I wrote a post about how to use the social media image-driven website Pinterest in 2011, shortly after the site went public.  At that time I wasn’t aware the risks Pinterest poses for our children.

Pinterest users create virtual bulletin boards and pin anything they want to from the internet.  People pin everything from recipes to decorating ideas. You can even pin this post if you find it helpful!

There are some real dangers inherent with Pinterest, especially when it comes to our preteens and teens.  If your kids are using Pinterest, here are some things to be aware of:

Pinterest and Privacy

• Pinterest doesn’t have the same protections in place as Facebook.  Anyone who wants to can follow you, and there is no way to “block” a user from following you unless they have posted inappropriate content–and even then you have to ask Pinterest to remove the follower rather than doing it yourself.  This is a major difference between Facebook and Pinterest.  Followers can see everything you pin in their news stream, and they can repost what you have shared for their own followers to see.  Those followers can find the original person who posted an image through links.
• Anyone who wants to can see what your teen is posting to their boards.  You do NOT have to be someone’s follower to see their pins.  This is another major difference between Facebook and Pinterest.
• Parents can protect their teen’s privacy through the use of “Secret Boards.”  Pinterest allows a user to have three secret boards at any given time.  These boards can only be seen by the board creator (your teen), or by their chosen “collaborators” (your teen’s friends).  Click here for a tutorial on how to set up secret boards.

Pinterest and Pornography

• There are also no good protections in place for Pinterest spam.  If you or your child receives a notification saying you were “tagged” in a post on Pinterest, do not click on the link unless the tag is from someone you know.  Many of these tags lead to junk spam (like weight loss products) or worse—pornographic images.  Your only recourse is to report it to Pinterest, but you cannot block the person who spams you, even if it happens repeatedly.
• Pinterest is an image driven website.  People are not generally posting words, though an image may include a description.  They are posting pictures.  Pinterest’s Acceptable Use Policy doesn’t explicitly prohibit  pornography.  Their Pin Etiquette says no nudity is allowed, however they do allow artistic images of nudity.  Teens should be restricted to only viewing the boards of friends they know.  Going to the Pinterest home page and perusing for whatever is out there is asking for trouble.
• I would caution my teen not to even look at the page which shows who is following them.  Many people use a soft porn image beside their name instead of a personal photo.  Pinterest sends out an email whenever someone starts following you, and that should suffice as notification of a new follower.  I do think moms should be aware of who is following their teens.  I, personally, would find it sobering if my teen were being “followed” by adults from foreign countries.

Pinterest Pals

• If your teen “follows” someone on Pinterest, they will see everything that person “pins” in their news stream.  If my teen were on Pinterest I would insist they only follow known and approved friends, not strangers.  It is very easy to find people to follow on Pinterest and a teen who lacks wisdom and guidance could quickly get into trouble.
• Be aware that Pinterest can assign you to follow people they have chosen (strangers to you) when you first sign up.  Make sure to check your teen’s followers and “unfollow” anyone that Pinterest assigned to you.

Pinterest and Principles

• If you and your teen are both on Pinterest, don’t assume your experience is similar to theirs.  I did not imagine Pinterest was dangerous at all, because I never pin anything except recipes and educational ideas.  Once I started looking into Pinterest, I realized there is a whole lot more available.  The teens I know are not using Pinterest in the same way my adult friends are.  It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.  Teens are more likely to post about movies, fashion, music, and pop culture.  Do you trust the wisdom of your teen’s friends enough to trust every image they will put on Pinterest?  If  I had a teen on Pinterest I would be taking time daily to look at her news feed.  What are her friends posting?  What images confront my teen when she logs in to Pinterest?  Do the movies, music, and fashion images she sees reflect the values I am trying to form in her?
• Pinterest appeals primarily to females; thankfully, none of my boys are interested in creating virtual pin boards.  Because of the inherent dangers in an image-driven social media site like Pinterest, we have blocked it through our Covenant Eyes software for our boys’ account.
• Many teens are unaware that some of their pins may be infringing on the copyright of others.  Not everyone wants their products on Pinterest, especially professional photographers.  Pinterest will remove pins if they believe they violate copyright laws.

Pinterest-savvy Parenting

• Pinterest  has an option to unfollow certain boards without unfollowing a friend altogether.  Your teen might follow her friend’s crafting board but “unfollow” her rap music board, for example.
• Teens can also see all the boards of every person their friends are following at the click of a mouse.  Just click on your friend’s name, click on their “followers,” and then choose one to see all of their boards.  Letting your teen get on Pinterest, even with restrictions, can open them to a variety of negative images as well as swear words which appear in some descriptions.
• We have a rule in our home that we have the passwords and daily follow all our teens’ social media postings.  We look at what our teens are saying and at what they are being exposed to through their friends’ postings.  Pinterest can be hard to keep up with, since it is image oriented rather than text driven–there are typically way more postings to follow than on Facebook.  If you can’t dedicate a few minutes every day to checking out your teen’s Pinterest account (what she is posting as well as what she is seeing) you might want to limit Pinterest usage.

Pinterest and Perception

• I would also be checking what my teen is posting.  Pinterest is a faster experience than Facebook, and it is not uncommon for a teen who has been on Pinterest for just a few months to have thousands of pins on their boards.  What image is your teen presenting to the world about themselves?  Looking at your teen’s Pinterest boards can be a source of insight into their heart and a springboard for meaningful conversations as you seek to disciple your teen.  One thing I would want to caution my teen about is to be aware that their pins are presenting an image to the world.  Does the image they are presenting match how they want to be perceived by friends, colleges, and potential employers?
• To protect your teen’s privacy, consider allowing her open an account under a fake name, to have her own board on her mother’s wall, or to make use of “secret boards.”

Pinterest and Predators

• How comfortable do you, as a parent, feel about what your teen is sharing on Pinterest?  Are any strangers following your teen, and if so, has your teen made themselves vulnerable in any way through posting too intimately on Pinterest?

Talk with your teen about the dangers inherent in Pinterest.  For more tips on handling your teen’s social media presence, check out my post about it here.

*Note: This post first appeared on Mentoring Moments for Christian Women

I want to apologize to everyone who keeps getting emails from this blog! I am not sure whether I have been hacked or if the problem lies with Feedburner, but although I haven’t posted anything new for awhile my blog keeps sending out posts.  I haven’t been able to do anything about it as I have been in China adopting our new daughter.  For those interested in our adoption journey, please check out my new blog Skip to my LuLu.

This blog will NOT be deleted, but unfortunately I believe I am going to have to delete my feed, which means those of you that have signed up to receive emails whenever I post something new will no longer be receiving those.  I am going to try one or two more fixes with my web host, but if that doesn’t work then I will have to delete the feed.  You will no longer receive the unwelcome emails with my last twenty posts–and also no more emails for new posts, either.

If anyone else has experienced this problem and knows another way to solve it, please leave a comment or email me!

I will highlight something in the sidebar about signing up for emails after I get this all resolved. Thanks for your encouragement and support!

Technology comes easy for some people. But not for me. Everything I know how to do on the computer has been hard fought and hard won, usually learned one baby step at a time.

That’s why I am so excited–so ECSTATIC–that I learned how to make a linked thumbnail image for my blogs, and how to get the HTML code to appear below the image in a scroll box!! Ladies, I can’t even figure out how to work the remote controls to turn my television on by myself. This is HUGE!

I’ve been searching for this very information for at least a year. I’ve tried to follow different people’s instructions, but to no avail. So now that I have finally figured it out, I want to explain how I did it.

If nothing else, I can refer to this post next week when I want to do this again but can’t remember what steps I took! Maybe some of you have been wondering how to do the same thing with your blogs. Believe me, if I learned how to do this, you can learn, too! My way is probably not the best way….any technical guru will most likely tell you that. But I don’t know any technical gurus, and this is the way that worked for me.

By the way, I owe it all to two excellent tutorials I found. Smilemonsters actually convinced me that I could do this, and showed me how to build the linked image. Blogging Basics 101 taught me how to get the HTML code into a scroll box and how to fool the computer into not reading the code.

I’m still learning how to take an image and put text and graphics onto it. I’ve learned how to use photoshop just a bit, but I can’t figure out how to download my doctored image to my computer. As I said, I’m learning by baby steps. So we’ll save that lesson for another tutorial down the road.

Let’s assume you’ve already got an image. In my case, a couple sweet friends each made me an image for two of my sites. I’m now trying to learn to make one myself for this blog.

Resizing the image to a thumbnail
If you are working in Photoshop, you can resize your image right there. Most thumbnail images should be around 125 x 125, give or take. Just upload your photo, click edit, then click resize, then click custom, and type your desired size into the boxes provided. When I do this, I can set one number and the other automatically re-adjusts. My image isn’t a perfect square, so it doesn’t come out a perfect 125 x 125. Again, I’m still learning here.

If you already have an image and you aren’t using photoshop, you can resize your image right on your browser at Pixer.us. Just upload your image, click the resize button and drag the button to the size you want, then save the image to your computer.

Generating HTML code for your button
Now you need to generate HTML code for your image. You can do this at Photobucket. You’ll need to upload the newly resized thumbnail. Then hover over the image, and you’ll see a drop down menu appear below your image. One of the items will say “HTML”. You want to copy that HTML code.

Getting the code onto your website
Next, go to the website where you want to put the image. If you are working in blogger, click on your layout, then Get a gadget, then HTML code. If you are on WordPress, go into your Widgets and drag a text/HTML box over to the sidebar.

Here’s where it gets messy. There is a way to put an example of this code right into this post, in such a way that you can read it but the computer ignores it. I can’t figure that out. Here is a step by step of what to put in your widget box or gadget box. If you want something simple you can copy and paste, go to Heather’s post at Smilebox and copy her code from there. If you do that, you can skip to the part where it says “Cleaning up the code”.

Here are my instruction, though, in case you don’t want to merely copy and paste, you want to BUILD it YOURSELF!

At the top of the HTML box, type this:

a href=”Enter Website Here”

and enclose that phrase with a carat on either end so that you see < before the letter a and > after the second quotation mark.

Enter your web address where it says enter website here, making sure you put the complete http:// address, not just the name of your site.

The next part of your code begins with another < sign, placed immediately following your last > sign. After the < sign, write the letters img src=”Enter photo HTML code here”

Put the HTML code for the image (which you generated at Photobucket) where it says Enter photo HTML code here.

To finish out this strand of code you’ll need a backslash after the last quotation mark /

Then a double carat, backslash, letter a, end carat. The symbols look like this, but with no spaces in between
>

<

/

a

>

Cleaning up the code
All you techies, look away now (or laugh, whichever you prefer). Whenever I click “save” my code somehow morphs. If I go to my website, I see my beautiful, linked button image, but there is extra code beneath it. Code I did not build myself. And what’s worse, my readers can see it, too! That’s OK. You can fix it.

Once you’ve done the above step and clicked save, go to your website and check out your new badge. Is there an extra http:// address below your badge, or a repeat of some of the symbols you just typed? If there is, go back to the window where you just placed the code. You should be able to see at a glance where your “good” code ends and where the extra code (which the computer generated, but you didn’t build) begins. Just delete that extra part. Save again and go back to your site. Check your button: does it look perfect? Click it, does it lead where it should? Great job!!

Get that code into a scroll box so people can grab your button
You want your friends to be able to easily put your button on their site, right? Up until now, I’ve been doing this the old fashioned way. I download the button image to my computer, then upload it again in WordPress or Blogger as a linked image, typing in the web address myself. You can use this technique any time you want to put an image on your blog when the HTML code is not provided.

But you want to make it easy for your friends, right? It is so simple.

Just copy the code you used to make the image in the first place (after you’ve saved and cleaned up that extra http:// information). Paste it below the original code. If you publish it like this, it will just show up as two linked images. You want a way to make the second set of code appear as code, so someone can copy it. You just need to put something before and after that code so that the computer doesn’t “read” the code and turn it into an image. I got this to work in my sidebar, but can’t figure out how to make it work in a post.

So although I wish I could show you an exact example, I am not good enough for that yet. What you want to do is write the word textarea and enclose it in carats <> and put that at the beginning of your code. Then you’ll want to write /textarea and enclose that in carats <> and put that at the end of your code.

Notice the part that goes after your code has a backslash in it…very important. When I put this before and after my code, it automatically created a scroll box for the code. What a bonus!

Don’t forget to save what you’ve just done. Then go to your site and grab your new code. Test it out to make sure it works before you assume that it does. One time I forgot to add that all-important backslash and my HTML code box contained everything from my site’s home page!

Happy Blogging!

This edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted at Heart of the Matter. Perhaps the venue got everyone excited, as there are dozens of posts in this edition! Check it out here.

I’m so thrilled to be hosting the latest edition of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival! We are beginning our 10th year of homeschooling this fall. The very first book I ever read about homeschooling was The Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. I was captivated by Miss Mason’s ideas and knew that I wanted to bless my children with that kind of education.

Inspiration for a New Year

Barb at Harmony Art Mom explains how families can still use Charlotte Mason principles during High School in her post High School Planning: Reminders from Charlotte Mason.
She shares some quotes from CM Volume 6, which are “a breath of fresh air”. Charlotte wrote, “If we can only allow ourselves to believe it, we really don’t have to manipulate children to learn their lessons. Nature has already taken care of that. If the lessons are the right kind, children will enjoy learning them.” Barb’s encouraging post about atmosphere and establishing habits put me in the mood to get back to school!

I needed those reminders! As I wrote in my post New Year, New Books, I sometimes find it hard to leave summer behind and begin a new school year. My recipe for end-of-summer-blues calls for setting up our new school year bookshelf. An hour or two spent looking at all the great books waiting for us quickly turns my heart toward the joys that lay in store for us. In this post on Countercultural School, I share my audio podcast series The Homeschooler’s Library, which is full of practical ideas and inspiration for choosing living books.

I am looking forward to making audio books a daily part of our curriculum this year. We are currently enjoying the living history books Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall and The Story of the Middle Ages by Samuel B. Harding, which can both be streamed at my new blog My Audio School.

Charlotte Mason’s volume 6 was a popular read this summer! Keri from Sunny Scholars also read it, and she distills Charlotte’s philosophy clearly and succinctly in her post Charlotte Mason in a Box? Using ideas from C.M. Volume 6, Keri shares insight into choosing a course of study the Charlotte Mason way.

Nature Study

I wondered if Heather of Maple Hill Academy might be suffering from end-of-summer-blues, too, when I first read her post about nature study, Winter Fun. As she notes, it may seem odd to mention this topic in the summer, but I found many of her thoughts to be applicable here in Georgia, where the heat threatens to keep us indoors all summer. You’ll want to check out her post for ideas of how to do nature study–both indoors and out–even when the weather is not ideal.

Tammy from Adventures on Beck’s Bounty lets us take a peek at what they’ve been finding on summer nature walks. Take a look at her posts, Nature Walk Discoveries and More Nature Walk Photos. The photos in Tammy’s posts are worth a thousand words. They inspired me to take my own children outside to observe and photograph the flowers and wildlife in our yard.

Jimmie has been using photo-sensitive paper for nature studies. Her fun post Nature Print Paper can be found on her blog Jimmie’s Collage. I know we have some of this paper in our school closet, but we haven’t used it for a couple years. Thanks for the reminder, Jimmie!

Using Living Books for Science and Math

Jimmie also provides some reviews from the wonderful new website The Curriculum Choice. Who would have thought one could study chemistry with living books? Jimmie shares about her wonderful find in the post The Mystery of the Periodic Table. In her Living Math Curriculum Review, Jimmie shares about a math supplement which is “a historical tour through time, looking at the mathematical developments of each period.”

Poetry and Memorization

Jeanne at A Peaceful Day shares about her new experiment with poetry memorization the Charlotte Mason way in her post Memorization and the Man. The quote she shares is well worth reading, and Jeanne is finding Charlotte’s method is working wonderfully in their homeschool. A lovely video clip, along with the text of their chosen poem, The Man from Snowy River, can be found in her post.

Incorporating Notebooking and Lapbooking

Katie from Katie’s Homeschool Cottage shares how her family struggled to implement lapbooking, but eventually found success Combining Notebooking and Lapbooking. You’ll find great tips, lots of photos and tons of great notebooking and lapbooking links in Katie’s helpful post.

Applying Charlotte Mason’s ideas beyond the classroom

Anna from French Kids Don’t Get Fat shares How to Use Masterly Inactivity to Win Your Child to Healthy Eating for Life. I had never imagined applying Charlotte Mason’s ideas at the dinner table before, but Anna gave me lots of “food for thought”!

Click here to view past editions of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival. If you are using Charlotte Mason’s methods in your homeschool, we’d love to read about it in the next blog carnival! Click here to submit a post.

I found out about Charlotte Mason when I was just beginning my homeschool journey, and her philosophies continue to shape much of what we are doing now, almost 10 years later. She was an advocate of using Living Books to teach subjects like history, literature and science, and her views have forever changed how I choose our reading material.

If you are looking for lots of fresh insight and encouragement, check out this latest edition of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival, hosted this week by Harmony Art Mom. While you’re there, I encourage you to browse Barb’s site, as she has a whole host of information about including the fine arts in your homeschool. Harmony Art Mom is one of my favorite sites to browse!

To find out more about contributing a post to this twice-monthly carnival, click here.

I’m hosting a blog carnival this month on Counter-Cultural Mom blog. This week’s Celebrating the Season topic is a chance to share what books and music you are using this Christmas. Do you have a new find to tell us about, or an old favorite you dust off every year?

We are using Family Worship for the Christmas Season by Ray Rhodes in our evening family devotions. There is a brief scripture passage for each day, a paragraph to bring out the key points for the parent leading devotions and a simple activity. What I am enjoying the most is the “Christmas Catechism” at the back of the book. Children are asked questions, catechism style, and in learning the answers they memorize much of Luke 2.

To see some of the other books we like for the Christmas season, click here.