Achievement vs. Kindness and Respect?

Posted on November 16, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Photo Credit: Gabriel Kamener, Sown Together via Compfight cc

In case you missed it this past summer, take a moment to read Why Kids Care More About Achievement Than Helping Others, an article by Jessica Lahey. The June 2014 Atlantic piece describes a research project that surveyed 10,000 middle and high schoolers, asking them to rate achievement, happiness, and caring for others in order of importance. By far, students ranked achievement and happiness over caring for other people.

The article notes that many parents believe they are sending strong messages about values such as respect, caring, and kindness, yet the study illustrates a disconnect between what parents think they say is important and how their children interpret their parents’ messages. The students tended to believe that their parents rated achievement the highest.

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21st Century life, apps, digital devices, parents and technology

Top Mobile Apps? Interesting Data from ComScore

Posted on September 29, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

top-25-mobile-apps-by-unique-visitor_reference — Click for a larger image.

Parents and educators often wonder aloud just who produces the most popular mobile apps and how many people, especially preadolescents and adolescents, actively use them on mobile devices.

Check out this ComScore image that depicts the most popular apps. Click on the image to visit a larger one at the company’s website that is much easier to read. The numbers represent unique visitors, though we cannot figure out ages. Still, it is interesting to wonder how many of these apps are on your digital devices? Your children’s digital devices?

ComScore is a company that statistically measures the activities of people on the web. It collects information from all over the world and the website is available in a range of languages. If you visit ComScore you can discover all sorts of interesting digital-world info-snapshots depicted with charts and graphs.

I am not at all surprised by this list of most popular apps in our 2014 21st Century lives. Are you?

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, online security, parents and technology, privacy

So I Just Won’t Use the Cloud! Really?

Posted on September 8, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

cloud storage — Just a few of the sites where people I know store data and photos.

Over the past several days I’ve heard more people say that they will stop using the cloud — a reaction to the stolen pictures, possibly taken from iCloud, of movie stars and celebrities (September 2014).

Hmmm… How about being a bit more realistic?

This is a great teaching moment for 21st Century parents, kids, and anyone who works with children. We need to remind ourselves that, no matter what a website tells us, our security depends on the many steps that each of us takes to protect and reinforce our information — passwords, privacy settings, 2-step verifications. Most of use the cloud, and often we don’t even think about it or take our privacy that seriously until something goes wrong.

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

Project Eavesdrop: NPR’s Story About Our Unintentional Sharing

Posted on July 30, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

detective-2 — Picture courtesy of Ollie Olarte on Flickr. Click to visit his site.

Just what can our Internet activity tell about us, and who can find the information? What do we unintentionally share? We tell our children not to share specifics kinds of personal information, but much of that information is somewhere — in the digital ether — a result of our various digital footprints, searches, apps settings, and smartphone connections, and waiting to be discovered.

Given the news about the massive amount of data collected by the National Security Agency, NPR reporter Steve Henn set out to find out how much of our data “seeps” out, potentially allowing others to learn all kinds of personal information about a person. Henn used himself as a test subject.

He called his story Project Eavesdrop, and NPR featured a radio report and posted the story online during the second week of June 2014 (a time when so many of us, busy with the end of the school year or the beginning of summer activities, missed this story). Continue reading “Project Eavesdrop: NPR’s Story About Our Unintentional Sharing” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, 21st Century teaching, parents and technology, searching

Why Word Order Matters When You Search!

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Marti Weston

The word order of a search matters in today’s connected world, so 21st Century learners of all ages should understand how search results change when a user rearranges the words. A short video on word order, uploaded by Google’s Search Anthropologist Daniel Russell – check out his Search-Research blog – teaches this lesson effectively.

Use this less-than-two-minute video, featured some months ago in a blog post at Free Technology for Teachers, as a quick and succinct teaching tool with students, parents, and other educators.

21st Century life, apps, digital devices, reviews

A Few Apps for Parents to Learn More About

Posted on March 13, 2014April 10, 2014 by Marti Weston

Check out these apps. Just two months ago, when presented to a group of parents, some of these were not on the radar for preadolescent and teen digital life. I’ve linked each to an article. For additional reviews, but not for every app, visit the Common Sense Media App Review Page.

Poof

hide mobile phone apps

4Chan

image bulletin board – pretty good up front rules

Whisper

share secrets

Wanelo

social media shopping

Yic Yac

anonymous texting

Rumr

more anonymous messaging

Secret

share with friends secretly

Pheed

share everything, including video, pretty good rules

21st Century life, online tracking, parents and technology, privacy

Retailers Track Adults by Monitoring Device Wifi

Posted on March 9, 2014March 10, 2014 by Marti Weston

We most often worry about advertisers tracking our children online but sometimes forget to think about how much we adults are followed around digitally.

FTC Privacy Series — FTC Privacy Seminar on Mobile Device Tracking

Check out the Washington Post article, Privacy Advocates Push Back on Stores’ Tracking, describing how retailers keep track their customers by monitoring smartphone wifi signals. No guidelines currently regulate this type of information collecting so no privacy parameters exist. Essentially this mobile device tracking is a way to get more information about shoppers, track what they do, and target advertising and target advertising more effectively.

The article, by Amerita Jayakuma, describes how a Maryland legislator has proposed a bill to require retailers to inform people if the store is watching them while they shop. The Federal Trade Commission recently held a seminar on mobile device tracking.

I’ve been wondering for some time if I was tracked a few months ago when I visited a huge regional outlet mall with my husband.

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