When children ask questions about the United States Government, two sites provide online access to kid-friendly explanations, data, and legal responsibilities at a range of government agencies. Each site has advantages and disadvantages, but the two sites combined offer young students access to all sorts information, written expressly for kids. Continue reading “Kids Explore the U.S. Government – Bookmark It!”
Month: July 2010
Multi-tasking is a Myth, Researcher John Medina Maintains
Many of us may need to rearrange the way we work, reconsider our understanding of multi-tasking, and rethink how we supervise our children during homework time. According to Professor John Medina, the brain cannot multitask efficiently.
Dr. Medina, a respected molecular biologist who teaches at the University of Washington, published Brain Rules in 2008, and his book spent many weeks on the New York Times best seller list. In this entertaining read he discusses 12 important brain rules with one chapter devoted to multitasking. Addressing the widely accepted view that in the digital age we all multi-task effectively, Dr. Medina explains why the brain has trouble with multi-tasking and why this practice can cause trouble for learners, workers, and especially for pre-teens and adolescents. Many entertaining video explanations of the 12 brain rules are posted at his website. Continue reading “Multi-tasking is a Myth, Researcher John Medina Maintains”
Media in a Child’s Bedroom?
As parents, we make decisions every minute of the day — some based on things we really know. Others assumptions turn out to be based on things we have heard or believe. It’s the latter assumptions that cause us the most problems. In today’s media-centered world people make interesting decisions about the access their children have to television and computers, some of them based on what is known and some not.
Most people know about the need to limit television, understanding that too much TV viewing can lead to quality of life and health issues. The document, Setting Limits of Screen Time, posted at the Center for Media and Child Health (CMCH), provides ideas and suggestions with links to some of the published research about children and television viewing.
Modifying Adolescent Risky Behavior on Social Networking Sites
The impulse-driven and wild-West environment of social networking sites encourages pre-adolescents and adolescents to “publicly display references to behaviors that are both personal and associated with health risks, such as sexual behaviors.” This article, Reducing At-Risk Adolescents’ Display of Risk Behavior on a Social Networking Web Site, published in the January 2009 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine is a riveting journal article.
Of interest to parents, the article reports how a physician researched at-risk behavior concerning sex or substance abuse openly posted by teenagers on social networking sites. Although it contains some complex statistics and research language, the article is available free for downloading and worth the time it takes to read.
A pediatrician, at the time of the research from the University of Washington Medical School, Megan A. Moreno, MD, M.S.Ed, MPH (Dr. Meg), identified public adolescent social networking profiles that featured risky behavior. She wondered whether hearing directly from a physician via e-mail about risky behaviors depicted on the social networking sites might influence how the young people represented themselves on-line and might perhaps encourage them to make healthy changes in their profiles.
Continue reading “Modifying Adolescent Risky Behavior on Social Networking Sites”
Media! Tech! Parenting! 