Month: September 2010

Posted in digital parenting, great sites for students, homework, parents and technology

Quick and Easy Graphing Site – Bookmark It!

Posted on by Marti Weston

Have you ever wished you would make a quick graph as you help a child with homework or explain a complex concept by depicting it with a graph?

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) offers a “Create-a-Graph” site, and more than 20,000,000 users have made graphs  since 2005.  The site provides a quick getting-started tutorial to help get started, but the graph making is simple enough that a user can get started almost immediately. Graphs can be saved, printed, and e-mailed.

Be sure to check out the other math and statistics facts on the NCES kids’ site.

Posted in acceptable use, digital citizenship, digital parenting, online safety, online security, parent education, parents and technology

Visit Google Family Safety Center – Bookmark It!

Posted on by Marti Weston

Comprehensive web-based resources on digital safety, cyber-bullying, media literacy, and general technology information can help parents learn more about the web and how their children use it. Most of these sites update their content daily with timely tips, strategies for parents and kids, blog postings, and other helpful links. Yet, with so many sites to choose from, parents may have difficulty keeping track of any single location, let alone navigating among the sites on a regular basis.

Now Google, as so often happens, has come up with a terrific solution — the Family Safety Center. The center is well laid out with clear explanations about safety tools and connections to many of the best digital and media safety sites — all partnering with Google.

Continue reading “Visit Google Family Safety Center – Bookmark It!” →

Posted in great sites for students, homework, parents and technology, web research

Evaluating Websites: Be Sure of the Quality

Posted on by Marti Weston

When we were students we learned to write content-filled essays and reports. Our teachers taught us to introduce the important facts, facts we discovered using quality reference materials. With today’s websites a student follows the same rules, but reliability is a significant issue. While it is easy to find sites with information about a topic, identifying reliable and significant information is more of a challenge. The trick is to identify information that indicates whether or not a site is a reliable resource. Do not let your child use a site as a resource unless it is possible to determine its quality.

Many websites look both real and reliable, but they are bogus. A fun website to explore is at based at the Western Australia Province Department of Education. It features bogus websites designed to look accurate and authoritative. Except that they are not accurate or authoritative. Take a few minutes to explore. Better yet, explore them with your children.

Evaluate the Web Sites that You Use

Be sure you use sites with accurate and reliable information. If you have a research project or your child has a homework assignment plan to evaluate each website to ensure its quality. Also please read the following tips describing how to evaluate web-based information.

Ten Tips to Ensure that the Information is Useful and Accurate

Continue reading “Evaluating Websites: Be Sure of the Quality” →

Posted in cell phones, parents and technology, resources to read

David Pogue’s Review of the Newest iPods

Posted on by Marti Weston

You may be ask by at least one of your children, or maybe a spouse or relative, to buy one of the new tiny and very colorful iPods.

Click to go to the Apple iPod page.

Read David Pogue’s Personal Tech post in the September 10, 2010 New York Times. His post, In Season 9, iPods Still Get High Ratings, describes the many positives of the newly released iPod model,  and he also makes a few other observations. Watch Pogue’s clever videocast as well (after the commercial).

David Pogue’s reviews are useful and even inspiring. Links on the Personal Tech site take readers the Gadgetwise blog with reviews, by a variety of reporters, on digital cameras, cell phones, camcorders, and much more.

Keep an eye out for Pogue’s other short, and very entertaining videocasts, all posted at the Times. They can also be downloaded as podcasts from iTunes.

Posted in digital parenting, online safety, online security, parents and technology

Help Your Family Avoid Online Scams

Posted on by Marti Weston

Every minute of every day people are victims of online scams — most often they arrive via e-mail. Some experts estimate that one person every 10 seconds is a victim of some type of scam or identity theft, and often the theft of personal information is easier because the victim unwittingly provides personal data. Families with multiple computers are especially vulnerable because people are working on many different online tasks. Children are susceptible to scams with animals, sick children, and the hardships of disasters. Kids need to be reminded – frequently – not to hit the reply button, no matter how good the cause.

Click here to go to SCAMFINDER.

The consumer affairs reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sheryl Harris, has developed Scamfinder, an extensive database to help people identify questionable e-mail or phone calls.

While most of us are familiar with the unrelenting e-mails from Nigeria, many other online scams, usually delivered by e-mail, are realistic and unnerving because they hit so close to home — for instance a charity soliciting around the time of a natural catastrophe or a seemingly thoughtful person writing to ask for contributions to police or victims of abuse. Sheryl Harris is often featured on the Market Place radio program, most recently on September 6, 2010. Scamfinder categories include:

Continue reading “Help Your Family Avoid Online Scams” →

Posted in acceptable use, Back-to-school digital reading, cell phones, digital parenting, media literacy, parent education, parents and technology, setting technology limits

Nine Back-to-School Technology Tasks

Posted on by Marti Weston
From ClipArt for Free.blogspot.com

The beginning of a school year is a good time for families to set limits, explain rules, and in general, clarify expectations about technology use. Getting started in the fall, when everyone is off to a new grade and a fresh beginning, encourages healthy technology habits.

Depending on the age of your children, you may want to accomplish some or even all of the tasks on this list, encouraging everyone to think responsibly and become committed digital citizens.

Nine Back-to-School Technology Tasks

Continue reading “Nine Back-to-School Technology Tasks” →