If you look at the list of suggestions submitted by Hschooler.net members, you’ll quickly see that the most requested feature is Chat or Instant Messaging. It has been suggested by four different members.

We want you to know that we aren’t ignoring these requests.

However, there are a couple of major issues that we need to deal with before implementing Chat or IM on Hschooler.net.

The first is fairly tactical. The web, by it’s nature, is a static, page-based medium. You load a web page and it sits there waiting for you to do something. Since the web was introduced back in the early 1990s, many advances have enabled the web to become more dynamic. Flash and Javascript are probably the two most important technologies in enabling a web page to be interactive without being reloaded or without going to a different page. However, it’s tricky to implement these technologies, especially in a way that doesn’t either overload the web browser or overload the web server.

Thankfully, others have developed Chat/IM plugins for the platform we use for Hschooler.net. However, these are designed to work with newer versions of the platform than we’re currently running with Hschooler.net. I expect we’ll upgrade the platform this summer, which will allow us to try out different Chat/IM plugins and hopefully implement one that meets our needs.

The second issue is more strategic. What sets Hschooler.net apart from other online social networks is our focus on creating a safe environment that is honoring to God and is family-centered, recognizing the God-given authority of parents. As with other tools in Hschooler.net, it’s important to us to give parents the ability to set the boundaries for their family members. Some family members may not yet be ready for IM/Chat, while others clearly are and should be given significant freedom.

But with Chat and Instant Messaging, there’s more than just the trustworthiness of the family member involved. We’ve all heard horror stories of Internet chat and instant messaging problems that threaten the safety of our families. None of us at Hschooler.net want to have our service become part of another horror story. We believe that giving parents the option of complete visibility into the conversations their family members are having through Hschooler.net is an important part of maintaining our mission and our differentiation.

That means that, once we find an existing package that provides the functionality that we think our users want, we will still need to invest significant development time into making our Chat/IM implementation Hschooler-ready.

In the meantime, we appreciate your patience! Please continue to send us your feedback, suggestions, and ideas.

There’s a new book out that you may find interesting. Windows PCs in the Ministry by Steve Hewitt (Thomas Nelson, 2010) starts with this description: “This book will present a variety of ways to use technology to enhance and expand ministry using Windows programs and Internet services.” And that it does - the Table of Contents alone is 5 pages long! I know Steve as the editor of Christian Computing World, which I’ve been reading off and on for almost 20 years, and have been contributing to for the past year.

But the real reason for this post is to celebrate what Steve has to say about Hschooler.net in the book.

Pages 78 - 119 deal with social networking, so it is a major theme in the book. Steve starts the section by saying “Social networking has established a strong foothold in our society, and one that will undoubtedly continue to grow.” The first subsection is “Problems, Concerns and Warnings” setting the tone for much of the chapter. Steve delves into major social networking services including MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. He describes the ways in which these popular services can be used for evangelism and for connecting with other believers. He also deals with the concerns and issues with each. He also provides an entire section on “How Can I Protect My Children on Social Networking Sites?” This is a great resource for parents!

Next, Steve delves into “Christian Alternatives for Social Networking” providing profiles of nine different Christian social networking services. He closes this section with a subsection titled “Warning to Parents” which starts this way: “If the purpose of allowing your children to use a Christian social networking site instead of Facebook is for security, you need to give this some thought. On many of the sites I visited, I found less security than on Facebook.”

The very next subsection is “One Christian Social Networking Site Gets Two Thumbs Up.” Guess who he’s talking about… Yep, Hschooler.net.

“After expressing my concerns about security for young people using social networking sites, even Christian social networking sites, I can recommend one site for those that want a site centered on security and safety for their family.”

Thanks Steve!

I hope and pray that we can continue to improve our service’s ability to meet the unique needs of Christian families.

Recently, I’ve subscribed to newsfeeds from Crosswalk. Jim Liebelt in particular has written some really interesting articles, especially for parents who care about the impact of the Internet on their families. I thought I’d point you to a few of them:

• Jim observed that it’s a “Good Idea to Limit Kids’ Media Screen time“
• Jim also observed that “Video Games Tied to Aggression“
• He reported that “Facebook Users Average 7 Hours a Month“
• And “Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ Kids Multi-task, Connect“
• Jim also shared that “Teen Blogging Declines While Popularity of Social Media Sites Increases“
• And to cap it all off: “Teens Do Better With Parents Who Set Limits“

I look forward to continuing to keep up with Jim’s observations on media and our kids.

We’ve added a new feature to Hschooler.net - the ability to create photo albums and upload photos to share with your friends!

While this is an exciting new feature that we expect to be very popular, we also realize that photos are a sensitive type of content. Parents are rightfully concerned about both whether their kids are uploading unsafe pictures (e.g. pictures that expose too much personal information or pictures that are embarrassing to the kids or their friends) and whether their kids are viewing pictures with inappropriate content. Given that our focus at Hschooler is creating a fun and safe environment that recognizes the God-given authority of parents, before introducing Photos, we knew we had to build in safeguards for this feature.

To address the first concern (kids uploading pictures), Photos is a feature that must be enabled by parents. Until it is enabled, a user can’t upload any photos. That means that the Photos feature is only available to members that have upgraded to a Family account. We believe that’s the right decision for creating a safe environment. By the way, as with all tools in Hschooler, parents can set boundaries for how broadly their family members can share Photos. A parent might decide that a younger child should only share photos with family members until she can demonstrate that she’s using good discretion.

To address the second concern (what kids can see), parents can also set boundaries for whose photos each family member can see. For example, a parent might set the boundary so that a student can see photos from “trusted friends” but not “all friends”. (By the way, if you ever see any inappropriate content in Hschooler, please click the “Report this” link in the top left corner of most windows in Hschooler.net.)

Every member that has Photos enabled gets 10MB of free storage for photos. We encourage members to set their digital camera to take lower resolution photos, or use a photo editing tool (like Photoshop or Paint.net) to reduce the resolution so that they can store dozens of photos in that 10MB. Once the first 10MB are filled with photos, additional storage can be purchased with Tuits - the virtual currency within Hschooler.net.

Check out the video tutorial for Enabling and Managing Photos and the video tutorial for using Photos.

We never got around to announcing the launch of the To Do Tasks tool and widget, although it’s been out for a couple of months.

This tool allows you to create an assignment for yourself and/or others. You can then provide updates on it and change the status. A dashboard widget can show tasks assigned to you, tasks assigned by you, or tasks assigned to everyone in your family. The color of the tasks in the widget show the status and warn you when a task is almost due. You can also “check off” tasks as completed in the widget.

One task can be assigned to multiple people if it’s a team assignment. A task can also have sub-tasks which is especially useful for team projects (e.g. creating a newsletter, where different team members are responsible for different sub-tasks for completing the entire project).

A task can also be set up as recurring, for example for chores that need to be repeated every day (make your bed) or maybe once a week (collect trash around the house).

You can check out a tutorial for this feature here.

Let us know what you think!

If you’re an Hschooler.net member, you’ve probably noticed that we redesigned our website, and especially the main home page. We wanted to make it easier for folks to understand what’s special about Hschooler.net, so we include two videos (make sure you click on the tabs in the top left to see both) - one from a parent’s perspective and the other from a kid’s perspective.

Let us know what you think!

Over the next couple of weeks we will be implementing a website redesign.

Hopefully you’ll like the changes!

Let us know if you see any problems.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read an entire article at the Psychology Today website before, but, although it clearly is not written from a Christian perspective, this one is worth a few minutes.

Peter Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College and author of a textbook on Psychology. He’s written a blog post for Psychology Today called “Freedom to Learn.” The subtitle of the article is “The Dramatic Rise of Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents: Is It Connected to the Decline in Play and Rise in Schooling?”

I recommend spending a few minutes reading the entire article, but here are some excerpts to give you a sense of where he’s going with this:

Today five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or an anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant.

The increased psychopathology seems to have nothing to do with realistic dangers and uncertainties in the larger world. The changes do not correlate with economic cycles, wars, or any of the other kinds of world events that people often talk about as affecting children’s mental states. Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, during World War II, during the Cold War, and during the turbulent 1960s and early ‘70s than they are today. The changes seem to have much more to do with the way young people view the world than with the way the world actually is.

One thing we know about anxiety and depression is that they correlate significantly with people’s sense of control or lack of control over their own lives. People who believe that they are in charge of their own fate are less likely to become anxious or depressed than are those who believe that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control. … The standard measure of sense of control is a questionnaire, developed by Julien Rotter in the late 1950s, called the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale. … Many studies over the years have shown that people who score toward the Internal end on Rotter’s scale fare better in life than do those who score toward the External end. They are more likely to get good jobs that they enjoy, take care of their health, and play active roles in their communities; and they are less likely to become anxious or depressed.

Twenge’s own theory is that the generational increases in anxiety and depression are related to a shift from “intrinsic” to “extrinsic” goals. Intrinsic goals are those that have to do with one’s own development as a person–such as becoming competent in endeavors of one’s choosing and developing a meaningful philosophy of life. Extrinsic goals, on the other hand, are those that have to do with material rewards and other people’s judgments. They include goals of high income, status, and good looks. Twenge cites evidence that young people today are, on average, more oriented toward extrinsic goals and less oriented toward intrinsic goals than they were in the past. For example, a poll conducted annually of college freshmen shows that most students today list “being well off financially” as more important to them than “developing a meaningful philosophy of life,” while the reverse was true in the 1960s and ’70s.

Twenge suggests that the shift from intrinsic to extrinsic goals represents a general shift toward a culture of materialism, transmitted through television and other media. Young people are exposed from birth on to advertisements and other messages implying that happiness depends on good looks, popularity, and material goods. My guess is that Twenge is at least partly correct on this, but I am going to suggest here a further cause, which I think is even more significant and basic. My hypothesis is that the generational increases in Externality, extrinsic goals, anxiety, and depression are all caused largely by the decline, over that same period, in opportunities for free play and the increased time and weight given to schooling.

…children’s freedom to play and explore on their own, independent of direct adult guidance and direction, has declined greatly in recent decades. Free play and exploration are, historically, the means by which children learn to solve their own problems, control their own lives, develop their own interests, and become competent in pursuit of their own interests. … In fact, play, by definition, is activity controlled and directed by the players; and play, by definition, is directed toward intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals.

By depriving children of opportunities to play on their own, away from direct adult supervision and control, we are depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control of their own lives. We may think we are protecting them, but in fact we are diminishing their joy, diminishing their sense of self-control, preventing them from discovering and exploring the endeavors they would most love, and increasing the chance that they will suffer from anxiety, depression, and various other mental disorders.

Children today spend more hours per day, days per year, and years of their life in school than ever before. More weight is given to tests and grades than ever before. Outside of school children spend more time than ever before in settings where they are directed, protected, catered to, ranked, judged, and rewarded by adults. In all of these settings adults are in control, not children.

In school, children learn quickly that their own choices of activities and their own judgments of competence don’t count; what matters are the teachers’ choices and judgments. Teachers are not entirely predictable. You may study hard and still get a poor grade, because you didn’t figure out just exactly what the teacher wanted you to study or guess correctly what questions he or she would ask. The goal in class, in the minds of the great majority of students, is not competence but good grades. Given a choice between really learning a subject and getting an A, the great majority of students would, without hesitation, pick the latter. That is true at every stage in the educational process, at least up to the level of graduate school. That’s not the fault of students; that’s our fault. We’ve set it up that way. Our system of constant testing and evaluation in school–which becomes increasingly intense with every passing year–is a system that very clearly substitutes extrinsic rewards and goals for intrinsic ones. It is a system that is almost designed to produce anxiety and depression.

School is also a place where children have little choice about with whom they can associate. They are herded into spaces filled with other children that they did not choose, and they must spend a good portion of each school day in those spaces. In free play, children who feel harassed or bullied can leave the situation and find another group that is more compatible; but in school they cannot. Whether the bullies are other students or teachers (which is all too common), the child usually has no choice but to face those persons day after day. The results are sometimes disastrous.

Anyone who looks honestly at the experiences of students at Sudbury model democratic schools and of unschoolers–where freedom, play, and self-directed exploration prevail–knows that there is another way. We don’t need to drive kids crazy to educate them. Given freedom and opportunity, without coercion, young people educate themselves. They do so joyfully, and in the process they develop intrinsic values, personal self-control, and emotional wellbeing. … It’s time for society to take an honest look.

As Christian parents who care deeply about the development of our children, I think there are important observations to take from this article. On one hand, if we homeschool, we can feel good about rescuing our kids from an environment that may contribute to anxiety and depression. On the other hand, we need to wrestle with how to provide the freedom for our kids to grow in a self-controlled manner while ensuring they are as safe as possible from very real physical and spiritual dangers. My hope and prayer is that Hschooler.net provides an environment that supplements the homeschooling experience with an online environment that is both a fun place to grow and a safe place to be.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has recently issued a report on the Media use of 8 to 18 year olds.

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote an excellent summary of the report at Crosswalk.

His summary of the dangers of the current situation is relevant to Hschooler families:

There is no turning back from the digital revolution. It is not realistic for most families to declare a principled disconnection from electronic media and the digital world. Nevertheless, this important report serves as an undeniable warning that America’s young people are literally drowning in an ocean of media consumption. There is every reason for parents to be concerned about dangers ranging from the content of this media, to the way digital saturation changes the wiring of the brain, to the loss of literacy and the reading of books, to the fact that many teenagers are far more connected to their friends through social media than to their own families in their own homes. Teenagers are forfeiting sleep and other important investments of time because they experience panic when they are digitally disengaged for even a few moments.

He concludes with this observation for parents: “These technologies and devices have their places, but the role of parents is to establish rules that protect children and teenagers from being dominated by technology and an army of digital devices. At the end of the day, parents must find the courage and wisdom to know when to disconnect.”

Or with Hschooler.net, parents can set the boundaries to help their families stay connected in a safe environment!

As reported at GigaOm:

Around 17 percent of all time spent on the web in August in the U.S. was on social networks, up from 6 percent during the same period a year ago, suggesting that sites like Twitter and Facebook have not only grown their audience size, but augmented user engagement. Meanwhile, advertising on social networks rose to $108 million last month from $49 million in August of 2008, an increase of 119 percent.