In October 2012, British Columbia teen Amanda Todd ended her life after suffering intolerable bullying triggered by a sexual predator who found and blackmailed her through Facebook. Millions were outraged. We were too. We are social media enthusiasts who care deeply about protecting vulnerable young users in the cyber woods from the predators out to get them.

The benefits of social media in connecting users worldwide are well known, and we ourselves have cheered the democratization of knowledge and information sharing. However, the proliferations of SM access to an increasingly younger demographic is most worrisome.

I have just begun a two-week venture called “Imagine That” with 10 three to five year-olds. It's a project I do with the Ithaca Youth Bureau for a couple sessions every summer, and one I look forward to with relish. I used to think of it as glorified babysitting, but several years ago, I realized that the secret was to have some delicious fun.

Obviously, if I have fun, I will be a better teacher, but more importantly, it's the KIND of fun I wanted to have. I make sure we have some active time and some quiet time, some movement, perfromance, visual, and music arts components, some scientific inquiry and exploration, and a variety of social relationship opportunities. I make sure there are less guided and more guided moments, and safety as well as freedom.

I have been watching and listening with interest over the last few weeks about what issues the media outlets have been featuring, as well as what federal, provincial and First Nation politicians have been speaking about. Despite the fact that some very important court rulings have come out which were in favour of First Nations peoples, they seem to have gone largely unnoticed. Similarly, there have been some pretty significant funding cuts to First Nations communities as well as various First Nations organizations, yet the political world has been all but silent on the issue.