of a person I am to focus on it... yet.  I do like that it requires me to close my eyes for about 13 minutes a day and relax though.

Anyways, if you want your own membership please email me!

Year Round Schooling

My brother in law (who is also a teacher) asked me the other week if I had heard what they were doing in some schools in Edmonton where they were switching the yearly schedule up so that students wouldn't get such a long break in the summer (where a lot of retention is lost) and instead have year round schooling with more frequent (but shorter breaks).  I hadn't heard of it but I have talked about it before...to read what my opinion was click here.

And what do I think now?

I still think it's a great idea!  So much retention can be lost over the summer holidays and shortening them will definitely (in my opinion) help with this.  Plus, what they are trying out this year is only shortening the summer break by a little bit.  They still get 5 weeks of holidays.

There is at least one downside that I can think of that I hadn't previously discussed though. 

If it were province wide it might be hard to vacation places within your province as everyone will have that same shorter time span to do all their typical summer holiday things.  Luckily, in Edmonton's case they are just doing it in 3 schools so I can't see 3 schools worth of families booking up camp grounds and overcrowding water parks nearby.  If it were hundreds of schools that get the same 5 weeks off it might be a problem though.  A possible solution... stagger the summer holidays so that different divisions in the province start the holidays at different times.  If you stagger it by divisions it will likely help with siblings who attend different schools (but remain in the same division) still having the same break.

Otherwise, I'm all for it.  

I like that there is 2 weeks at spring break especially.  This means that if you want to go away somewhere hot (like Mexico) during your break you don't have to jet off the first Saturday and quickly fly back a week later and jump right back into school.  You can leave on a Tuesday instead (which might even make a vacation less expensive) and come back with still a few days before school is back in session.

I kind of wish they would have given a bit extra time at Christmas though.  It just always feels like I'm super swamped with family things to do (and this is usually when I get sick as well) that once all the gatherings are done and I'm starting to feel better it's already time to go back to school.  

Here is the article I've referenced in this post

Anyways, what do you think?  Are you on board with year round schooling?

What Parents Need to Know About Live Streaming

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Live Streaming!

To be honest, live streaming isn't something that I'm super familiar with but I bet the students that I teach in middle school or older are.  Also, my husband knows about it as apparently it's popular in the gaming community (not that I would classify my husband as a "gamer").  Although, every so often you do hear about it in the news as to how someone live streamed some terrible thing that happened which basically alerted whomever was watching and they in turn alerted authorities.

Anyways, you can download this poster from National Online Safety

To start with there are SO many ways to live stream.  You can use Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Periscope are some of the bigger ones.  

You can't edit your live stream... it's like when a news broadcaster goes live... hopefully they already kind of know what they are going to say and do because you can't undo or change something once it's happened.  Also, since it's live you can't preview what's going to happen.  So if you are trying to protect your children from certain language or videos it would be harder to do if they are watching live streams.  

Like anything on the internet once you put something out there it could be there forever.  You may eventually delete that video you live streamed (or the app may automatically delete it after a certain amount of time) but that doesn't stop people from recording it or taking screen shots.

Clues can be gathered from live streams as to where your child may be.  Is there a school, mall, or street names in the background?  Even something like a park could be identifiable if people know the general area that a live streamer lives.  So be careful where you film.  You could also let it slip that after the live stream is over you are heading to xyz mall not thinking about that you are giving your location away.

Generally just be aware of what your kids are doing in life and online.  It can be a scary place out there and we want to protect these kids from it as much as possible.

Last week I talked about a live streaming app called Twitch.

This Week OFF From School

School has officially started back up where I live but this substitute teacher still had this week off!

We went to the lake for the long weekend (a different lake from all the other times we've gone to one this summer though).

Although I wasn't feeling the greatest all weekend I did manage to still go out for ice cream (black forest - YUM), play games, a long hike, and catch the "live action" Lion King in the theater in the park!

Here are a couple of shots taken from our hike

Last week I mentioned I found a cake recipe that required lots of apples that I had made and I went ahead and made it again this week for the lake.

Apple Cake

You can find the recipe here but I made a few changes (after reading some of the comments)

1) I used a half cup less sugar

2)  Then I used 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar instead of just using white sugar

3)  I used an extra cup of chopped apples (so 4 cups)

4) I added a generous 2 tsp of vanilla

5)  Before I poured the batter into the bundt pan I greased the edges with butter and then made a cinnamon sugar mix to sprinkle on the edges (it will stick to the edges because of the butter)

6) I baked it in a bundt pan at 350 for about 55 minutes

When it comes out of the oven it will smell like doughnuts and you'll understand why I made it twice in 2 weeks!

I FINALLY went to the doctor after getting back from the long weekend because my ears were making it feel like I was stuck on an airplane in the sky for the last week.  After telling me I have a sinus infection she wrote me 3 prescriptions and told me to come back in a few days if I'm not feeling much better.  

Unfortunately, I'm STILL not feeling much better (or at least my ears aren't) so it'll be back to the doctor next week probably.

I made salsa!

Homemade Salsa

This is the result of about 2-3 hours of chopping!.. well half the result our pots weren't big enough until it cooked down a bit so I started it in 2 pots.

At this point everything but some of the tomatoes (we ended up buying 50lbs of roma tomatoes from Superstore because they were on for an amazing price - $16 for 50lbs) and the onions were from our garden.

So, peppers, tomatoes, chilies, and jalapenos all came from our garden.

In the end it only made 3.5 quarts which I'm pretty surprised by... it originally seemed like so much more!  But it should last us for the year.

I went to a friends birthday party.

I'm hoping that by next week I manage to work at least a half day to report on but if that fails I did manage to book what could potentially be my first day back in a couple of weeks from now!

Returning to my old Elementary School

This school year I mentioned that I had returned to my old elementary school to do some subbing. 

I mentioned that some things had changed (the staff is different, the classrooms are changed, and there no longer is grade 6's at the school - in fact I was in the last class of grade 6 students to ever be at this school)!

But there are things at this school that I never realized were so nice to have...

We had 2 stairwells that were HUGE. Like you could probably easily fit 5 kids across on the stairs at a time... that's how big they are. We must have evacuated for fire drills lickity split.

We had lockers (so I actually had a locker to use all the way from grade 1-12). I don't think we were aloud to put locks on the lockers but we had them for storing our stuff in (and I also can't remember if we always had our own locker) whereas most other elementary schools I've been to have hooks either inside the classroom or in the hallway.

But there were also some things that I feel the school lacked...

The windows are small and don't let in much natural light. Remember this classroom... what a dream!

Some of the classrooms are kind of small? Maybe they are just mid range in size.... but if I had a classroom of my own I would want it to be quite large so the children have room to spread out. Check out what I would want for my ideal classroom here and how I would organize it here.

They also no longer had a computer lab any more (but I'm seeing this more and more now).  The weird thing was they changed what had been the computer lab into a bike lab?  I never did get a clear explanation (from my students) as to what a bike lab was.

What about you?

Have you ever returned to your old elementary school?  Was it surprising what had all changed or did things stay pretty well how you remembered them?

What Parents Need to Know About Twitch

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about Twitch!

Once again, Twitch is an app I'm not super familiar with but what I do know is that it is a place to live stream videos and largely the videos on Twitch have to do with gaming.

You can download this poster for free at National Online Safety

Here are some things I learned about Twitch

There are no parental controls.  So, maybe watch a few videos with them to get an idea of how the person they are watching behaves and if you approve. 

You can hide chats.  Maybe the person doing the streaming isn't a problem but it's others in the chat.  

Be aware that online streaming is hard to monitor and anything could pop up or happen in a live stream that you may not be fond of.

Last week I talked about what we all need to know about Tik Tok.