CV Town Council Youth & Seniors

Content below is Updated Daily.

Youth Information for Parents

In This Issue:

--From the Editors
--Tips: Cyberbullying
--Expert Advice: SAT Prep
--Multimedia Classroom: Women's History Month
--Tech Tools: Whiteboards
--Water Cooler: Football Ads
--Your Thoughts?

A Note About Newsletters

You registered for HotChalk in the past, and we're now sending a valuable parent newsletter as an additional HotChalk resource at no cost. Included below is our first issue.

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From The Editors

Dear Parent,

Welcome to the first edition of HotChalk's Parent Connection. It is no mystery that children of involved parents consistently perform better in school. With this newsletter, we aim to keep you updated on what is happening in the 21st century classroom and also offer helpful tips to ensure your child's safety and academic success. As well, we will be discussing hot education issues and providing links to free, top-quality video content from our partners NBC News, PBS, National Geographic, Weston Woods, the History Channel and more. Please feel free to pass along these resources to your student's teacher.

We look forward to providing you with an insider's view of today's classroom and to assisting you in playing a more active role in your child's digital age schooling.

The HotChalk Editorial Team

Water Cooler

Not All Football Ads Good For Kids
Common Sense Media recently released a study on the content of ads shown during NFL broadcasts. Some 5.3 million children watch football each week, while one out of every six ads shown during the commercial breaks include content that's wildly inappropriate for kids.

Tips: Cyberbullying

Ten Ways to Help Prevent Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is the practice of posting or sending harmful images or text via the Internet or other digital communication tools, such as cell phones, email, instant messaging, chat rooms, video game spaces or social networking environments such as My Space and Facebook. Following are some tips for parents and educators to help keep kids safe.

Tell students to never pass along harmful or cruel messages or images.
Train students to delete suspicious email messages without opening them.
Ask students to step up to friends who are cyberbullying and tell them to stop.
Speak to students about the importance of telling a parent or adult about any cyberbullying they're witness to.
At home, supervise your child's time online. Putting the computer in a common area, such as the kitchen, is a good idea.

Read the additional 5 tips here.

HotChalk's Virtual Science Fair!

HotChalk is partnering with the Federation of American Scientists to host a Virtual Science Fair for high school students. We hope you'll share this information with your child's educator.

Multimedia Classroom: Women's History Month

To celebrate Women's History Month, HotChalk is assembling a collection of video content around women's "firsts" and offering them to educators and students for FREE throughout the month of March! Let your child's teacher know that beginning Monday, March 2nd, they can find top quality video content from NBC News at HotChalk.com.

Expert Advice

When it comes to preparing for the SAT, there are a number of options, from written guides and study software to online courses and personal tutoring. But are there good reasons to spend that extra time and money in preparation for the test?

Tech Tools

Children are growing up as "digital natives," and don't remember a time when the technologies they use every day were not a part of life. Even young children are spending large amounts of time interacting with multimedia at home through computers, hand-held devices, cell phones, video gaming machines, digitized toys and other products. One way educators can transfer such home-based interactive experiences into the classrooms is via electronic whiteboards, which offer a broad range of learning modalities, including visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences.

Your Thoughts

We invite you to let us know what you would like to see in HotChalk's Parent Connection! Please contact Barbara Atkinson with comments and suggestions.