21st Century life – Page 10 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, digital citizenship, digital devices, digital parenting, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Starting Out With Digital Devices Is Just Like Learning to Swim

Posted on November 10, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

swim-meet The minute a child gets that first web-connected mobile device, the adults in the family commit themselves to extended digital life “swimming lessons.”

Young swimmers become increasingly competent and skilled while at the same time needing adult support, supervision, and occasional intervention. Twenty-first Century digital natives require the same parental attention and guidance as they learn to operate safely and adroitly in the connected world waters. Swimming and connected-world activities, though they require long-term adult oversight, help children explore the world around them and gain confidence, learn new things and grow their abilities, learn to make good decisions and yes, avoid making bad ones. The key to their success is adult support.

Continue reading “Starting Out With Digital Devices Is Just Like Learning to Swim” →

21st Century life, choosing reliable resources, evaluating web site resources, information credibility, parents and technology

Triple-Check For Fake News on Social Media — Learning Resources

Posted on November 1, 2016September 2, 2019 by Marti Weston

It happens to me all the time on social media. I see something interesting that connects with what I like or want to believe, start to read it, and then I immediately start to share it with my friends. I’m learning, however, to think more about it first. Now I’m spending more time considering whether what I see and read comes from a reputable news source or if some of the details in the article can survive a fact check.

Anyone can set up a catchy name on Facebook and send out news, but these authors don’t necessarily check or even care about the facts. Here’s what Brian Stelter on CNN has to say on the subject on his Oct 30, 2016 broadcast. Continue reading “Triple-Check For Fake News on Social Media — Learning Resources” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, digital life

Creepy Losses — A 21st Century Halloween Graveyard

Posted on October 31, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Happy Halloween 2016!

A friend’s Halloween yard display — to-the-point about the 21st Century challenges and concerns that we face as so many people live so much of their lives on social media. I hope that future Halloween holidays can be celebrated with at least some of these problems improved. rest-in-peace-halloween-graveyard

21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, online communication, online security, parents and technology, privacy, public vs private comments, teachers, teaching digital kids

Digital Communication Disrupts the Rules of Civility, Privacy, & Integrity

Posted on October 30, 2016May 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Click to read the article. — Click to read the Washington Post article.

After spending years teaching digital citizenship and civility in the K-12 world, I’ve now come to the conclusion that we parents and teachers should, in the midst of teaching children, stress that there is never privacy online. Yes, I know that we already teach this — or try to — in most schools and homes, but election 2016, accompanied by the theft and sharing of emails and other connected world materials, is scary. It has proven that everyone can be hurt by what they say online — even when what is said is not intended to generate hurtfulness.

To learn much more about the lack of privacy in private communication read Deborah Tannen’s October 28, 2016 Washington Post column, Why What You Say In Private Looks Bad in Public, Even if It Isn’t. Tannen is a professor at Georgetown University and the author of the bestseller, You Just Don’t Understand.

Our confidential comments may differ from what we say in public. When our candid thoughts become widely available — yes, through hacking, but with kids, it’s through intentional sharing, gossip, or the unintentional mistakes that kids make — words can often be interpreted negatively. Moreover, at least for the time being, we live in a world where stealing a public figure’s private communications and making them public appears to be OK.

Good Quotes from Deborah Tannen’s Article (Read the entire article for much more) Continue reading “Digital Communication Disrupts the Rules of Civility, Privacy, & Integrity” →

21st Century life, digital kids, family media plan, media and family life, media diet, parents and technology

Pediatricians Recast Screen Time Recommendations & Give Parents Online Planning Tools

Posted on October 22, 2016April 5, 2019 by Marti Weston

Thanks to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), parents and teachers now have two simple and easy-to-use tools that can assist with developing a family’s media plan and estimating how family members can organize their time so that screen time is balanced with physical activity, reading, face-to-face connections, and homework.

screen-shot-2016-10-21-at-8-47-49-pm — A screenshot of the two new media tools.

Every school administrator and every PTA group will want to share the information about these digital planning devices in as many ways as possible. The new tools are available at the AAP’s HealthyChildren.org website.

The Academy has also refreshed its screen time recommendations for children of all ages, making needed updates to reflect the changing digital landscape as well as the many media activities in the lives of family members. Whether you agreed or vehemently disagreed with previous AAP screen and media guidelines, the professional society of children’s physicians deserves high praise for its ongoing efforts to address a media and digital landscape that dramatically affects the health and wellness of young people.

Continue reading “Pediatricians Recast Screen Time Recommendations & Give Parents Online Planning Tools” →

21st Century life, hateful comments, offensive speech, parents and technology

Teaching Children (and Adults) to Extricate Themselves from Offensive Situations

Posted on October 21, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Expressing hate is so easy with just a few taps on the keyboard. — Expressing hate is so easy with just a few comments or taps on the keyboard. Develop strategies to contain it.

Can a person learn how to respond to an offensive or hateful situation? Can adults help 21st Century young people master the skills? Earlier this fall I wrote a post, Is Hate Speech Here to Stay?, wondering if up-front, in-your-face hate and offensive speech will be a continuing problem in our connected world.

Recently a New York Times article, Lessons in the Delicate Art of Confronting Offensive Speech, described the challenges and awkwardness that individuals experience when they happen to hear or see a person engaging in offensive activity. The piece highlighted research about what occurs when people challenge offensive speech, and it suggests concrete steps that a person can take when confronted by offensive behavior or speech. The authors, Benedict Carey and Jan Hoffman, point out that researchers have consistently found that a person who makes the awful comments will often curb behavior when another expresses reservations or reacts in a more indirect way.

Continue reading “Teaching Children (and Adults) to Extricate Themselves from Offensive Situations” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, body image, media literacy, media messages

Media Literacy, Girls, Women, and Beauty Magazines

Posted on October 13, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

medialit-mag-video-thumbnail — Check out the video below.

Each month I receive several teen and women’s magazines to look over, and I immediately go through each one to tear out scads of perfume advertisements. My allergies react to the scented pages, and it is much easier to read the articles when I vanquish the perfume ads.

Recently I began thinking about how many advertising pages — perfumes and everything else — publishers cram into each issue that we read, knowing that almost all of them focus on female body image and portray unrealistic, and usually unattainable perfection. These days, so much of what kids see is digital, but these magazines still loom large in the lives of pre-teen and adolescents girls.

Continue reading “Media Literacy, Girls, Women, and Beauty Magazines” →