Innovation is not something that just happens.

Or, rather it does given the right chemistry.

Oftentimes this chemistry is referred to locally in schools as “climate,” but climate is only a small part of the formula. Where innovation comes from is an increasingly popular topic recently as new projects are increasingly visible, and due to digital reach, impactful across fields and industries. Right now, let’s stick to innovation in public education.

In K-12 education, there is a lot that can slow down innovation, and below are 12 guesses at some of those suspects.

Note, this doesn’t necessarily make any of the following “bad” anymore than a needle point, hot stove, or venomous snake should be thought of as “bad.” They just are what they are. It very well could be that innovation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and we can thank our lucky stars that we have these 12 natural decelerators of change.

Maybe.

12. Busy Parents

Busy parents—an unfortunate reality in homes from single-parent to dual-income and everything in between—rarely can begin to have enough time to support the innovative learning that does manage to occur.

Most parents are accustomed to one way of being educated—the way things were when they were in school. New learning forms confuses busy parents, making it difficult for them to support it, and worse, a harder sell with “fringe” students for whom current formal learning models barely work to begin with. If mom and dad don’t buy in, the children might refuse to as well. This can be corrected a variety of ways, but if the parents and teachers are too busy to consistently talk, it’s difficult for such a correction to take place.

11. SBDMs

The site-based decision making councils that mange most schools have their heart in the right place, as do local school councils. They are made up of teacher and parent reps who vote on school “policies,” curriculum adoption, hiring of new teachers, and so on. Important stuff.

But the meetings can be poorly attended. There is (necessarily) limited representation of all stakeholders, and due to the time and energy necessary to serve, the most innovative educators are too busy innovating to serve on such councils. Or think they are anyway. The point is simple—if parts of the school or district are pulling one way, and other parts pulling another, innovation can be slow or non-existent. Small meetings in the evenings of a handful of tangent “players” in a school is not an ideal circumstance for innovation.

10. Teacher Turnover

This one’s simple. Few things hurt learning/learning management more than teacher turnover. While replacing teachers that aren’t likely to innovate with those that are sounds good in theory, innovation isn’t the only thing. Innovation itself requires conditions to get off the ground—clout, trust, organization, communication, and so on. Constantly replacing teachers is a recipe for not only wasted resources, but stagnant thinking conditioned by systems, tradition, policies, and protocol.

9. Drive-by Professional Development

Experts in education are a boon to innovation. Thought leadership, expertise in niche areas, and general rallying of the troops through conferences, social media, and blogging is great.

When one of these experts/thinkers/doers gets an administrators ear, their ideas are usually “brought in” somehow–books, programs, DVDs, etc. In fact, they may even be invited to share their thinking with staff in person by sitting in on PLCs, addressing staff meetings, and observing classrooms. They may even come in several times throughout the year—and hades has no panic like the day before said expert returns to the school and staff are expected to bring back “artifacts” from implementing said great idea in the classroom.

The issue here is that innovation is usually not their gift to staff, but rather tips and strategies. The best of these tips and strategies are undoubtedly helpful and necessary, and offer opportunities for the kind of incremental improvement that shows up on test scores and Annual Yearly Progress.

But this top-down “improvement” doesn’t create the conditions necessary for bottom-up innovation. If that expert was to instead use a kind of cognitive apprenticeship or coaching model to help guide educators through a thinking process that yielded the innovations that have made them successful, we’d have both innovation and, more critically, improved teacher capacity.

8. School and Community Climate

Many K-12 schools give lip-service to the concept of innovation in mission statements, on websites, in PDs, and during committee, council, and board meetings, but lose their nerve when it’s time to make it happen. Supporting something seen as secondary (innovation) in the face of pressure, far-reaching programs, external standards ranging from Common Core to Literacy, Technology, and Career Readiness becomes a matter of priority–and job security.

While education begs for innovation, arguments against it often turn to tempting, straw man attacks.

The Tempting Position: In the company of innovation, how can we be sure standards are being taught and children are learning?

Different forms of learning require unique data and monitoring infrastructure that could be missing.

The Tempting Position:How can we be sure what’s happening in each school and classroom?

Homogenizing instruction across classrooms, schools, districts and now even states offers up a uniform look provides an illusory comfort. And dampens innovation everywhere it seeks to spring up.

The Tempting Position: How can we encourage teachers to share, collaborate, and work together if “everyone’s off doing their own thing”?

This is the ultimate straw man, comparing innovation to a kind of chaos that gives policymakers ulcers.

So, out of fear of breaking the system through disruption, compliance with “research-based” strategies and “district expectation” and policy is valued above all else. Here, innovation is rare—usually the result of a bright, charismatic teacher or hard-working administrator that realizes that somehow, no matter the cost, something has to change.

7. Policies

Policy is a natural consequence of attempting to manage something unmanageable. The stuff of governments, large businesses, and organizations that can’t personalize decision-making with the attention that it deserves—the careful thinking needed to solve important problems. So policies are adopted to police departments, curriculum, conferences, professional development, etc.–all to help ensure that “everyone is on the same page.”

The immediate reaction might be, “Yeah, ‘carefully thinking’ about 800 pre-adolescents a day is impossible” to which a rational person might respond, “Exactly the point.”

Policies—at least how they are used today–are necessary only as a result of a system that’s either too large or too industrialized for the personalization that it’d ideally benefit from. This might be fine levying taxes, manufacturing cars, or enforcing laws, but when nurturing the minds of children—and the adults charged with their “intellectual care”—it fails miserably. And worse, we tend to react by “improving the policy” or creating new ones instead of re-considering limits, scale, and even notions of collaboration. We form policies to police the policies.

And innovation? Policies hate innovation, because they’re not built for that kind of fast-moving thinking, and put teachers at odds with other educators and personnel who dutifully follow said policies, making these kinds of educators seem like “non-team players.”

6. Meetings

Meetings are undoubtedly necessary on some level, but with so many digital tools and social media platforms available, a huge percentage of the information exchanged at meetings could be distributed elsewhere—and in ways that could be curated for broader sharing, input, and reference later as well. The problem is that meetings are often required at a district level—so many hours per week or school year, the pleasing image of collaborative teachers sitting together in libraries or conference rooms making education better one meeting at a time.

The reality is that teachers collaborate, seek need-to-know information, and “get on the same page” in lieu of these meetings, not because of them. Innovation does not happen in the minds of passive teachers discussing the logistics of bus duty or computer lab access during testing. If digital and social media platforms could be used to reduce their duration and frequency, educators could have more time to relax their minds, read about education leisurely, and as a consequence, innovate.

5. Overly-Rigid Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

Though not a staple of universities, in the modern K-12 public school in the United States, PLCs are a trending instrument of school improvement.

In concept, a PLC is an embarrassingly obvious response to the workload of planning and differentiating high-level learning for so many unique minds. It simply asks teachers to agree on standards, share instructional strategies, and gather again to disaggregate the data. This kind of professional collaboration is par for the course across industries, and makes sense for education as well. The problem is that many PLCs unwittingly meld together teaching and instructional design styles across classrooms and teachers until they’re indistinguishable.

Teaching is an incredibly personal act—creating a climate where learning happens doesn’t come as the magic result of an industrialized formula, but the carefully planned interaction between teacher, learner, and content. In many schools and districts, this is what PLCs help realize. But in many others, where educators are uncertain of shifting roles, bring massively different technology or planning forms to the table, and may struggle to internalize the process that may include up 10-15 steps across several weeks, and you have a formula that, at best, may be failing to foster innovation.

4. District Programs

District programs make sense on a district level. If you’re in charge of a system of schools, and you discover a program or platform that you believe would support learners and teacher in those schools, as a leader of that district, you have to make that happen.

The challenge comes in application. These programs are necessarily comprehensive (or they’re not really programs). Whether they are for reading, testing, career readiness, or some other likely noble initiative, they can be far reaching in their integration. Learner rosters, teacher schedules, access to school resources, professional development required, “district expectations,” hardware and software technology, curriculum mapping and instructional sequencing, and other areas can all be impacted by well-intended programs.

At the district level it might be easy to say “Good! If everything’s impacted, that means it’s working!” Trouble is, there’s already more to do as an educator than there is time for. What makes a great teacher can often be not what they “put in,” but what they leave out—and how to hide that from those “holding them accountable.” Adding more programs that are tangled with everything else a teacher touches only guarantees that other things are going to fall by the wayside, including many of the same kinds of (often expensive) programs from the year before.

And worse, by their very nature these kinds of programs rarely support innovation at the classroom level.

3. Traditional Report Cards

Blaming report cards for a lack of innovation may like a bit much, but the traditional report card as we come to know it reduces the complex and messy process of learning and learning mastery. Which is not as good a deal as it sounds, as the end up as misleading letter grades that don’t give parents nearly enough information for them to begin to help, leading to questions such as “What’s going on in math?”, rather than “Where exactly in graphing coordinate planes are you getting stuck?”

Standards-based reporting would be a step in the right direction. A leap? Learning that is community-based, where families are embedded from the beginning, and accountability is shared across stakeholders far beyond the walls of a school, where a piece of paper every 9 weeks wouldn’t be required to communicate learning progress.

What this has to do with innovation is significant: the fundamental relationship between learner, family, and content is tied up in the iconic “report card.” Innovating learning requires that performance and local application be innovated as well. It will be difficult to design incredible 21st century learning environments, and then report “A/B/C” in “Math/Science/English.”

It all misses the point (something gamification can help with, incidentally).

2. Scripted Curricula

In the face of mounting pressure and countless initiatives that at times seems to pull teachers in different directions, some districts respond the best way they know how: buying a curriculum that’s scripted. This provides the pleasing image of all educators on the “same page,” and would seem to make tracking learning results simpler across classes. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way—and worse, it stifles innovation and ultimately reduces teacher capacity.

Curriculum has to be responsive and flexible. Curriculum maps that aren’t living, breathing documents can confound efforts to align learning experiences. Scripted curricula, such as SpringBoard by SAT’s College Board, are a placebo for schools and districts wishing to consistently offer high-level, progressive, and personalized learning experiences that result from well thought-out innovation.

1. Overworked Teachers

While an occupied mind signals engagement, one bursting at the seams with learning targets, meetings, fluency probes, IEPs, ECE, ESL, ELL, 504s, G/T, PDPs, RTI, ORQs, MAP, ACT, Explore, Common Core, scripted curricula, Stiggins/Wiggins/DuFour/Marzano, AYP, pre-assessment, differentiation based on assessment results, summative assessment, authenticity, PBL, CBL, and PBE does not. And this is not simply a matter of shorter days, fewer students, or longer summers, but rather a schedule and climate within formal learning environments like schools that support educators in developing truly lasting innovations where the rubber meets the road—the classroom.

Top-down change–programs from the district and state level, for example–can certainly support educators, but lasting innovation and change must come from a collaboration between learners, educators, and communities. In an era of “accountability,” teachers are tasked with “proving” everything. Nothing is trusted, and on the surface this makes sense: all professions have accountability standards to one degree or another. But the sheer quantity of “accountability tasks” your average K-12 teacher has to perform at best doesn’t guarantee the learning success they are intended to, and at worst, smother any opportunity for innovation at the classroom level.

No matter the school climate, PLC/Data Team format, or elements of instructional design, if the teacher is drowning in paperwork, meetings, and accountability tasks, true innovation–and subsequent consistent performance–will always be a challenge.

12 Silent Saboteurs Of Innovation In Education; this post was revised and republished from an earlier TeachThought article in August of 2012; image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool

If you teach teenagers (or maybe you have/had one at home), you know that they can be…well, forgetful. When you ask if they need something, they adamantly say no, but suddenly they remember they need to be somewhere in five minutes/they have a paper due tomorrow morning/they need money for a school trip and it is due in an hour/they’re going to be out tomorrow. Sound familiar? Well, don’t worry – you’re not the only one noticing this!

As it turns out, this forgetfulness is not just because they want to drive you (and everyone else?) nuts – there are a lot of changes going on in teenaged brains that may be causing this – and it can last into the college years. Mia MacMeekin and David Wilcox have teamed up to create an awesome infographic that takes a look at why teens forget so much, a bit of the science behind it, and some ideas on how you can help. It’s a great little guide for bringing some order and organization into your classroom filled with teenagers, but also a great reminder that they aren’t just trying to drive you up a wall (for those times when you might want to strangle them!).

The Science

• Changes occur in three areas of the brain during the teenage years – the cerebellum, the prefrontal cortex, and the limbic cortex
• These changes are referred to as ‘blossoming’ (age 11-14) and ‘pruning’ (age 14-25)
• The prefrontal cortex controls things like: alertness, attention, planning, working memory, and regulation of social behavior
• The cerebellum controls things like: balance, motor coordination, recognition of social cues
• The limbic cortex controls things like: emotion, attention, memory, and emotions

So What Happens?

• The teenage years are often known as the ‘use it or lose it’ years due to this synaptic pruning
• The changes in the brain impact memory and attention
• This brain ‘reorganization’ is complex, and adds extra strain on the teenager’s brain
• Teen brains are losing about 30,000 connections per second
• A teenager’s brain needs to reconnect with information it once found easy to locate
• The circadian shift impacts sleep and information retention

What Can You Do?

• Love, forgive, encourage
• Experiment – what works for one teen may not work for another, so try a number of avenues
• Let them take healthy risks
• Help create systems and routines
• Create order
• Be actively involved
• Teens need at least 9.5 hours of sleep per night
• Acknowledge wins, build on losses, allow natural consequences
• Minimise ‘business’
• Let them be emotional

“Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

A woman with whom I once worked seemed to talk non-stop and loudly, interrupt incessantly, gossip about whomever wasn’t in the room, constantly complain, and live quite happily in martyrdom.

It seemed nothing and no one escaped her negative spin. She was good at it. She could twist the happiest moment of someone’s life into a horrendous mistake. She seemed to enjoy it too.

At first, my judgmental mind thought her behavior to be quite inappropriate. I simply didn’t approve of it. But after weeks of working with her, the thought of spending even one more moment in her presence sent me into, well, her world.

Her negativity was infectious. More and more, I found myself thinking about her negativity, talking with others about her negativity, and complaining about her constant negativity.

For a while, though, I listened to her whenever she followed me into the lunchroom or the ladies’ room. I didn’t know what to say, or do, or even think. I was held captive.

I’d excuse myself from the one-sided chit-chat as soon as possible, wanting to someday be honest enough to kindly tell her that I choose not to listen to gossip. Instead, I chose avoidance. I avoided eye contact, and any and all contact. Whenever I saw her coming, I’d get going and make for a quick getaway. I worked hard at it, too.

And it was exhausting because whether I listened to her or not, or even managed to momentarily escape her altogether, I was still held captive by her negativity.

I interacted with her only a handful of times a month, but her negative presence lingered on in my life. And I didn’t like it. But what I didn’t like didn’t really matter—I wanted to look inside myself to come up with a way to escape, not just avoid, a way to just let go of the hold this negativity had on me.

And when I did look within, I saw that I was the one exaggerating the negative. I chose to keep negativity within me even when she wasn’t around. This negativity was mine. So, as with most unpleasant things in life, I decided to own up and step up, to take responsibility for my own negativity. Instead of blaming, avoiding, and resisting the truth, I would accept it. And, somehow, I would ease up on exaggerating the negative.

I welcomed the situation as it was, opening up to the possibilities for change within me and around her.

I knew all about the current emotional fitness trends telling us to surround ourselves with only happy, positive people and to avoid negative people—the us versus them strategy for better emotional health. I saw this as disconnecting, though. We all have times when we accentuate the positive and moments when we exaggerate the negative. We are all connected in this.

Instead of attempting to continue to disconnect, to avoid being with negativity, while just denying my own, I wanted to reconnect, with compassion and kindness toward both of us.

She and I shared in this negativity together. And once I made the connection, and saw our connection, a few simple, and maybe a little more mindful thoughts began to enter my mind, and my heart. This reconnection would be made possible through love.

And these simple little, love-induced thoughts spoke up something like this:

• Patience can sit with negativity without becoming negative, rushing off to escape, or desiring to disconnect from those who choose negativity. Patience calms me.

• And while I’m calm, I can change the way I see the situation. I can see the truth. Instead of focusing on what I don’t like, I can see positive solutions. I can deal with it.

• I can try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. Why might this woman choose or maybe need to speak with such negativity? I can be compassionate.

• Why does what this woman chooses or needs to say cause me to feel irritated, angry, or resentful? I have allowed her words to push my negativity buttons. I can’t blame her.

• She doesn’t even know my buttons exist. She’s only concerned with her own needs. I’ve never even told her how much her negativity bothers me. I see what truly is.

• I see that we are both unhappy with our shared negativity. People who complain and gossip and sacrifice themselves for others aren’t happy. I can help to free us both.

• I will only help. I will do no harm. I have compassion for us both. I will show kindness toward both of us. I will cultivate love for us, too. I choose to reconnect.

• I will start with me and then share love with others. May I be well and happy. May our family be well and happy. May she be well and happy. I choose love.

And whenever I saw her, I greeted her with a kind smile. I sometimes listened to her stories, excusing myself whenever her words became unkind, much the same as I had done before. But I noticed the negativity no longer lingered within me. It disappeared as soon as I began choosing love again. I was freed. And I was happier. And compassion, kindness, and love had made me so.

My desire was not to speak my mind in an attempt to change hers, to change her apparent need in choosing negative words. I did hope she might free herself from negativity and liberate herself by choosing positivity instead. Our reconnection was complete, quite unlimited, too, and it gave me hope that happiness could be ours, shared through our connection.

I continue to cultivate this loving connection, being compassionate and kind whenever people, myself included, choose to speak negative words, for we all do from time to time. We are positively connected in this negativity thing, and everything else. And compassion, kindness, and love happily connect us all.

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

When students write a paper, it goes without saying that they must cite the sources that they use in creating it. For generations, students have created note cards to document and organize these resources and/or submitted a bibliography page with their finished work.

In the modern classroom, student research and creation has taken on a new look. Before, when students created a poster, and then separately handed in a bibliography page to the teacher, justice was done and fair credit was given for the ideas used.

However, as widespread sharing of these projects becomes more common, and the internet allows students to reach an audience far beyond the school or classroom, we need to re-evaluate this procedure and address our responsibility to share these sources – not just with the teacher or school, but with all who might consume the project.

Without readily available sources to review, the audience cannot truly evaluate the validity of the project. They are left with what might be a beautiful and elegant project (the product) without knowing the sources used to construct it (the process).

Sharing sources with an audience is how we can focus on the PROCESS of creation rather than seeing only the PRODUCT.

Sharing Sources of Student Work

1. Include citations for individual pieces of information within the products themselves. This method has the advantage of sharing the sources with those who are consuming the project. For a classroom, this further engages the class in evaluating the sources that are used and allows them to ask “is that a valid source?” or “does that source have a perspective or a bias?”

2. Have students create a traditional bibliography page in Google Drive and include a link to it on their project. This will increase the likelihood that students will explore sources and evaluate projects at a deeper level. The same could be done with Evernote or a shared document in Dropbox.

3. For traditional paper projects, science fair projects, posters, mobiles or other display work, have the students provide a shortened URL to let others find and explore their works cited as they view the product. This will also work for electronic work such as Prezis, Glogsters, Popplets, Google Presentations or online videos. Shortnened URLs can be created at tinyurl.com or by using chrome extensions such as goo.gl URL shortener.

3. In place of a Tiny URL, use a QR code to link viewers to works cited. QR codes can be created for free using QR Kaywa or QRCode Monkey. QR codes are an image file that can be easily added to online projects, and are equally effective when added to the end of videos.

In our information-rich world, accessing information is a daily activity, making it essential to credit the sources being used. This is no less true in elementary school, high school or college. The “Culture of Creation” that emerges in connected classrooms makes this even more important, and putting it at the forefront of creation will allow for a healthy and necessary evaluation of how classwork is created and the ideas used to do so.

Shawn McCusker will be addressing online research & citations during his Teaching History with Technology workshop in Chicago this June.

All of us with school-age children know it’s important to read daily.  Many schools and teachers use reading logs and rewards to encourage kids to read.  But why are those twenty minutes of daily reading so important? Read 20 minutes a day for happy, healthy minds.

We know- with busy schedules and other priorities, it’s hard to get in 20 minutes.

But why is reading so important?

20 minutes a day = 3,600 minutes in a school year = 1,800,000 words = better vocabulary = better writing = higher success and it goes on and on . . . .

Now let’s get to our hands on tips to help get those 20 minutes in:

• Keep a few books in the car for “waiting around times” or for ease of grabbing as you’re dashing off.

• Instead of reading before bedtime when kids (and parents) are tired, try reading together at a different time of day (and get a little extra “mommy time” in too!)

• Have different types of books around that fit different lengths of time you/your child may have: story/chapter book, book with CD (younger kids), a kid’s magazine, fact books/world record books.

Are you an analog teacher trying to function in a digital world? Is the professional chatter of your colleagues littered with terms like Smore, Voki, Today’s Meet, Prezi, Popplet, Thinglink, and others? If so, then you are a casualty of a digital divide that exists among the ever-growing number of educators as they attempt to keep up with the flow of resources and information. The demand is on for educators to provide more digital content that allows for the integration of technology, but where does the professional start? A great place to start would be a website aligned to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.

Created by a Media Coordinator and an Instructional Technology Coordinator this website offers resources from the beginner to the advanced user of digital resources.

Bloom’s Digital Web Tools

Designed with the educator in mind this website looks at the array of digital tools and cross references them to the new Bloom action verbs. The tools were selected based on several criteria. First, they had to be free or at least offer a free version as a minimum package. Second, they had to work within our district’s filtering system. Third, they had to be educationally sound and not littered with inappropriate ads.

Easily navigated, this website provides the experiences associated with each Bloom’s level. Once an educator selects a tool he or she is directed to subsequent page which offers the user a more detailed description of the tool along with additional tools that match the same criteria. In some cases, pdf documents are included that provide directions, additional ideas, student/teacher examples, and additional navigational links. A toolbar on the left allows the user to select a tag such as blogging, podcasting, cartoons, etc. This tag instantly takes the user to the Bloom’s category under which the link is housed.

An added feature of this site offers the educator a twin of the web 2.0 tools aligned to Bloom’s in an iPad app version. By clicking on the Blooming Apps tag the educator is immediately directed to a brand new site that offers the same features of the main page. The apps are laid out in an easy to use format that offers resources at each level of Bloom’s along with a related tag on the left toolbar. The difference in this site is that the icon for each app, when clicked on, takes one directly to itunes for download. For more information about the app, and similar apps, one must navigate to the bottom of that section of Bloom’s and click on the link. Both sites are continuously growing and changing with new tools and apps added on a regular basis.

Click on each photo to  link back to each site!

Blooming Apps

Finally for the educator who wants to create inquiring experiences with their students beyond the first page of a Google hit, there is a dedicated website for research in the digital age. This site provides both the educator and the student with 15 or more unique search engines and a comprehensive collection of fake websites. Along with resources on how to evaluate a website, plagiarism, and copyright resources educators can use the fake websites to teach students how to critically evaluate a site for currency, reliability, accuracy, and purpose.

A couple of weeks ago, Common Sense Media released their findings from a study they conducted on children’s media use in America. This was their second survey designed to document the media environments and behaviors of kids ages 8 and under, the first of which was conducted two years ago. While this information would clearly be interesting on its own, we find it to be even more interesting to have the comparison with the data from two years ago.

How have our young children and their media usage changed over the past two years? The handy infographic below takes a look at the data from this year’s study and comparisons with the study from two years ago. Keep reading to learn more.

Growing Up Mobile

• 3/4 of children have access to mobile devices at home
• Smartphones are the most commonly used devices (63% up from 41% two years ago).
• Tablets come a close second at 40% – compared with 8% two years ago!
• The number of kids who have used mobile devices has about doubled since two years ago (38% to 72%)
• Average daily use of mobile devices has tripled (from 5 minutes to 15 minutes a day)
• The number of children under 2 who have used a mobile device has risen to 38% from 10% in 2011.
• Traditional screen time (TV) is down from two years ago, but mobile screen time is up.
• Most children using mobile devices are either playing games, using apps, or watching videos on the device.
• The average child spends 1 hr 55 minutes per day in front of a screen – and this is still dominated by TV despite the rise in mobile usage.
• More and more of this screen time is becoming DVR, on demand, and streaming.
• The ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor still exists – high income families are three times as likely to own a tablet and more than twice as likely to have high speed internet.
• 54% of higher income families use mobile devices for educational content but only 27% of lower income families do.

Being the parent of two teenagers I can definitely relate to this article and the importance of how we view, relate and interact with each other. I am concerned as a parent, educator and person who works with teachers that there is little or no emphasis on teaching children empathy, compassion and overall being NICE. Sad but true, this is the world we live in but each day we can do a little to change it and make it a better place.

Social media is affecting the way kids look at friendship and intimacy, according to researchers.

The typical teenager has 300 Facebook friends and 79 Twitter followers, the Pew Internet and American Life project found in its report, Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.

And some have many more.

The 2013 study also says the norms around privacy are changing, and the majority of teens post photos and personal information about themselves for all their on-line contacts to see.

More recent survey data released last week by the Canadian non-profit digital literacy group MediaSmarts shows Canadian youth do take some steps to protect their privacy – for example, by not posting their contact information on social media.

But the paper, Online Privacy, Online Publicity, also points out that most kids have only a limited understanding of things such as privacy policies, geo-location services and the implications of sharing their passwords.

The research contributes to an emerging picture of how teens’ ideas about friendship and intimacy have been altered by their immersion in the on-line world, says Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA developmental psychologist and the director of the Children’s Digital Media Center @ LosAngeles.

In her own research, Greenfield has found that young people feel socially supported by having large networks of on-line friends, and these are not necessarily friends they ever see face-to-face.

“We found in our study that people, college students, are not getting a sense of social support from being on the phone. They’re getting social support through bigger networks and having a sense that their audience is large.”

The result is a decline in intimate friendships, Greenfield says. Instead, many young people now derive personal support and affirmation from “likes” and feedback to their postings.

“The whole idea of behind intimacy is self-disclosure. Now they’re doing self-disclosure to an audience of hundreds.”

Other research at UCLA shows teens’ increasingly preferred mode of communication with their friends, texting, makes them feel less connected and bonded than face-to-face communication.

Graduate student Lauren Sherman studied various forms of communication between pairs of friends. She found the closer the experience was to in-person conversation, the more emotionally connected the friends felt. For example, video chat rated higher than a phone call, but the phone created a closer connection than texting.

“I don’t think digital communication in itself is a bad thing,” said Sherman, “but if we’re losing out on opportunities to connect with people as well as we can, that’s a problem.”

Studies have estimated teens typically send more than 3,000 texts a month.

This article was originally posted in the Huffington Post

Greenfield says that indicates kids are opting for efficiency of connection over intimacy.