News and Notes from the
World of Al Menconi

The Impact of Everyday Interactions Ordinary moments may become the biggest treasured memory for a child by Allison Akey  www.FocusOnTheFamily.com Aug/Sept 2009 Do you ever wonder what memories your children will treasure when they become adults? Down the road, you may be surprised by what they recall. Picture this scene: It is your daughter's 10th birthday. You want to make her party extra special. After all, she has told you every day for the past month that she is finally in the double digits and "no longer a child." You have plotted a surprise birthday party for weeks. You've invited her friends, bought snacks, hung pink and purple streamers, blown up balloons, spent hours meticulously decorating the cake and hired Sparkles the Clown. The guests arrive, and the party is a huge success. Years later, as the two of you swap your favorite memories, your daughter mentions her 10th birthday. You assume she will rave about the beautiful cake and Sparkles' funny

Facebook use Can lower grades by 20 percent, study says Study finds university students distracted by social networking site By Suzanne Choney  msnbc.com,  updated  9/7/2010 6:26:19 PM ET Does the "F" in Facebook stand for an "F" in school? A new study says that college students who are on Facebook while studying or doing homework wind up getting 20 percent lower grades than students who don't have the social networking site in visual range, or even running in the background on their computers or mobile phones. The study, reported in the  Daily Mail  of Britain, was done by Netherlands psychologist Paul A. Kirschnera of the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies at the Open University of the Netherlands, and Aryn C. Karpinskib of Ohio State University. It will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Kirschnera told the Daily Mail that his team studied 219 U.S. university students between ages 19 and 54, and found that Facebook user

When college students multitask by using Facebook and studying simultaneously, they get lower grades—20% lower—than those who don't have their Facebook profile running within their visual range.  The study, conducted by Dutch psychologist Paul A. Kirschnera and Ohio State researcher Aryn C. Karpinskib, examined the study habits of 219 U.S. university students between the ages of 19 and 54. The grade point average of the Facebook multitaskers was 3.06, compared to 3.82 for nonusers.  "The problem is that most people have Facebook or other social networking sites, their e-mails and maybe instant messaging constantly running in the background while they are carrying out other tasks," Kirschnera said in an interview with Britain's  Daily Mail . "Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to

Who's That Texting Your Kids in Class 66% of the Time? Parents BY   AUSTIN CARR Wed Sep 8, 2010, Reprinted from FastCompany.com The days of getting caught  talking  in class are over--and so aren't the days of even getting caught . According to a new survey by app developer textPlus, which surveyed more than 600 of its users aged 13 to 17, texting is more rampant than ever in the classroom. A whopping 42.5% of teens admit to texting during class, and more than half of those say they text sometimes or constantly. What's more, nearly 80% of students say they've never gotten in trouble for texting during class, suggesting the eyes-down, cell-under-the-desk method is slipping past even your most yard-stick taunting school teachers. With more than 42% of teens admitting to bringing a cell phone or iPod Touch to class, isn't it time schools start cracking down? And if technology is to become more a part of education, how will teachers ever track students who are already a

Study Links Too Much Texting,  Social Networking To Health Risks By  Ed Payne , CNN November 10, 2010 CNN)  -- All that texting and social networking by teenagers could come back to byte them. A new study by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine links poor health behaviors -- including smoking, drinking and sexual activity -- to hypertexting and hypernetworking. The study defines hypertexting as sending more than 120 messages per school day. Hypernetworking is spending more than three hours per school day on social network sites like Facebook, it said. "The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers," said Scott Frank, lead researcher on the study. "This should be a wake-up call for parents to not only help their children stay safe by not texting and driving, but by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone or social web