In a few short weeks my little second grader will become a full-fledged third grade girl. I can’t believe it. She ends the year with a full set of teeth, a few more inches on her height and a new awareness of the world around her that wasn’t there a short nine months ago. Does that mean that she needs the latest celebrity gossip pop-up to flit across her computer screen in the classroom this year or next? No, it does not. Are we, as parents, powerless to stop this kind of advertising to our kids even during school hours? No, we are most certainly not!
Don’t feel powerless about something like ads on the classroom computers. You don’t want them at home, why in your child’s computer lab? Enter Bing in the Classroom . An ad-free, safe search that schools can join. That means that next year while she is still growing wiser I won’t have to worry about her seeing images to the next big ultra-violent video game or ads for diet pills with confusing text and images that are not meant for a developing girls self-esteem. Bing in the Classroom has strict filters for adult content and enhanced privacy protection too. This was all something I didn’t even think about until the last few months when she started talking about computer lab and using the school computers to research various projects on China, Egypt, Native Americans and more. She began asking to do more searches online on her own at home too. I ignore all that stuff out when I work on the computer, but her little sponge of a mind just soaks it all in and one question about a questionable sidebar or pop-up ad leads down a wormhole of more searches to find out what it all means. The reality being that I am sometimes called away to deal with her other younger siblings and not able to constantly monitor each moment. Not are these ads distracting her from her studies and research at school they just shouldn’t be there in the first place. I asked her teacher about Bing in the Classroom after noticing that it wasn’t at our school, then I totally signed that petition to get our school on board too. It was fast and easy.
Her teacher confirmed that the elementary school doesn’t have Bing in the Classroom or ad-free search. She wished they did because she felt the flyers being sent home advertising Tae-Kwon-Do and Cheer Camp or Bowling Night were bad enough. The fact that ads do pop up taking away precious school time with their distractions frustrates each teacher. These kids don’t need all these outside ads and influences in their school, their place of learning. They shouldn’t be marketed to within school walls and yet they are almost every single day. Computer ads are just part of it. Want to know more about getting Bing in the Classroom at your school? Show support for #adfreesearch!
Don’t forget to Sign up for Bing Rewards! , you can donate earned points to donate Surface tablets to schools. Bing in the Classroom provides digital literacy lesson plans for teachers. See it in action.
*Disclaimer: This post was created in partnership with Bing. Sometimes I receive payment for a post but opinions are 100% my own and all products and topics are in line with my own thoughts and opinions. 
