Three Ways a Teen can Use a Spreadsheet

First of all, I don't use spreadsheets that much myself, but it's a handy thing to have if you usually find yourself organizing things. How a teen could use a spreadsheet would depend on the daily activities that specific teen engages in, but there are several different ways that different teens can make use of spreadsheets. For this post, I'm going to use a typical teen as an example.

1. A teenager could use a spreadsheet to show what exercises they do throughout the week in PE class.
2. They could also use a spreadsheet to show how many hours a day they spend using electronics or doing homework on average.
3. Finally, a typical teen might use a spreadsheet to organize a balanced schedule between chores, homework and free time.

Sources

http://img.chandoo.org/g/spreadsheets-for-teachers-what-can-you-do.png

How to Deal With Cyberbullying

So I've never been bullied or Cyberbullied, but I have had people be just plain rude to me on the Internet, and in person as well.  Today, I'm going to focus specifically on Cyberbullying. If you or a friend is being Cyberbullied, I have the following tips for you below.  These steps are not in order of importance, as they're all things you should do if you're being Cyberbullied.

1. If someone is harassing you online to the point where it could be called bullying, you should know is that it's not your fault.

2. You need to block the bully or bullies so you can no longer see the messages.

3. Report the bully to the site administrator, so they can have their account deleted.

4. Find someone to talk to for support. If you have no one to talk to, find a way you can express your feelings that does not involve self harming.

5. If step three proves ineffective, tell a trusted authority figure about your experience, as they might be able to help you.

6. Know that the bully's opinion of you doesn't matter. The only thoughts you should acknowledge about your personal worth are your own.

7. As difficult as this may sound, do your best not to become filled with hatred for the bully. I'm not saying have pity on them, but having hatred won't solve anything. It's only going to make you feel worse.

8. Don't respond to the bully under any circumstances, all they want is a reaction from you. Once they get it, you'll find that suddenly you've wasted hours, or even days arguing with them. No bully is worth your time.

9. Try your best to be assured in knowing the fact that the bullying won't last forever, especially if you make an effort to do something about it as soon as, or even before it starts.

Sources

http://medimoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cyberbullying-child1.jpg

Texting and Social Media Ruining our Social Skills?

  

A pretty good number of people think that social media and texting is slowly eating away at society's social skills. Am I one of those people?  Yes, but I'm not as firmly rooted in that belief as some others might be.  Some people are likely to be less involved in actual one on one conversations than others, and whether or not that's thanks to technology is up for debate.

Here are a few reasons why I think technology being used for communication more often than not is a bad thing.

1. Some people are too concerned about their social media lives. A negative outcome of this might be someone convincing themselves that their social media status defines their worth in the real world. Obviously, that's not the case, but people like cyberbullies prey on those who have this belief  in order to give themselves an easier time of victimizing someone.

2. Someone who texts more often than actually speaking might become lazy when it comes to real conversation. A negative effect of this might be someone using slang words from their texting experiences, which isn't always appropriate. An example of this would be someone saying "omg" instead of actually taking the short few seconds to say "oh my gosh." Or saying "lol" instead of actually laughing. (I'm not kidding, I actually saw that happen between a group of teenagers in a hospital waiting room.)

3. Speaking of teenagers, one of the things my generation seems to love doing is making a big deal about everything. During text messaging, that is, which brings me to my final point. Some people tend to over exaggerate their reactions to things during text messaging.
For example, someone saying "that is literarlly the worst thing to happen to anyone ever", upon receiving news via text messaging or social media that someone had simply hit their toe on a table.

I could go on, but I think three simple reasons are enough for now. Especially considering that I've witnessed situations that were either similar to, or exactly like the ones above. Do I think it's too late for society to unplug from their phones and computers in favor of actually experiencing the real world? Certainly not, but that doesn't mean there isn't a time limit for us to do so.

Sources

http://www.heartfelt-stress-relief.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/People_texting_2.66151506_std.jpg

How I Think Internet Safety Should be Handled

Internet privacy issues are something I think people should take more seriously, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has this opinion. In fact, I'm quite positive. I read an article about a fifteen-year-old girl in the UK who would agree with me, because she had a personal picture of herself in a bikini shown to an entire class for an Internet safety lesson. Ironic, right? See, this would have been fine if she had consented to the picture being used, but she didn't. Of course she didn't, and I wouldn't want a picture of me halfway undressed being shown to a bunch of strangers either. This brings me to my first concern about privacy on the web.

First of all, I think people should have better sense than to display personal images of other people to large groups, or to anyone. They could get sued, thrown in jail, attacked, the list goes on. One of the best, and probably the simplest solution to Internet privacy problems is for people to have respect for other's personal information. That way, it might not be as dangerous to share these types of things. 

A second solution would be for Facebook and other social networking websites to improve their privacy settings. This has been an issue for Facebook ever since they launched their website. Time after time I've seen headlines about Facebook "fixing" their privacy settings because users were complaining about how loose they were. Facebook isn't the only website with this problem, of course. There are plenty of other websites that aren't social networks, but have their fair share security problems anyway.

Obviously, it's not always entirely the websites fault. A third solution would be for users to make themselves more aware of and actually use the privacy settings on these types of websites. Notice I said it's not always the websites fault. The predators in situations like these are always the real menace. However, people could make themselves a lot less vulnerable to these online predators if they would just educate themselves on how to stay safe on the web.

I'm not going to say that people shouldn't post personal content on the Internet. Even though it's the wise thing to not do, people shouldn't have to be afraid to post even the smallest things about themselves online. It's their right to post whatever they want to, personal or otherwise. However, it's also someone else's right to do whatever they want with that information. This is a conflict that can be resolved by improvement of knowledge on both sides of the fence.

Sources

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141007/10253228753/uk-teacher-shows-students-swimsuit-photo-facebook-to-class-assembly-to-teach-her-lesson.shtml#comments

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBTNMYHYI2fiYQD-1DqvcXg3P9-l-gwdUxI8LhD7BdnkdI079j

Why I Think There Should Be No Rules For the Internet

One of the best things about the internet is that you can do pretty much anything you want to, without having someone looking over your shoulder. Can you imagine if someone took that away? I know I can't. Here are a few reasons why I think the internet needs to stay the way it is, without rules.

Firstly, the internet is just too large to have rules for everything. There are billions of people who use billions of websites on the internet, and there can't possibly be a way to keep track of all of them. Nor can there possibly be an effective way to exempt certain users from certain rules.

 Rules are things that should be broad, and can be applied to everyone. The internet is just too big and diverse to have rules that can be applied to every user.

My second reason for why the internet should have no rules should be pretty obvious. It already has rules. Well, in a way, that is. Most websites already have their own rules and restrictions for what users can and cannot do while on their website. These rules are usually called, "Terms of Use." People are required to follow these terms of use, or they have the risk of having their account deleted on that website. For example, one of the rules at Youtube.com is that users can't have copyrighted material in their videos without the permission of the materials owner. If they ignore this rule one too many times, their account is deleted.

Of course, there remains the question, "What about the kids on the internet?" Well, that just brings me to my third and final reason why there shouldn't be rules. Parents have the option to restrict their kids from going to certain websites. I don't mean they can just tell their kids not to go to certain websites and expect them to listen, I mean they can actually prevent their kids from going to certain websites. On most computers, there is a setting to restrict certain users from doing certain things. 

I know this because my mom did it to me when I was nine. Back then, I wasn't exactly an angel, and there would be times when my mother blocked my computer account from playing my favorite online game. However, it's not just games parents can block, they can also block websites that aren't child-friendly. Not to mention that they can teach their kids about the dangers of the internet so they don't have as much to worry about.

Those aren't the only reasons why I think there should be no rules on the internet, but they're the ones that first came to mind.

Sources

http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/167/166538/auto/rules.png

About Carrington

 Hi, my name is Carrington as you can obviously tell from the name of this blog. I prefer that people call me by my nickname, Karen, because I sort of hate the way my name sounds out loud. If someone were to ask me what I know about computers, I wouldn't say I know anything much aside from how to turn them on, browse the internet, download certain things and create folders. In all honesty, knowing how to do something as simple as those things depends almost entirely on the operating system the computer has. 
There's not that much I specifically want to learn in this computer literacy course, but there a few things. Some of those things include knowing how to better research things, how to properly give credit to a source and how to better operate certain programs.

(Computer Picture link

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Computer-aj_aj_ashton_01.svg/1024px-Computer-aj_aj_ashton_01.svg.png)