Securing our home wired/wifi network for our children

Hi all, this is Jaideep.  While my wife is busy putting together her next set of posts, I thought I would make one myself.  As a parent in this connected world, we are all concerned about the websites our child may come across while browsing the web.  While we can't control what happens outside the house, we should be able to control what they can access at home through parental controls on our home wired/wifi network, and protect our children from the evils of the web.  This post will guide you through one such solution.  It's a bit techy, but I've taken the pains to walk you through every step, and if executed correctly, within a few minutes you will have a more secure home network!

While there are many free and paid Parental Control apps and programs, I found the solution provided by OpenDNS to be simple and effective.  It's not perfect, but for most parts, it does a great job.  It's easy to setup and monitor, and allows you to add exceptions when required.  And with one setting, it applies to all devices connecting to your home wired/wifi network.

If you are technically challenged, stop reading NOW and get help.  If not, let's get started.  It shouldn't take you more than 5-8 minutes.

Pre-requisites: You will need access to your home wired/wifi router's settings page (login and password) and know where to change the DNS servers.

1. Visit OpenDNS and create a Personal Account >> Family Shield Account from here. 
2. Once your account is setup, login to your home router's settings page.  Your router is generally at 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 with login and password both as "admin"
3. Change the DNS addresses in your network setup to 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123. More instructions for a typical router can be found here. 
4. Hit the SAVE or Apply Settings button at the bottom of that page!!!
5. Restart/Reboot your home router.  
6. Connect to your home network on your laptop/desktop. 
7. Confirm your DNS settings have been setup correctly by clicking on the link here. 
8. Log back into your OpenDNS account here.  It should show your IP address on the top. 
9. On the same page, you will see an option to add network here.  
10. In Settings, you should see your IP address.  Select it and follow the instructions until it says you have successfully added your network.   
11. Go back to Settings, and re-select your network.  You will be taken to the Web Content filtering page.  Here you can choose your filtering level.  
12. If "None" is selected by default, you can change it by selecting one of the predefined defaults, or select "Custom" and choose any additional category of sites you want blocked and hit the Apply button. 
13. If for some reason you come across a site you do not wish to block, come back to this page, scroll to the bottom, and under "Manage Individual Domains" add the website you want unblocked, select "Never block" and hit the "Add Domain" button. 

Here is a link to a YouTube video on the same topic.

That's it.  You should be good to go.  Your favorite inappropriate content sites are now blocked (even for you!!!)  If someone on your home network visits a site that is blocked, they will be given the option to send you an email to unblock the site.  You can also login to OpenDNS and review stats related to the site requests that have been blocked.  

For those of you using android smartphones, there are apps that allow you to change DNS for your phone's Wifi and 3G networks too, but I haven't used or tested any of these, so can't comment on them.

Hope this helps. Let me know if any of you have used any other service which is easy to setup and use for Parental Control.  My next goal is to find an app for Android and iOS that can enable me to monitor and control device and internet usage.  I'm testing an app called Qustodio which has a 50% discount on 1yr service for the next few days.  If any of you know of any such service that works well, do let me know.  

Reading with Comprehension- Easy to use comprehension skills

Reading comprehension sounds like a big term, you may have heard it from the teachers all the time. Yes, it is a big deal! All academics boil down to your comprehending/understanding capabilities, which is why it is stressed upon so much right from the early years of schooling.

When you begin reading stories to your child, do you ask her questions like ‘what is the story about’, ‘who was the bad character’, ‘why did he do that’, ‘what happened in the end’, ‘does it remind you of anything’, etc. or do you simply read the book and don’t engage her in thinking about it at all?

Whether it is fiction or nonfiction, a long story or a short comprehension passage, there is a very effective method that you can use to inculcate the habit of ‘reading with comprehension’ in your child. This will also help her to think beyond and make connections to her own life with the text.

For us to understand how to effectively teach reading comprehension, we need to be aware of the sub skills that make up reading comprehension. The sub skills are as follows:

1.     Identifying Main Idea

2.     Identifying Detail

3.     Sequencing Events

4.     Using Context Clues

5.     Getting Facts

6.     Drawing Conclusions/Predicting Outcomes

7.     Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion

8.     Understanding Cause and Effect

9.     Identifying Figurative Language

10. Using Prior Knowledge

11. Comparing and Contrasting Ideas

12. Generating and Answering Questions

13. Identifying Inferences

14. Summarizing Concepts

15. Understanding Vocabulary

16. Visualizing Ideas

17. Determining Author’s Purpose

18. Connecting to real life experiences

(RITES 2013)

Let’s try to understand the basics of each skill and try to keep it simple and not get into the technical details. It becomes simple for children if we keep it simple and clear in our own mind.

1. Identifying Main Idea: The main idea is the basic idea or the overall idea of a text. For example, if you are reading a short story about whales, ask your child questions like, ‘What is this book/story mainly about’. The main idea can also be for a particular paragraph within a text. Identifying the main idea brings focus to the text and adds purpose to reading.

2. Identifying Detail: Details support the main idea of the text. Ask children questions like ‘How can you describe Hansel and Gretel’s experience in the woods when they got lost in the jungle’.

3. Sequencing Events: This skill is used in text, which is in the form of stories. Ask questions like ‘What happened first’, ‘What happened next’, ‘What happened in the end’, ‘Whom all did the Gingerbread Man meet’, etc.

4. Using Context: Many a time your child will come across words that she wouldn’t know or text that would not be very clear to understand. For this very reason you need to teach her the skill of making guesses based on the words or sentences that are in the text. For example if you come across the word ‘flabbergasted’ and your child has never heard this word before, instead of you telling her directly what it means, you can ask her to make a guess based on the context which could be ‘on seeing the humungous sand castle Henry was flabbergasted’. Have her come up with words in context to ‘humungous sand castle’, which could eventually lead up to determining the meaning of ‘flabbergasted’.

5. Getting Facts: After reading the text, you can ask your child to list down the facts either orally or in writing. You can also use mind maps or other visual organizers to draw out the information.

6. Drawing Conclusions/Predicting Outcomes: Before starting to read show your child the cover page of the book and illustrations and ask, ‘What do you think this book will be about’ and while reading, stop and ask questions like, ‘What do you think will happen next’ or more specifically, ‘What do you think the fox will do to the Gingerbread Man’. This also adds more interest to the reading.

7. Distinguishing between Fact and Opinion: You can ask questions like ‘Is this a fact or is it what the author thinks it is, ‘Is it true information or does it have any feelings attached to it’. For example, ‘Hansel and Gretel got lost in the jungle’ is a fact whereas ‘The wicked witch was the most cunning witch ever’ is an opinion.

8. Understanding Cause and Effect: The cause is ‘why it happened’ and the effect is ‘what happened’. Ask questions like ‘What happens when water gets heated up (when reading about water cycle)’, ‘Why did she wake up early in the morning’ or ‘What did Matilda do when she found out that her family was moving to Spain’.

9. Identifying Figurative Language: You have to draw your child’s attention to figurative language. It’s hard for her to get it but by age 7 you can introduce a few idioms and proverbs. If you come across things like similes, metaphors and personification when reading, take a minute and discuss it with her. For example, ‘The fox was lying through his teeth’ or ‘He ran as fast as a horse’. You will be surprised how excited she will feel about it. Show that you are excited about it to arouse more excitement in her.

10. Using Prior Knowledge: Before reading a passage or a story ask your child what she already knows about that particular thing. Generating prior knowledge helps a child to build upon what she already knows and hence adds depth to her learning. It allows her to make connections to the bits of knowledge she might already have. Questions like ‘What do you know about deserts’, ‘Has anything like this happened to you’ or ‘Does it remind you of a similar situation’ add depth to the reading.

11. Comparing and Contrasting Ideas: Many a time you would come across comparisons in the text. You could draw your child’s attention to these points either by listing them down orally or using visual organizers like a Venn Diagram. For example, if you are reading a passage on different types of animals, have her give points of differences between a mammal and a reptile. You could also compare and contrast two similar stories or two authors’ writing styles.

12. Generating and Answering Questions: Most of the comprehension passages come with questions but a book might not have ready questions. Ask simple direct questions while reading or after you have finished reading to assess how much your child has understood. Also, at times you could ask her to make up questions and pose them to you. This also helps with better focus on the reading and the child thinks that she is playing a game with you! 

13. Identifying Inferences: To infer simply means what you can assume will happen next or what you can figure out based on the information in the text and your own knowledge. In other words it means making an educated guess. Writing prompts like ‘I think…’, ‘I guess…”, ‘Maybe…’, ‘This could mean…’ , ‘It could be that…’ , and ‘I predict…’ can make children think in logical terms.

14. Summarizing: This is a very important skill, as the name suggests it’s the gist of it all. It gives you an idea whether the child has understood the overall meaning and the message. You could ask the child to retell the story in her own words by stressing on important points and excluding the details. A story summary may contain an account of the characters, setting, problem and solution.

15. Understanding Vocabulary: Vocabulary is an important aspect of comprehension. If you are not familiar with a certain word you either ignore it or you stop and look at the dictionary or ask someone in order to find out the meaning of the word. Unfortunately, many children don’t do that. So we need to inculcate this habit in them. Ask them to underline the new words and discuss the meaning with them. Maintain a book of new words that they come across and encourage them to use the words in their daily life.

16. Visualizing Ideas: When you visualize things in your mind, it becomes clearer to understand the sequence of the story, the factual information, the description of the characters, the setting, etc. Visualizing also helps with better retention of details. When you come across information like the alligators can be up to 14 feet long, ask your child to imagine how long that is in comparison to herself who could be 4 feet long when she lies down on the floor. This will help her remember the information better.

17. Determining Author’s Purpose: There is always a purpose to writing a text. It can be to inform, to persuade or to entertain. After you read the text, ask your child questions like ‘Why do you think the author has written this story’. This also adds interest to reading.

18. Connecting to Real Life Experiences: As soon as you connect a story or a comprehension passage to real life examples, you multiply the engagement and enthusiasm in children. Once I was working on a comprehension passage on iguanas with a group of children, a not so interesting informational text for everybody. Before I started reading the passage, I told them a little story of my experience when I saw a pet iguana for the first time in my life. This made them instantly interested in learning more about iguanas. Till today I see the glisten in their eye when they recall that passage. It could have been any other text that they had read and forgotten about but relating it to a real life experience made them enjoy it and remember it for a long time. You can encourage children to ponder over and answer questions like ‘Have you felt like this before’, ‘Has anything like this happened to you’, and ‘What did you do when you were stuck in a position similar to this’.

Select two or three skills at a time and focus on them rather than trying to do them all as it would put undue pressure on the child and she would not be able to enjoy the process of reading and thinking. Start with simpler skills like sequencing, understanding cause and effect and identifying facts and work it up to higher order skills like comparing and contrasting, determining author’s purpose and identifying inferences.

If done consistently ‘reading with comprehension’ will become a habit and everything in general whether it is Math or Science, History or Geography, English or other languages, will be more clearly understood by your child.

A Predictable Routine

Children need to know how we have planned the time for them. It’s important for them as it allows them to mentally prepare themselves, which in turn makes the environment more predictable for them, which further helps them to cooperate better with us.

There are many simple ways to do so. One of them being, before starting the session or class, list down the plan in front of them and discuss it. Ask them what they would like to do first. If you can change a few things around, do so, as it helps them to feel important and makes them cooperate with you better. I would like to support this strategy with an example. I work with a child with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). For many days, I had the plan for him for the hour that he came to me, but I never shared it with him. There was definitely much resistance and displeasure towards the activities from his end. Later on, I began to start our sessions with listing down the activities and discussing them with him. For example I would write: 1. Worksheet on phonics, 2. Read a story, 3. Word search, 4. Dictation and 5. Board game. I allowed him to change the order of the activities. He wanted to start with the word search, which I allowed him to do. I realized that my student was more willing to listen to me and was more engaged in the activities as they proceeded.

In the classroom, teachers can discuss the class/day’s plan with the students. Make the plan visible to them and cross out the activities as you get done with them. If you empower the children in this way, you will definitely have more cooperation and engagement from their end.

Another thing that is important to be mindful of is giving the children a warning before they make their transition to the next activity. As adults we tend to take the children for granted. For example, when we have to go out, we simply order them and expect them to drop everything no matter how engaged they are in their task. This invites much irritability and tantrums and definitely affects their behaviour in general. Put yourself in their shoes and think how you would feel if you were enjoying a good movie and someone just asked you to stop it there and then and do something else. What we need to do is tell the children things like, ‘You have ten more minutes left to play, then we will go home’ or ‘Please finish drawing the picture and you can paint it later’. We need to keep the children informed of how their day proceeds and make it predictable for them. Try doing this, and you will have happier and more settled children around you!

Can we influence children's eating habits by what we say to them?

As parents and caregivers, we want our children to eat healthful foods and be in the habit of doing so all the time. We try our best to motivate them to eat. We give them rewards when they finish their food, we talk to them about the health benefits of good food, we set up a good example by eating the right foods ourselves, etc., but do these sincere efforts really work? If not, then what really works?

If you said to the children that eating ice-cream and chocolate is good for them, will they really look forward to eating it as much as they do because you stop them from eating too much of it? On the contrary, will the children eat peas and broccoli more willingly if you focus on their taste and texture rather than the health benefits associated with them?

Follow the link below to read an eye-opening research article published by the University of Chicago about what really works towards imbibing healthy food habits in children. This article confirms the fact that the psyche of the child has a big role to play in all the aspects of child development.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/magazine/fall-2014/how-to-get-children-to-eat-healthy-food?cat=business&src=Magazine

I am using the strategy stated in the article with my own daughter and, slowly but surely, it seems to be working.  Do share your thoughts and your success stories so that we can all learn from each other's experiences.

External rewards cripple your child! Shy away from stickers and stars...

Giving rewards to children for getting them to do good work has a very short- term effect on their performance. When you attach a reward to a task, the ‘feel good’ factor of the completion of the task per se gets lost. Also, the children don’t get ‘intrinsically motivated’ to do the task, which in turn goes against their inclination to be independent and lifelong learners.

The novelty of getting a sticker, a treat, T.V. time or the like, makes the children dependent on an external agent to motivate them at all times. Compare the two scenarios… in the first instance, the teacher/parent gives a writing assignment to the children and says, ‘If you finish this on time, you will earn a star’. The children will do the task to earn the reward and not because they want to and feel like writing a good essay. In the second instance, a teacher/ parent gives a writing assignment to the children and lets them do their best. When they are done, s/he gives feedback to the children regarding their work and offers specific and ‘genuine’ praises and appreciation for their work, for example, ‘I like the way you have started the introductory paragraph’, ‘this reminds me of the time when I was traveling’, ‘I like how you used a different word for happy’, etc. or reads their essay out loud to the class and then puts it up on the board. Statements like these are motivators and have better and longer lasting effects on children's future performance. 

Once you have motivated the children from within to yield good work in this manner, you will see that you have not only made so many things easier for yourself but also have given them the wings to achieve greater heights. Think about it yourself, wouldn't you rather be genuinely appreciated than be superficially rewarded for your performance? What would work better on your psyche?

For further reading:

http://www.naturalchild.org/robin_grille/rewards_praise.html

The Calendar

Just like the world map and the number grid, which you could  display in your child’s room or the classroom for meaningful and contextual learning, you could put up a small calendar somewhere too. There are many printable templates available online or better yet you could take a blank sheet of A4 or A3 sized paper (depending on your child’s age) and make a grid on it. In fact it’s better you make it yourself as you can have your child practice drawing out the columns and rows and a lot of thinking goes into it in terms of how many lines will be needed and how you will organize the space on the paper. For the first few turns, display how you make straight lines and as the child understands and is ready to give it a try, allow her to draw it out herself.

Once you have the grid, mark the year, month, the days of the week and the dates. Do it in front of your child, say out the words clearly and keep giving her information like ‘There are 7 days in a week’, ‘We are in the month of October now’, ‘This year is 2014’, ‘Daddy’s birthday is in this month’, ‘This month has 31 days’, etc. As your child learns how to write the numbers and a few words, have her draw/write down important events of the days, mark the weather for each day, her feelings etc.

The calendar not only serves as a good record of happenings and upcoming events of the month but is also packed with literacy and numeracy skills. For example, when you write down ‘dad’s birthday’ and draw a little picture of a cake next to it, your child will develop picture-word association and in turn will be learning some important decoding skills of reading. Similarly, when she attempts to ‘write’ words like ‘sunny’, ‘rainy’, ‘happy’, ‘sad’ she will be learning/ practicing encoding skills.

The child exercises her Math skills by counting the days up to an event, keeping a track of yesterday, today and tomorrow, writing numbers, estimating how many lines she will need to make the grid, etc.

Motivation will be high for this activity as it is real and personal to the child. It also puts her in the habit of keeping a track of her routine and remembering important events.