With eLearning on the rise, it’s important to keep our kids’ brains moving. Doing so will help them to perform at their best given the challenges eLearning can present. It will also help them relax as they spend more time at home. Healthy eating can help in many other ways as well.

Health agencies, childcare organizations, and child-friendly brands always remind parents and guardians to encourage kids to eat nutritious foods. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) sets child nutrition guidelines, and The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend a healthy eating pattern for people aged two years and above.

Now more than ever, parents must ensure that their children are taking nutrient-dense foods to ensure they grow healthy, strong, and happy. But many parents face a struggle in feeding healthy foods to their children. Luckily, food experts like Serenity Kids share valuable information with parents online, such as choosing healthy snacks for picky eaters.

Since children are getting out less, their immune system is vulnerable. During winter months, we receive less Vitamin D, exercise less, and can even go a little stir-crazy. With nutrient-packed meals and snacks, your children can be a little more at ease in their new, but still temporary, full-time environment.

Furthermore, this is a great time to get creative in the kitchen. Choose foods that stimulate child development. Select ingredients wisely and be careful not to frivolously fill your shopping cart with just any food. Make a list, and limit the number of times you visit the grocery store to prevent bringing back the virus to your children.

You can also make a menu list, food journal, or cheat sheet that includes valuable information about your children’s special food preferences. Take note of the healthy food recipes you cook that they like the best, allowing you to create more versions and serve them the next time without boring your kids.

Additionally, read or watch cooking techniques and recommendations from chefs, nutritionists, and pediatricians, and note them in your journal. This can help you learn creative ways to make vegetables, fruits, grains, and other nutritious foods look interesting and appetizing. That way, you can improve your food preparation skills and boost your children’s healthy eating patterns.

Tasty meals can help fade the negative stigma most children have surrounding nutritional eats, and can even go on to make them prefer fruits and vegetables rather than being resilient to them. Here’s what you can do:

When cooking at home with your kids, be intentional about meal prepping and portion control. It’s best to avoid highly processed snacks such as cookies, crackers, chips, and canned foods containing high-sodium and high-fructose corn syrup. Bake your own sweets using natural ingredients.  Low-fat popcorn and nuts make great mid-day snacks; and for dinner, pairing pasta or rice with a protein, such as fish, can fill your little ones’ bellies for much longer.

Lastly, be aware of the “Pandemic Pantry,” the list of items shopped are stockpiling. These include canned foods, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and bottled water. Buying a water filter can help alleviate the purchasing of bottled water, and given the recent governmental policies, we need not fear being disconnected from your water supply while under quarantine – even if bills begin to pile up.

Taking the opportunity to show your kids healthy eating habits can benefit them now, and also influence them to continue a great diet post-quarantine. If you read the infographic below, you can gain more information on how to eat healthy. Take care, be safe, and enjoy your extra family time.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 7.5 hours per day in front of screens.  It may be on social media or watching TV or playing videos games.  Even adults will agree that the hours “fly by” when engaging with the digital world.  Don’t worry, the 7 Day Digital Detox is not asking you to go offline for 7 Days.

Rather, it’s 7 days of tech-free family activities and conversation starters delivered to your inbox.   It’s a chance for your family to reconnect without looking at a screen.  Life is about balance.  It’s about developing healthy habits that doesn’t necessarily mean stopping something you love to do altogether.

Why The Digital Detox?

It’s not uncommon to see a group of teens sitting together, each of them on their phones on social media or texting, but none of them interacting with each other.  The same thing happens with families at home.  Let’s face it.  Watching TV kills time.  Surfing the web or scroll posts on social media can eat up hours. The temptation for distraction from life is great but ‘so called’ relaxing time can also lead to online burnout.

There is also the time reading online news, most of which is negative. It can bring a person down without a balance of reading stories that are positive and uplifting.

No one denies the benefits of being able to keep in touch with family and friends miles away, especially in this time of social distancing.  But even when you look at the hours we spend on screens, how much of it is actually having a digital conversation compared with reading and viewing information in silence.   Studies have claimed too much screen time can cause social and family dysfunction, as well as development delays and depression.

Human Interaction Takes Planning

If we don’t set time aside to do things as a family, it won’t happen.  It’s the difference between cooking dinner and having family members just take their food from the stove to eat wherever they like, or saying “tonight, we’re going to have a sit-down meal together”.  It takes a simple commitment.  A meal together is one activity a family can do to have a conversation, as long as everyone doesn’t bring their phones to the table.

Planning to do something can be easy to talk about.  It’s much more difficult to follow through on unless at time is set.  For example, at 5 o’clock today we’re all going for a walk.  Friday nights are game night.  Keep it interesting by exploring fresh new activities like new language games the whole family can enjoy.   Or how about a family drive to a scenic outdoor viewpoint in your local area.

Get ideas for activities and conversations starters
to bond with your family without tech!

And there’s nothing wrong with a movie night.  True, it’s more time in front of a screen but can be a fun time to spend time together compared with everyone just watching their own favorite show in solitude.  The same can be said for videos games done together on one screen as a family. It’s certainly better than when kids individually looking at their screens with no interaction with those around them.

As mentioned, it’s not about eliminating screen time, only reducing screen time it in our daily lives while connecting in a personal way with our family.  Puzzles anyone?  It may not be everyone’s preference.  In that case, break up your activities in groups.  Some work on a puzzle while others play a game or build a connectable toy.

You can also use the time to evaluate if there are any online accounts you don’t really need.  Detoxing your digital life can also mean reclaiming your online privacy and doing away with excess use to simplify your digital management.

So why not give it a try?

Sign up for the 7 Day Digital Detox and you’ll receive one email per day for 7 days.  Each email will consist of fun ideas to help you reconnect as a family in fun way.

Start Your Free Digital Detox Here!

The Digital Detox is inspired by the same parental control software company that developed Covenant Eyes, the program that also teaches kids how to be responsible internet users. Screen time monitoring is just one of the features that parental controls offer, in addition to preventing the much worse consequences of when kids come into contact with explicit material online.

Any attempt to reduce screen time, avoid screen time addiction, or protect families from harm online begins with a conversation.  The 7 Day Digital Detox is great way to open the lines of communication between family members so that having those important conversations happen naturally.

With the continued integration of digital tools in education, it’s more important than ever to carefully consider the implications of transferring student data between parents, teachers, and administrators. Educational technology is now a standard across classrooms—so what exactly does that mean for our students?

Risk of Student Data Breaches

Between 2022 and 2023, the number of student data breaches continued to rise, highlighting the growing risks associated with educational technology. In higher education specifically, attacks were up 70 percent.

In the most severe cases, students’ personally identifiable information (PII) has been sold on the dark web.  Even on a small scale, these breaches mean the potential for hackers to decode passwords. In these cases, student’s accounts are compromised and this can lead to targeted cyberbullying.

Lengthier Education Records

Years ago, the extent of student data was education records stuffed into file cabinets. Oftentimes, those records were lost or tampered with. Ultimately, they didn’t follow students as far as education records will today. Solidified on the web, students have little room for mistakes in the current climate.

It’s important to consider these factors when employing new chatrooms or technology mediums in classrooms. Ensuring all edtech helps, instead of hinders, student’s futures should be an educator’s number one priority.

Responsible Student Data Privacy in the Classroom

Student data privacy laws on a federal and state level monitor some of these potential risks on a micro-level. As an educator, though, you must take proactive measures to protect student data privacy. Consider the following when implementing education technology in digital and physical classrooms:

• Follow FERPA Sherpa: Use resources available from the government to understand the concerns with edtech in the classroom.

• Read the privacy policy: Before having students visit a website, make sure you read the privacy policy thoroughly. It may indicate it sells data to third parties, or worse, does not have a privacy policy in place at all.

• Follow the school’s approved list: Districts and schools will have an approved list of companies and websites to use in the classroom. Seek out this approval before asking students to use a program or website.

• Explain best practices: Explain best practices for safe web use to your students, and lead by example. Inform them of the dangers of sharing personal information online and not to believe everything they read online.

• Avoid clickwrap agreements: If a website in question has a clickwrap agreement, avoid using it in the classroom. These agreements are data-controlling and have free use of information used on their site.

• Look for secure sites: the “s” in ‘https’ signifies that a webpage is encrypted. Any site where students need to log in to an account should be encrypted.

The advancement of tech in education can be a benefit for efficient, personalized learning, but it’s important to take extra measures to protect the new influx of data. With proper vetting of websites, technologies, and platforms; technology can be an advantage for students, parents, and teachers.  Learn what types of personal data parents should protect.

Practice Physical Security Measures

Physical security within the context of data privacy refers to the protection of physical devices that can be compromised by someone within a workplace or school.

If teachers or students fail to securely log off a computer containing personal information, it becomes a target for unauthorized access when they step away. This risk also exists at home, where a visitor could steal personal information if your phone or laptop is not password-protected. Additionally, devices themselves can be stolen.

Data security is about more than just protection from online cyber threats.

To protect yourself, avoid leaving devices in a vehicle when traveling. In busy areas, ensure your devices are safe in a bag or kept out of sight. Always keep devices password-protected and enable secure cloud backups so you can remotely wipe a device without losing your data.  These precautionary steps provide users with better control over sensitive information that could otherwise be accessed by someone physically present.

Personal Device Privacy

Do you really want someone to use your phone to record what you say without you knowing? Do you really want strangers looking at all your pictures and texts? Then you better learn about SMALL PRINT. How about strangers selling your pictures and texts to other people? Or following everything you do online?

Of course, secretly peeking into your life is wrong. Still, you probably clicked on a box that gave someone you don’t know permission to do just that.

Small Print for Smaller Humans

Whenever you activate a phone or play a computer game or download an app, you see itsy bitsy print at the bottom of the pages. Those tiny words are filled with things that you need to check off before you can use your new computer or play that new game.  Those words can be so small that you probably can’t even read them.

If you could read them, they’d sound like gibberish. Many adults with years of education have trouble understanding what those weird words mean. Your parents should look at any small print that you check off, but they might have problems figuring out what they say. What people do know is that when you check the “AGREED” box, you give strangers permission to do scary things.

Do you:

1. Use a web browser?
2. Play games online?
3. Download apps to your phone or computer?
4. Upload pictures for your friends to see?
5. Store pictures or text in a cloud?

If you do, then here is a list of just some of the things that you have probably agreed to let strangers do:

• turn your video and audio recorders on
• take and use your pictures and videos
• turn your gaming machine off forever
• track everything you do online and share or sell your activity
• prevent you or your parents from legally stopping people from sharing details from your lives.

Small print is tricky. Teams of well-trained lawyers spend thousands of hours working on every little word. All that time and all those brains are there to protect the big companies that you use online. It’s up to you and your parents to protect YOU.

Make a point of looking for small print. Grab a bunch of your friends and see if all of you can figure out exactly what you agree to when you click that little box. You will be surprised.

Anyone who is connected to the internet will be a target of online scams. These scams are common and come in a variety of ways. Scams may be on your smart phone via text, in an email and even in the form of a phone call. The key to keeping yourself safe from getting scammed is to be aware of various methods scammers use to try and trick you.

Scammers want to get money out of you, often by stealing your personal information or tricking you into paying for something you don’t need. Using a scam checker can help you become more attentive to the methods online scammers use, making you better equipped to recognize and, even more importantly, ignore them.

Let’s review what these methods are and also give you some tips on how to confirm whether an email, text or phone call is legitimate or not. There are three main ways scam artists use to get your attention and fool you. Phishing, SMishing and Vishing. Here is what each of them mean and how you can protect yourself if presented by one of these methods.

Phishing

Phishing happens when a scam is sent to you via email. Most often, a scammer will invite you to click a link to gain access to your personal information. They will pose as a legitimate company, such as a bank, an online streaming service or social media platform. Basically, any online account you may or may not have is fair game.

You may not even use one of these services and wonder why they are targeting you. This is why it’s called Phishing. The term was created to sound like the word ‘fishing’. Someone fishing on a lake will cast their hook out into the water. They don’t know how many fish are in the lake. They don’t see the fish or know whether any of them are even interested in the bait on the hook. But the person fishing knows there may be at least one fish that will take a bite and be hooked. Another way to look at it is this. Imagine someone fishing from a boat with a large net. Not all the fish will be caught, but many will.

In the same way an online scammer will send the same email to millions of people. It may be for a company you don’t have an account to. But many other people getting the same email could be tricked into clicking the link. By doing so they will log in to a fake website and the scammer will capture their username and password. This will give the scammer access to the user’s real account in order to steal their identity.

How to Protect Yourself: Never click on a link you receive in an email, even if you think the email is legitimate from an account you have. Simply go to your web browser and visit your account’s website directly or by using a bookmark you’ve created. Log in from there and check to see if there are any issues with your account.

Phishing only works because people are not paying attention. For example, let’s say you just ordered a package from Amazon. Shortly afterward, an email arrives stating that there is something wrong with your shipment. This is probably a coincidence. You can see how easy it would be to click the link since you just sent a package.

SMishing

SMishing is when a scammer sends a message to you via text. It is called SMishing because texting is also known as SMS (short message services). Just like Phishing, criminals who want to steal your information or money cast a wide net via text to catch people off guard. SMishing is a more recent problem. There has been a lot of information about email scams over the past few years. Now, we need to be also be on the look out for SMishing scams on our phones. Most often these are security texts which appears to be from a bank stating that something is wrong with your account. The goal is the same. To trick you into giving over your personal information.

SMishing may also come in the form of a positive message. It may be a great deal on something but by clicking you may end up paying for something you won’t receive.

How to Protect Yourself: Be careful when clicking links in a text. Never click on a link associated with an account you may have, such as a bank account or any online account, including Spotify or Facebook. Of course, friends may send you links to websites or videos. In that case, just be extra careful and pay close attention to who is sending you the link.

Tips for Guarding Against New SMishing Schemes

Smishing scams are sent by cybercriminals who are typically pretending to be a company or a different person. Conducting a reverse image search of someone’s picture will reveal if they have other identities under other names or are using someone else’s picture to catfish users. There are many different methods scammers use in sMishing scams, and these include sending malicious links and links to fake websites.

These days, many random text messages have no link at all. Message likes “Hey, are you picking my up at the airport today?” or “Hi, I’m coming to town, do you want to do lunch?” are scammers testing numbers. If you reply they can continue the conversation to build trust and eventually scam you. Or they may sell you number to other scammers.

Avoid responding to unsolicited text messages. Even just replying yes or no confirms for the scammer that you are a real person with an active number.

Vishing

The “V” in Vishing stands for voice call scams. We’ve all received them. We’ve all been greatly annoyed by these scam phone calls that come from a foreign or strange looking phone number. Worse yet, many calls that are spoofed to look like a local number. The Spoofing of a phone number is when a caller makes it look like they are calling from a particular number, but the call is actually from different location altogether.

Just like other scams you need to be ready to think before you respond. The call may sound like it’s from a legitimate establishment. Adults are often tricked into thinking the call is from their government’s tax collection service. If the call is fact real, they won’t be threatening the receiver with arrest by the police if they don’t pay immediately, as scammers often do.

How to Protect Yourself: Never give any personal information over the phone, even if the person sounds like they are from a real company. If in doubt, hang up and call the company directly. If the caller is uttering threats or demanding information or money, hang up! You can also do your part to stop the scammer by reporting it. Google the contact information for your country’s anti-fraud center. You can call them or submit a report online from their website.

Beware of New Vishing Scams

Cybercriminals can gather audio samples of a person’s voice from their social media, their voicemail, or even from their replies to scam calls. This is part of what makes deepfake audio scams alarmingly convincing.  Cybercriminals typically ask the person they are calling for money to help get them out of a fake emergency situation.

If you receive an emergency phone call from an unknown number from what sounds like a loved one,  call their normal phone number directly.  The scammer might claim they don’t have access to their personal phone, but it is best to try anyway as the person “in peril” might answer and confirm they are perfectly fine.

Signs of artificially generated audio are unnatural pronunciations or pauses, irregular pitches, and lack of background noise are   Keep an ear out for these audio cues which could be signs of a scam.  If you want to know who’s calling you repeatedly from the same number, you can search the the deep web that checks public records.

Quishing

But wait, there’s more!  Here’s a new addition to the scam vocabulary. Quishing is when cybercriminals use QR codes to access your accounts or steal your data.  We wrote a new article about it here.   

Protecting Your Computer from Scams:

On a final note, it’s important for anyone with a computer or laptop to also protect themselves from malware and viruses. If you accidentally click on a bad email link, you have better protection with a secure computer.

1. Make sure your operating system’s security features are activated and up to date.
2. Then install a reputable anti-malware software program. This type of program will also offer protection when surfing the web, in the event you land on an infected website that is trying to access your personal information.

These types of malicious websites may also try to secretly install malware on your computer and direct you to fake websites. You could also be infecting other computers through email without your knowledge.