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.