Homework Distractions
Internet during homework time but without the distractions
The Situation
Your teen has been pushing her boundaries (and your buttons) all week. Online after curfew, Instant Messaging her friends for hours during the times she was supposed to be studying…
Certainly being online is an important part of her social culture so denying internet for a week is like “grounding her”, right? But she’s got her own laptop. And you’ve got wireless internet throughout your home which allows her to connect whenever she wants. You could take her laptop away…but all her school files are on it and she needs the internet to do research on Google for her science project due the next day.
So you ask her to bring her laptop to the kitchen where you can keep an eye on her. Appalled that “you don’t trust her”, she says she can’t concentrate in the kitchen (“it’s too noisy”); and promises to use the internet just to research her assignment when she goes back to her room. But as soon as she switches on her laptop, Instant Messenger automatically starts up notifying all her "IM buddies" that she is online, and so the instant messaging begins. Worst of all, you know there’s practically nothing you can do about it. And she knows it too.
Your Frustration
How are you supposed to teach your teen online discipline and responsibility when the social distractions of the internet seem limitless and uncontrollable?
The Solution
Ensure the internet is being used responsibly during homework hour! Log in to your WebCurfew account and locate your teen’s laptop on your control panel. Turn internet access off for her laptop until you decide to log back in to reinstate her internet privileges when she has finished her assignment. Finally, tell her to transfer her files using a disc or other storage device, then research her homework assignment using your pc that’s near the living room where you can keep an eye on her. Log in to your WebCurfew account and locate your teen’s laptop on your control panel. Create a WebCurfew access rule for her laptop that restricts access to online social distractions like Instant Messenger, Hotmail, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. without impeding her ability to search Google for legitimate research purposes.** Use the WebCurfew Timer feature to automatically apply this rule every school night to keep unwanted online social distractions from interfering with her homework time ever again.
The Result?
The flexibility of WebCurfew empowers you to promote better study habits for your children by shielding them from online social distractions during homework hours. This allows them to stay focused on their studies for longer periods of time, without sacrificing their ability to utilize the full power of the internet as the educational tool it was originally intended to be. ** NOTE: Your ability to turn off individual websites and applications with WebCurfew will depend on the capabilities of the internet environment in your home. Your WebCurfew control panel will tell you if your existing home internet environment can support this capability and what you can do about it if it can’t.