Search Results for “digital wellness”

21st Century life, digital devices, digital health and wellness, images, parents and technology, privacy

Three Concepts that Build a Foundation for Digital Wellness & Health

Posted on April 1, 2019April 1, 2019 by Marti Weston

unnamed Various types of digital devices and toys are now a given in the lives of many children — even toddlers and preschoolers. From three and four years of age, many of their play activities include a vast array of toys and books that talk, beep, sing, cue activity, and play music. Even two-year-olds quickly learn how to use digital devices — after all they are generally adept at figuring out cause and effect and how to operate buttons.

The moment children begin to hold or play with digital devices of any kind is the time for parents and adult mentors to begin introducing three important digital life concepts — privacy, fairness, and respecting images. These three connected-life values, introduced early and reinforced regularly, contribute to a child’s long-term digital wellness. The three concepts create a knowledge base that supports decision-making as a child grows older, uses more powerful digital tools, and faces increased peer pressure. Continue reading “Three Concepts that Build a Foundation for Digital Wellness & Health” →

21st Century life, connected learning, digital learning, digital wellness, educating digital natives, parents and technology

10 Digital Wellness Thoughts to Consider

Posted on December 14, 2016December 14, 2016 by Marti Weston

Will new devices, robots and other items that connect to the Internet with your wifi be arriving in your home during this 2016 holiday season? If so, check out this post about maintaining digital wellness in your family.

Media! Tech! Parenting!

These days everyone talks about personal wellness — those steps that people need to take to remain physically and mentally healthy and strong. But what about digital wellness? Poor digital health affects not only our connected lives, but also our physical and mental well-being.

Digital wellness is about fine-tuning the 21st Century skills that we use to work and play in a connected world, and it also involves understanding number of common myths about the nature of online life. Helping family members take steps to develop digital wellness habits can challenge parents, mainly because many children, pre-adolescents, and teens appear to be far more advanced online consumers than their parents. Underneath the veneer of digital native expertise, however, are a fair number of information gaps.

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21st Century life, connected learning, digital citizenship, digital learning, digital parenting, digital wellness, educating digital natives, parents and technology

10 Digital Wellness Thoughts to Consider

Posted on May 6, 2015March 22, 2019 by Marti Weston

Digital wellness is about fine-tuning the 21st Century skills that we use to work and play in a connected world, and it also involves understanding a number of common myths about the nature of online life. Helping family members take steps to develop digital wellness habits can challenge parents, mainly because many children, pre-adolescents, and teens appear to be far more advanced online consumers than their parents. Underneath the veneer of digital native expertise, however, are a fair number of information gaps. Continue reading “10 Digital Wellness Thoughts to Consider” →

21st Century life, back-to-school, Back-to-school digital reading, digital wellness, parents and technology

Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist

Posted on August 12, 2019August 21, 2019 by Marti Weston

This post includes a downloadable handout.

At the beginning of the school year, what can parents and teachers do to ensure that digital kids — with their hand-held devices, connected school activities, homework, and other online endeavors — get off to a good start?

Back-to-school preparation is more than school supplies, lunch boxes, and carpool arrangements. It also involves reviewing and articulating connected-life expectations with family members and working together to set up a family media plan that works for each person in the family.

Below are a few issues for parents and educators to consider as they seek to maintain quality in kids’ 21st Century digital lives during the 2019-2020 school year. Raising strong and competent digital citizens requires teamwork and immense effort — at home and at school.

handout image 2 — Download this PDF handout.

1. Make decisions about screen time in your family. Altogether, as a family, figure out your plan and then think about how you will re-address your decisions as the year progresses. Check out the 2018 article, How Much Screen Time Affects Kids’ Bodies and Brains at Forbes. Family issues to consider might include:

What limits will your family set up for digital devices, electronic games, and television?
If your child uses a personal device from school, are you aware of specific teacher expectations and time commitments?
What else would you like your child to spend time doing?
A good article for parents and educators (and a great back-to-school piece to share with parents) is on the NPR website — Kids and Screen Time-What Does the Research Say?

Continue reading “Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, civility, digital footprints, digital parenting, parents and technology, personal data, privacy

Those Digital Footprints Keep Multiplying

Posted on May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 by Marti Weston

For years, when I taught seminars in digital citizenship to third, fourth, and fifth graders, the primary topic was always digital footprints. Oh, we discussed and worked on lots of other 21st Century connected-world issues, civility, for instance, but everything seemed to wend its way back to those always-proliferating digital footprints.

We watched and rewatched my favorite digital dossier video from the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard. The students kept diaries and also asked their parents to do so. They found an online calculator to explore and considered how their permanent digital footprints might look a few years down the road. We made a list of all the potential places that might collect digital footprints, one year creating a list that started at the ceiling, went all the way to the floor and then back up to the ceiling again.

My students were always amazed at the size of their digital dossiers which included, in addition to email, apps, social media, and websites, a range of digital markings that they never considered such as credit cards, license plates, grocery store purchases, EZ pass travel, Amazon purchases, app downloads, and so much more. So when the time came for a final project — more than half or each fifth-grade class chose to concentrate on a digital footprint topic. Two of their posters are shared here. Continue reading “Those Digital Footprints Keep Multiplying” →

21st Century life, collaborating with kids, digital change, digital devices, digital parenting strategies, family media plan, parents and technology

Melinda Gates Parents Digital Kids, Too

Posted on August 30, 2017March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Parenting digital kids?

kids devices Gates — Image downloaded from Pixabay.

If you sometimes feel lonely and unprepared as you take steps to craft appropriate media guidelines for your family, check out Melinda Gates’ digital parenting essay I Spent My Career in Technology: I Wasn’t Prepared for Its Effect on My Kids, appearing in the August 24, 2017, edition of the Washington Post. Her family experiences some of the same 21st Century challenges.

Despite spending years working at Microsoft, Gates describes her amazement at the pace of change and the ways that digital activities have taken over, in different ways, the lives of her children. She compares and contrasts her older child’s technology experiences with the increased access of her younger daughter. And she thinks about and shares a range of resources to help parents understand more about digital wellness and how to raise children who understand the digital world where they live.

Continue reading “Melinda Gates Parents Digital Kids, Too” →

21st Century parenting, collaboration, device-free times, digital health and wellness, digital kids, digital parenting, digital wellness, parents and technology, tech free time

Collaborative Family Digital Activities For Summer 2017

Posted on July 10, 2017March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Summer 2017 is here, and as we enjoy family fun, outdoor activities, trips to museums and historical sites, vacations, and all sorts of camps and special programs, it’s also important to discover activities that will help 21st Century children use screen time creatively and wisely.

So with less frenetic schedules and no school, use the summer months to collaborate — that’s parents and kids doing things together. Adults can learn more about the digital whirl that’s such a huge part of young people’s 21st Century lives, and kids can engage in meaningful, creative, and interesting projects — and even have fun working with their parents. The pay-off? Everyone will figure out more about digital life and add variety to the types of digital activities that they typically do.

Below are 12 family digital project summer suggestions — all work best if people work together — to consider for summer 2017.

Twelve Summer Digital Projects for Families Continue reading “Collaborative Family Digital Activities For Summer 2017” →