Study: Spending time with Dad good for teen self-esteem – CNN.com
I have always believed that after my responsibility of being a good husband to my wife, my other number one responsibility is to help my boys grow into strong men of character who can contribute to society. This is a responsibility that I have to take seriously and over the years most of the choices that I have made with respect to where we live, the work I do, and how I spend my time have focused on ensuring that I am available for my family. James Dobson of Focus on the Family stated that:
morality, values and beliefs are not taught rather they are caught
and it is very difficult to catch these foundational traits if there is no one around for children to catch them from.
It is reassuring to have one’s beliefs confirmed by thorough research. The CNN article points to a recent Penn State study that found”
The more time spent alone with their fathers, the higher their self-esteem; the more time with their dads in a group setting, the better their social skills.
The study also reported that one-on-one time with Dads started to drop at age 15 and that
Dads get in just over an hour of one-on-one time with first and second-born kids each week.
This is very sobering but it is also very useful to know that your children need you as much if not more as they move into their teens. With my recent change in my employment status and the exploration of opportunities, I have been considering the wisdom of NOT moving back into an executive suite position. My two boys are 14 and 16 and I am realizing that my boys need me now as much as they needed me when they were younger, then it may be wise to make sure that my next position or project doesn’t take me away from my boys when they need me the most.
It may also be wise to make sure that over the next 3 years, I create the best learning environment for my family and boys and ensure that they have as much time with me as they need to grow into men of character.
This infographic clearly demonstrates that many people are using the Internet to watch television and videos in general. Perhaps the most interesting number is that 25% of video viewers in households with high speed internet watch those videos on a device other than a television.
When we were living in the US we didn’t have a full cable package because we could watch most television shows on our computers through Hulu, directly from shows website our through a Usenet download. This is not only more convenient it eliminates most commercials. Unfortunately, media services like Hulu, Pandora or Spotify are not available in Canada so one has to rely on the Usenet and the NZB process of searching, downloading and recompiling media. It is not nearly as slick as the full streaming that you would get from Hulu but it works and it is free and the best part is that it is commercial free. A typical 60 minute show runs between 38-42 minutes without the commercial breaks. A 30 minutes show runs 19-21 minutes.
Depending on the time zone you live in you can even get access to a show through the Usenet earlier then when it runs in your local. We currently live in MST and can download a show from the Usenet within minutes of it running in EST. This is dependent on the popularity of the show but for a major hits like Grimm or Burn Notice you can download the current episode before it is scheduled to run here in the west. Another advantage to using the Usenet is that you can download the files in formats that are either fully compatible with mobile devices or that can easily be converted to a mobile format. The internet and mobility is changing everything.
…if you really want to make a difference in the world, you have to design outcomes. And that’s design that matters.
What a Tech Start-Up’s Data Say About What Works in Classroom Forums – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
Jeffery Young from the Chronicle of Higher Education shared an analysis of research conducted by Piazza, a start-up company that manages online discussion forums for thousands of courses, on online interactions among students and professors in 3,600 courses at 545 colleges and universities over a period of 18 months. The data revealed:
- highest gains in student understanding when discussion was less strictly marked
- students at highly selective universities are far more likely to ask questions anonymously than are students at other institutions
- the practice of asking students to post a comment to introduce themselves correlated with more-robust discussions
These finding are no surprise to those of us in the academic community who have been using online discussions to enhance both classroom and online courses. Perhaps now the dataset for this study is large enough to finally appease even the most vehement opponents to online instruction.
Then again…will there ever be enough data and evidence to fully convince the detractors of online and digital learning?
