b"Is your teenequipped forCOLLEGE LIFE?Maureen P. Tillman, L.C.S.W.Counseling parents and teens for a successfulcollege experience during uncertain times973-315-8635|mtillmanlcsw@gmail.com 108 Baker Street | Maplewood Villageeven from a distance. The author's son, Cole, spends the spring semester of his freshman year of college hands-on, experiential learningtaking his classes from home via Blackboard, an online virtual classroom.Forremotelearning,aworkingkeephisfamilyfromusingdata-in-Chromebook, laptop or tablet is essen- tensive apps while he is playing. Im tial. For the younger kids, this is likelypretty sure the dog needs a walkits to mean a dusted-off early generationyour turn, right? is a tricky way to get iPadoraneldersiblings12-poundhousehold bandwidth to himself.Chromebook.OlderstudentsmayCharlotteHarteveld,aColum-be viewing a full school day throughbia High School sophomore, recently agrainy,glitchy,11-inchscreen,ifhosted a movie night with her friends. theyareluckyenoughtohaveoneShe used Netflix so they could all start atall.Evenso,moststudentsarentthe movie at the same time, and Zoom complaining about device speed whento chat as they watched. Its nice to dealing with schoolwork.have a link to communicate with my Internetspeedisadifferentmat- friends,shesaid.Butitsnotthe ter, however. A loose online coalitionsameasactuallybeinginthesame of teenagers from SOMA are lobbyingroom with them. Having to commu-parents for faster internet speeds. Annicate[thisway]addsextrapressure anonymous member of this coalitionto make conversations work, and the adamantly insists this is for the ben- silence is awkward. efit of his family and has nothing toThe adults working from home are dowiththevideogameOverwatch.justasinnovativebutmoreserious. (His parents remain skeptical.) In theJohn and Patricia Fulweiler of South meantime, he uses creative means toOrange both work with children and have had to learn new technology to do their jobs. Says John, a speech and language pathologist who doesnt con-siderhimselftechnologicallysavvy, All of a sudden in the space of a week IhadtofigureoutZoom,Google Meet, Google Forms, and Dropbox. To get up to speed, he watched webi-nars but admits, Once the webinars confused me thoroughly I just went on the platform and tried it. Patricia, a teacher at South Orange Country Day School, has had to re-Members of a household can getthink how to best keep her kindergar-competitive about securing the internet speed needed to do their various tasks,teners attention now that shes teach- CO-EDnNURSERY THROUGH GRADE 8nFARBROOK.ORGincluding playing video games. ing via Zoom. She says, I make sure feature story /25"