Posted in 21st Century life, digital kids, ipads, iPads in health care, iPads in hospitals, parents and technology

Can iPads Help Kids Stay Calm & Avoid Meds Before Surgery?

ipad-1Sometimes kids get so ultra-focused on their iPads that they don’t notice anything that’s going on around them, and sometimes parents and teachers despair. There are, however, situations where 21st Century digital kids’ intensive engagement and concentration can be put to good use — even with a digital device.

Physician Dominique Chassard, an anesthesiologist in Lyon, France, wanted to find out whether children preparing for pediatric ambulatory surgery would do just as well if they had iPads to play with before an operation as with a routine pre-anesthesia sedative. The study authors divided participant families into two groups. Half of the children received the standard sedative treatment and the other half were given iPads so they could play with games and puzzles. Continue reading “Can iPads Help Kids Stay Calm & Avoid Meds Before Surgery?”

Posted in data collecting, media literacy, media messages, parents and technology, searching

Your News, My News – Do We Get the Same Views?

screen-shot-2016-12-07-at-10-24-28-amAccording to a video shared by the DuckDuckGo website, when we  search for information on Google each of us can get slightly different, or sometimes enormously different results – even if we use the exact search terms in the exact order and at about the same time. DuckDuckGo, a search engine that emphasizes privacy, is a Google competitor.

The order of Google’s results may guided by what it knows about the individual who is doing the search. (Check out Ghostery to identify trackers on any or all of your pages.)

Collected information – including any previous searches, where we live, what we read, where we get our news, what we purchase, how much we travel, and much more can affect what we see in the results. I never thought about this much, but I do remember how a few years ago a group of my middle school students were searching on Google for information, and I noticed and was puzzled that similar searches sometimes generated lists of slightly different results. Continue reading “Your News, My News – Do We Get the Same Views?”

Posted in 21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, credibility, evaluating news, evaluating web site resources, fake news, information credibility, media literacy, parents and technology

Real or Fake? How to Check Yourself

img_7661If you think a lot about fake news these days, and if you aim to help your students or family members develop the ability to effectively evaluate and decide what’s real and what’s not, National Public Radio (NPR) just published an excellent article, Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts. This piece highlights six steps that individuals can use to judge the stories they encounter, and the article includes a detailed description about how to go about following through with each step.

The entire NPR post, which is chock full of helpful information, will be a useful teaching tool for anyone who wants to gauge a news item’s authenticity, and the six basic steps are easy to master. Post the list near computers, on the refrigerator, and in rooms where family members use digital devices and on digital devices’ note pads.

News Evaluation Steps from National Public Radio (Read the article for lots more detail.) Continue reading “Real or Fake? How to Check Yourself”

Posted in 21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, data collecting, kids and privacy, online data collecting, parents and technology, privacy

More on Using DuckDuckGo & My Extra Bit of Privacy

screen-shot-2016-12-05-at-2-38-25-pm
Check it out.

Last June I wrote How Much Privacy Do I Have? DuckDuckGo Gives More, describing how I am using the DuckDuckGo search engine for most of my online inquiries. Interestingly after six months using the alternative, I’ve made some observations and noticed some changes. I’m so glad that I switched.

Check out what I’ve learned below.      Continue reading “More on Using DuckDuckGo & My Extra Bit of Privacy”

Posted in parents and technology

Picture Books Help Digital Children Understand the Images in Their Lives

In today’s digital world children, pre-adolescents, and teens are bombarded with images that they must try to understand and not the issues around fake news make image evaluation skills increasingly important. It turns out that old-fashioned, non-digital children’s picture books may be one of the best ways to help young children begin to build the 21st Century skills necessary to evaluate and draw conclusions about images.

This post from several years ago explores the topic, but one aspect is different in 2016. Children’s bookstores, and independent books have been opening made a comeback! So perhaps with so many more opportunities to see quality children’s books and parents will have more opportunities to purchase books.

Marti Weston's avatarMedia! Tech! Parenting!

Many years ago my early elementary school aged daughter met author Daniel Pinkwater in a bookstore. After listening to him read and getting his autograph, she offered him a suggestion about a picture in one of his books. My husband and I were shocked at first, but then we congratulated ourselves — our daughter was so experienced and comfortable with picture books that she felt right at home giving a suggestion to a noted author.

Visit Eric Carle’s Museum of Picture Book Art

Ensuring that picture books — lots of them — play a significant role in a child’s life is a required task for digital world parents. Today all children need to evaluate the images — especially the digital pictures — that saturate their lives. The Google Answers site points out that an average American is exposed to huge numbers of commercial messages each day (note the wide range of…

View original post 468 more words

Posted in 21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital change, digital devices, digital wellness, digital-device-free times, mentoring digital kids, modeling for kids, parents and technology

After Buying a Device & Before Giving It to Kids — 2016 Update

iphone-6s
My new iPhone, purchased in early 2016.

Every 21st Century parent needs a holiday digital parenting checklist that describes the tasks to accomplish between purchasing a new digital device and watching a child gleefully unwrap it. This list gives parents a head start, identifying challenges, offering explanations, anticipating problems, and most importantly, setting the stage for responsible and respectful use of exciting but extraordinarily powerful devices.

The time adults spend preparing for new devices that enter a family’s life is well spent and spending that time up front may well prevent a huge time drain later on after a your child experiences a connected world problem. Parents are simultaneously guides, limits setters, and lifeguards, whether or not they know as much about digital life as their children.

The MediaTechParenting 2016
         Digital Parents’ Holiday and Beyond Checklist        

Continue reading “After Buying a Device & Before Giving It to Kids — 2016 Update”