In case you missed it, two weeks ago I posted that I will be teaching a parent workshop on November 6 about Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Instant Messenger, World of Warcraft and various other popular Internet hang-outs for teenagers. There’s been enough response from you guys saying you’d like to participate in something like this that some of my youth staff and myself decided to stream the event LIVE online for anyone in the general public who wishes to participate. Here’s the direct link to where you can watch it on Ustream.tv. You’ll have to register for the site in order to take part in the chat room next to the live feed, which might be worth it since I plan to take a couple questions from Internet viewers. After general questions are answered, we plan to cut the feed in order to give privacy to our parents who may wish to ask more personal questions about their kids.
The workshop starts at 7:00 PM central time on Tuesday, November 6, 2007. If you can’t make time for the live event, Ustream.tv will also archive the video, so you can watch it later at that same address.
Here’s my tentative general outline for the meeting so far. Any input, suggestions, comments or ideas?
Overview
- Teen usage of the Internet
- Misconceptions
- Sexual victimization
- Cyber bullying
- How home life affects Internet life
- Statistics
Introduction to social networking sites
- What is a social networking site?
- MySpace demo
- Facebook demo
- Deviant Art demo
Introduction to media sites
- How broadband has changed the Internet
- YouTube demo
- Flickr demo
Introduction to Instant Messenger
- What is Instant Messenger?
- AIM demo
- MSN demo
- Yahoo! demo
- Trillian demo
Introduction to blogs
- What is a blog?
- Facebook/MySpace
- Live Journal demo
- Xanga demo
- Blogger/Wordpress demo
Introduction to MMORPGs
- What is an MMORPG?
- Why are they so addicting?
- What is the spiritual influence?
- What’s good about them? What’s bad about them?
- How much time is too much?
- World of Warcraft demo
Potential upcoming social sites
- Twitter demo
- Virb demo
- Ustream.tv demo
What happened to email?
- Why kids don’t use email to communicate with each other.
- How kids communicate now and why: PM, SMS, IM
Tips for the home: What should we do with this info?
- Strategic computer placement
- Communicate with your teen
- Learn from your kids
- Search Google
- Learn from their history
- Your relationship makes all the difference
- Shoulder surfing
- A better solution than monitoring software
- Join your kids!
General Q&A for Tim and a panel of students
Specific family Q&A (cut the live feed)
Here’s the promo video I made that will run in church services and be sent around online in various ways. Feel free to share it with others and tell people to watch the event on Ustream.tv on November 6 at 7:00 PM central time.
About me: I am married to my beautiful wife, 
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Tim, looks like a ton of great information. I know that you have a start time on there, but how about a projected ending time? Just for those scheduled minds out there.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Umm, I’m not exactly sure when it’ll end because that partially depends on questions, but I’d say a safe guess is probably 9:00 PM central time.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
This material looks great. Very comprehensive. Would you be willing to share notes after the broadcast if I wanted to educate my parents with this kind of stuff?
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
@ Nick: Well, so far the extent of my notes is pretty much what you see in this post! lol Since I’m a user of every one of those sites, giving an overview of them is pretty simple. It’s all in my head right now. However, I’m sure I’ll be putting together something with a little more detail than this before the event. If I do and I think it’ll be usable by others, I’ll gladly post it.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:51 pm
I’d be more interested to see what you say for the “Intro” bullets and the “Tips for the Home” bullets. (I’ve used everything mentioned here except Ustream.tv and Twitter)
October 24th, 2007 at 12:06 am
@ Nick: Most of my material will come from Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein (blogger at ypulse.com) and the panel discussion on teen Internet use. Some of will be my own thoughts, too, though, like the better alternative to using monitoring software. Whatever I have I’ll try to shoot your way.
October 25th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Thanks, I appreciate that, Tim. I admire your desire to get parents equipped! (hey that rhymed a bit!)
November 4th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Thanks for the info! Great work!
November 4th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Hey, several questions if you would be so kind to answer them:
1. How long are you planning this workshop to last?
2. Are you using a power point presentation? If you are, is there any chance you can share it?
November 5th, 2007 at 1:33 am
@ Juan:
1. I’m not really sure how long it’ll last. That partly depends on the questions parents ask. I’m thinking it should be over around 9:00 PM, though.
2. No PowerPoint. I’ll just be browsing all the sites live in front of everyone.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Hey Tim,
I just got a date to teach a similar workshop at our church. Very thankful to you for sharing what you’ve already done; it will be a great resource! I love this promo video, but I’m wondering what the “AYS?” shorthand stands for in this promo video? I guess I missed out on that one. Thanks!
November 15th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Hey Shawn! AYS stands for “Are you serious?”