In our continued efforts to inform and educate parents about ways to help their children learn to use technology positively and have a healthy balance in their use of technology, we held a lunch hour webinar last week. We have done this in the past and found it to be an effective way to reach a large number of busy parents. Over 300 parents signed up in the first couple of days we advertised it. Not all ended up watching it live, but all who did sign up received a recording of it afterwards to watch. We'll also post it on our website for anyone to see. This webinar format is becoming more common for parents who want the information but can't fit an evening meeting into their schedule. We have run webinars in the past for programs about topics such as class registration and our VANTAGE business internship program. These, too, have been popular and recordings have been watched by many who did not attend the face to face meeting.
For this webinar, Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance, I was joined by Mathew Meyers, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist from Traverse Counseling. I've known Mathew for a few years now as part of our District Digital Health & Wellness Committee. Mathew has such great insight and advice for parents about dealing with kids and technology, and he even counsels and helps young people with video game addiction. Both of us are parents ourselves and figuring out how to raise kids in this high tech world we all live in today.
I'm always learning things from Mathew, and during this webinar I asked him questions about a number of topics, including addiction, attention and advice for consequences when rules around technology aren't followed. I often receive questions from parents who are divorced about how to enforce rules when parents have different beliefs, and he had some great advice. We also asked those registering to submit questions ahead of time and received about 60 questions which we grouped into six areas and addressed during the webinar: Screen Time & Balance, Attention & Focus, Addiction, Parenting & Modeling, Monitoring & Filtering, and Age Recommendations. You can watch the 54 minute recording here. 
During the webinar parents submitted another 25 questions which we tried to answer. We sent out a survey afterwards and asked parents to let us know future topics of interest. You can see the results from our survey pictured (24 responses so far). Feedback about the webinar itself is pictured below. Because of such positive results and so many people asking us to do another session, we are planning a second webinar in a few weeks (on May 10). I'll post this second webinar recording afterwards on this blog. During our next webinar we plan to include a live video with a webcam to make it more than just an audio file with some slides. 
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I am always learning from you too Dave! Love the collaboration and excited to do Part II of our webinar this thursday!
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