This morning I was guest speaking in a High School journalism class here at Point Park.  The class meets every other Friday to talk about Advertising and Public Relations.  I was asked to come in and speak about Social Media and Multimedia.

I talked a lot about Facebook, RSS feeds, viral video, and other exciting multimedia topics. I know from experience that lecturing is never a good idea, and in the first 10 minutes I had one student catching up on some extra sleep.  As soon as I let them loose on the computers, though, they perked right up :)

Before I started the class I asked the Fans of the PittsburghMom Facebook page "If you could ask a group of teenagers one question, what would you ask them?"  and got some great responses in the hour before I was ready to start our multimedia project.

The questions included

• Why do you care so much about what others think of you? (These poor kids have no clue about the world beyond high school and that your popular status means nothing outside of it-I wish people would have told me that in High School)
• What is the most imprtant thing about you; that you are happy people " get " or wish more " got " ?
• What do you need from your parents?
• What are your dreams? i think dreams can reveal so much about who they are and where our generation stands..
• I have a 13-year old - I ask her everyday "how are things going?"...sometimes she says," Mom I don't feel like talking", but then later, opens up. There is so much more that kids deal with than we ever did. Our kids need to know we care and are there for them always. Talk to them