digital devices and gadgets – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, cell phones, digital devices, digital devices and gadgets, digital parenting, digital wellness, digital-device-free times, first mobile phone, getting a first device, getting started with a kid’s new device, parents and technology

An Amusing but Pointed Welcome Poem for Kids With New Digital Devices

Posted on April 3, 2017March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

childing-typing1 — Click here to read my second poem about kids’ advice to parents.

Since it’s National Poetry Month, I decided to write a few amusing verses about digital kids and the connected world. You are welcome to attach this poem, with attribution, to any new device that a member of your family receives. Enjoy!

An Amusing but Pointed Welcome Poem PDF

Congrats on acquiring a new mobile device,
Have fun working and playing, but here’s some advice.
With your friends or relations who, like you, love the web
You’ll connect with so much, you’ll feel like a celeb!

But remember! When you work, play, or hangout online,
You must understand when you need to decline.
Kids often forget while using devices
That it’s easy to get caught in another kid’s vices.

It’s great fun to partake of apps, websites, and more,
Because you and your friends mostly do know the score.
You’re connected, you’re sharing – and that’s really great!
But please know that you’ll make more than one big mistake. Continue reading “An Amusing but Pointed Welcome Poem for Kids With New Digital Devices” →

21st Century life, bedrooms, devices and bedtime, digital devices, digital devices and gadgets, digital devices and sleep, digital life, parents and technology, tech free time

When Did We Stop Thinking of Bedrooms as Places to Sleep?

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Marti Weston

bedroom device Should we make kids’ bedrooms better for sleeping?

I’ve just finished reading an October 2016 editorial in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, Problems Associated With Use of Mobile Devices in the Sleep Environment — Streaming Instead of Dreaming. The short piece describes the problems that digital devices, especially those that are mobile and easy to glance at or grab in the middle of the night, reflects on research published in the same issue of the journal. Unfortunately neither article is freely available; however, the links I’ve added offer a summary describing how the research was conducted and highlighting the findings.

The JAMA Pediatrics research article explains how the study asked the question, “Is there an association between screen-based media device access or use in the sleep environment and sleep quantity and quality?” Researchers conducted a meta-analysis (examining the results of many studies and combining the results) by searching through 20 previous studies, involving more than 125,000 children, that examined sleep patterns of children between 6 and 19 years old. Continue reading “When Did We Stop Thinking of Bedrooms as Places to Sleep?” →

21st Century life, device-free times, digital devices and gadgets, digital health and wellness, digital wellness, modeling for kids, moderation, parents and technology

Without Moderation & Mindfulness Tech Can Diminish Our Personal Lives

Posted on February 26, 2017April 22, 2019 by Marti Weston

Does too much technology, with our smartphones especially, os7iphone-2 interfere with the quality and the personal connections in our lives? Do we concentrate less because of the unceasing demands of our digital devices?

I’ve just finished reading Jonathon Safran Foer’s December 2016 article, Technology is Diminishing Us, and he makes thoughtful points about how, despite the good things that 21st Century digital devices bring to our lives, they can also diminish our daily emotional responses and contemplative experiences. The author reflects, with a personal emphasis, on digital distractions that increasingly disrupt of face-to-face communication, and his ideas connect well with the conclusions that Massachusetts Institution of Technology professor Sherry Turkle shares in her books Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversations, also well worth reading.

Foer, whose essay appeared in The Guardian, notes that early on technological innovations aimed to help people more easily accomplish daily life tasks — telephones replaced letters, answering machines supplemented phone calls, email made communication even easier and texting easier still. Each change or invention sought to help people communicate more efficiently and effectively (in theory). Yet all this ease of use comes with caveats. The devices that connect us to others almost all of the time and to unlimited information whenever we seek it, have become electronic busybodies, obsessively notifying, alerting, locating, and suggesting (even when we try to turn many of the features off) as we attempt to concentrate, interact with others, and get things done. Most of us do little to stop these interruptions. Continue reading “Without Moderation & Mindfulness Tech Can Diminish Our Personal Lives” →

digital devices, digital devices and gadgets, parents and technology

My Itty-Bitty Bluetooth Speaker — Best Summer 2016 Travel Device

Posted on August 1, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

One of the most difficult decisions before leaving home at any time of year is deciding what digital devices to bring along on the trip. My laptop or just the iPad? My iPad and my iPhone? My digital camera or just my iPhone? Then there are all the chargers and the surge protector with extra USB ports that I now bring along.

This summer I discovered one more digital device that I cannot live without when we travel — a tiny JAM bluetooth speaker that has big sound and darn good quality. About the same size as the small plastic drinking glass that I bring along when I am not in hotels and weighing not much more, this speaker connects with my laptop or iPad or iPhone (doesn’t matter which devices I decide to bring or not bring).

Continue reading “My Itty-Bitty Bluetooth Speaker — Best Summer 2016 Travel Device” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital devices, digital devices and gadgets, digital life, parents and technology, smartphones, teamwork

The Right Age for a Smartphone? Interesting NY Times Article

Posted on July 23, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

os7iphone-2 Take a few minutes to read What’s the Right Age for a Child to Get a Smartphone? by Brian X Chen. The July 20, 2016 New York Times article includes interviews with Internet Safety experts and contains some advice from other parents.

The Take-aways? (Well, we know most of this, but reminders are always useful.) Continue reading “The Right Age for a Smartphone? Interesting NY Times Article” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital devices and gadgets, digital life, digital parenting, kids' advice for parents, media and family life, parents and technology, screen time

What to Do About Screen Time – A Diane Rehm Show Discussion

Posted on December 31, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Click to check out the report’s infographic.. — Click to check out the Common Sense Media research report’s infographic.

This past week I listened to New Research On Teens, Toddlers and Mobile Devices, an engaging radio program about digital parenting on The Diane Rehm Show (NPR). In early November 2015 Rehm featured four expert guests who thoughtfully examined the digital parenting issues that adults should consider when it comes to digital media and children. It was rebroadcast in December 2015.

The program appeared to be timed to highlight a recently released report, The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens (2015). Educators and parents will learn a lot by listening to this broadcast or reading the transcript and by checking out the program’s resource links.

A new year—with new devices and new considerations about rules and limitation—is a good time to listen to experts who can help adults think more carefully about how to define screen time and discuss the research (and the need for much more). This program can help adults guide children whose 21st Century lives are increasingly defined by digital activities. Continue reading “What to Do About Screen Time – A Diane Rehm Show Discussion” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, digital citizenship, digital devices and gadgets, family conversations, kids changing lives, parents and technology

Digital Literacy 101 for Kids, PreK -Grade 6: A Checklist

Posted on October 22, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

In his book Net Smart, Howard Rheingold writes that for any of us to become knowledgeable connected world users and citizens, each of us needs to develop and continually strengthen five areas of digital literacy. People who use the web wisely and with good results develop fundamental skill in five literacy areas — attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption of content.

New Smart – Read Rheingold’s Educause book excerpt.

As the lives of children, online and off, grow more complex by the day, we adults spend a good deal of our time helping them learn more about the lives they will live in a 21st Century world. We are accomplished at mentoring children in the parts of their lives that are offline, but often teachers and parents simply react to digital life problems rather than build fundamental digital literacy skills that will help children avoid problems. For kids to really be prepared to develop the five literacies that Rheingold describes, they need to build up a foundation of knowledge about the connected world environment.

How is it that children, pre-adolescents, and teens can understand how to use digital devices, consume digital culture at an early age, and even figure out digital device problems for their parents, but have only the barest knowledge about how to relate thoughtfully to people online, take complete advantage of digital resources, and solve problems rather than create them? The reason? We adults have so often put the cart before the horse. We give children their own personal devices or let them borrow ours — gadgets connect in various ways to the entire world, albeit different ones at different ages — and only gradually go about teaching the fundamental literacy aspects later on and especially when something goes wrong. Continue reading “Digital Literacy 101 for Kids, PreK -Grade 6: A Checklist” →