21st Century life – Page 17 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, data collecting, digital footprings, digital footprints, parent child conversations, parents and technology, searching

Google Dashboard: A Connected-World Teaching Tool for All Ages

Posted on March 1, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

A screen show from the Google Dashboard. — A screenshot from the Google Dashboard.

If you use Google, take a few minutes to check out the Google Dashboard and look over a detailed digital footprint snapshot of your Google activities. Learning about digital footprints is an important 21st Century connected-world skill.

The Dashboard keeps track of everything — and I mean everything — that you do on Google. It’s a dynamic digital footprint collection. To sign in and examine your Gmail or Google Alerts is easy, and you can also check out the other features offered by Google such as Google Docs, Google Calendar, Blogger, or Google Reader (many more Google products are available and new ones become available on a regular basis).

Google Dashboard is an awesome connected-world teaching tool for 21st Century children at any age and for adults, because it makes a point — concretely — about the amount of information that Google accumulates on each of us. Many people are surprised, and a bit disconcerted, on a first visit, because the Dashboard depicts a good deal about each user.

Continue reading “Google Dashboard: A Connected-World Teaching Tool for All Ages” →

21st Century life, connected learning, social media, social networking

Social Media Week? What a Great Idea for Schools!

Posted on February 23, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Just imagine what we could teach our 21st Century students and ourselves if, together with students, we organized social media weeks (or days) with presentations, demonstrations, and talks about all aspects of social networking — what’s good, what’s not so good, and what can be done with social media to make our lives better?

More importantly, what if in the process, we educators and some of our social-media-savvy parents demonstrated to students that we understand the role that social media plays in all of our lives while also emphasizing the need to manage and curate our profiles?

Social Media Weeks seek to do just that. The mission of social media week events is to promote a discussion about our always-connected lives, examining how things have changed, how to make the world a better place, and perhaps most importantly, how to learn from our mistakes. Online conferences, offline events, lectures, and dialogues are scheduled during four official social media weeks, held in major cities around the world. Continue reading “Social Media Week? What a Great Idea for Schools!” →

21st Century life, digital learning, digital life, sharing media, social media

Getting to Know Pinterest: A Parent’s Guide

Posted on February 20, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Pinterest digitizes image collecting, the non-digital activity that lots of us have been doing for years. In a sense Pinterest offers a 21st Century way to bookmark and collect images instead of accumulating pieces of paper. I’m loving it!

Many people spend time looking through magazines and catalogs, identifying images such as the best-looking clothes, interesting plants, comfortable shoes, or pictures with ideas for an upcoming home construction project. An individual cuts out (or tears out) the image and puts it into a folder. I used to have folders (and more folders) filled with images on all sorts of topics, waiting for me to consult. And I used them from time-to-time, especially at the beginning of a project.

Continue reading “Getting to Know Pinterest: A Parent’s Guide” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, parents and technology, social media, supervising digital kids

Play in the Social Media Sandbox? Decisions, Decisions!

Posted on February 19, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Check out Nick Bilton’s New York Times article, Letting Your Kids Play in the Social Media Sandbox. The February 18, 2015 piece shares Bilton’s experience as he considers how much initial access his nephew should have to social media, after the boy asked about signing up for a YouTube account.

The best part of his decision-making process is the author’s metaphor describing the three doors that open to progressively more complicated social media and how each door leads to a more complicated social experience for a younger person. Bilton explains how each door opens to trickier types of social media that allow — or more likely promotes — certain types of negative behavior. He is not against social media access at all, but he has some specific recommendations about child supervision and parent responsibilities.

Continue reading “Play in the Social Media Sandbox? Decisions, Decisions!” →

21st Century life, digital life, parents and technology, selfies

Collecting Information — Even From Selfies?

Posted on January 30, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

There seems to be a way to collect information about — well — everything.

Nowadays that includes our images and more specifically the selfies that we informally snap and share. Parents of 21st Century digital kids need to know that data mining reaches ever farther into our lives, seeking information from our most spontaneous and casual digital image creating activities.

An October 10, 2014 article in AdWeek, How Marketers Are Mining Your Selfies for Data: Chances are, Without You Knowing, describes how data mining firms collect information on the millions of pictures that are casually uploaded and without privacy settings. Continue reading “Collecting Information — Even From Selfies?” →

21st Century life, digital life, digital parenting, parents and technology

Thanksgiving 2014, Gratitude, and Digital Life

Posted on November 20, 2014November 25, 2014 by Marti Weston

We are about to celebrate Thanksgiving 2014, a time when we give thanks for family, friends, and the richness of our lives. It’s a time for gratitude when most of us take stock and think about how well we live.

As a parent, teacher, and 21st Century learning advocate with a digital parenting focus, I spend much of the year suggesting ways that families, educators, children, and certainly, my students can strategize, enrich, and improve their digitally connected lives. And, of course, we are always attempting to learn enough to avoid potential problems.

But Thanksgiving is different!

Last year at our Thanksgiving 2013 celebration my family took time to consider the many good things that have changed in our 21st Century lives since we now live with so much technology. Each of us came up with a broad range of experiences that changed our lives in positive ways, bringing extra excitement and joy to our lives: experiences for which we are most grateful. Check out my list below. Continue reading “Thanksgiving 2014, Gratitude, and Digital Life” →