Adult Supervision for Online Communications

[SSScout]

Once upon a time, in the dim past, back when "Internet"  meant "between fish catching equipment", we had an invention called a "telephone".  It was attached with wires to the wall, often sat on a small table next to  the front door of one's house, or next to a parent's bed. Or, it might have been hung on a wall, say in the room equipped for heating up our Mastodon steaks....

It involved an assigned number, which was encoded into the mechanism ,  and when done correctly, enabled one to verbally communicate with a friend or relative, or even a store or other merchantile establishment.  Connected plastic coated copper wires enabled the electrically energized pulses to be transmitted to other similar mechanisms, thus enabling human to human verbal communication.  

Such communicative devices enabled properly trained Scouts to arrange gear assignments, camp food allocation, purchasing arrangements, transportation requests and such germane to Scout adventure necessities.  Someone , in the dim past,  realized that if one person telephonically communicated with two other similarly equipped people (Scouts), and those two duplicated that effort to two more similarly equipped folks,  and so on, a quick way to disseminate information and organization could be accomplished. Appropriately, this technique was named a "phone tree" (not to be confused with the rare but useful "Oakey Doke" tree of Naval fame...).  

It is appropriate to use these lessons from the past to educate and govern our future.  Now, it would seem, the "phone tree" has become a "phone fountain" where not just two, but umpteen folks can be advised of the next meeting date at the same time by only ONE person.   This in no way eliminates the need to be responsible in our dissemination of information, or the need to READ the email/tweet/etc. in a reasonable time.  The Scouts (and some Scouters)  I deal with seem to be  AGHAST (aghast) that I may only read my emails only once, maybe twice a day. And not while I'm driving. Tweets?  Yes, but don't bet on it being RIGHT NOW.  Maybe later..... 

"Ahoy, ahoy.  No, this is one. You  want two. Yes, two.  " 

 

[elitts]

On 10/10/2018 at 6:19 PM, DuctTape said:

This underscores the younger generations' point that us older adults really do not understand digital communication and are scared of it. 

Imagine this scenario, on a campout a group of boys are in their tent having a conversation. BSA HQ changes guidelines to require that an adult stand outside the tent to monitor their conversation. What do you think?

 

The rule is stupid. And I am being gracious here.

I think you got it wrong.  The rules as written would mean that TWO adults would need to stand outside monitoring the conversations. 

🙄

[WonderBoy]

5 hours ago, elitts said:

I think you got it wrong.  The rules as written would mean that TWO adults would need to stand outside monitoring the conversations. 

 

Or would that be two TRAINED, REGISTERED adults?