Posted in 21st Century Learning, American history, citizenship, curated resources, digital citizenship, digital learning, First Amendment, informed citizens, NewseumEd, web resources

All About the First Amendment at NewseumEd

These days I hear many people talking about the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, but as they talk I often wonder how much they really understand about the document? Can they describe the five freedoms and how those freedoms affect people’s lives in the United States? Children and adults probably need to learn lots more.

An excellent NewseumEd activity, designed for students in grades three through eight, introduces the First Amendment using materials, discussion, and scenario examinations that explore how the First Amendment works in real-life situations. Similar resources are available at the website for high school and college learners.

Below are some interesting facts from the activity, although students will discover much more. Continue reading “All About the First Amendment at NewseumEd”

Posted in 21st Century life, 21st Century teaching, American history, and media, digital learning, media literacy, museums, parents and technology

Video Tour of the Newseum’s News History Gallery

bill-of-rights-cropWatch this inside video tour (below) of the Newseum’s updated News History Gallery. The exhibit features 400-plus historical newspapers, newsbooks, and magazines —  documents that reported some of the greatest and most amazing news stories. You can visit the Newseum’s web site to explore some of the other exhibits without leaving your home or school.

After you watch the video, check out and sign up for NewseumEd, a site that is filled with ideas for teaching First Amendment and media literacy and with resources that can be easily downloaded. These are terrific connected world teaching tools that can be used in 21st Century classrooms.     Continue reading “Video Tour of the Newseum’s News History Gallery”

Posted in 21st Century life, cybersecurity, digital learning, digital life, parents and technology

Quiz- How Much Do You Really Know About Cybersecurity?

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Click on the image to take the quiz.

How about taking a quiz to see how much you really know (or don’t know) about how cybersecurity affects your digital life?

Statisticians over at the Pew Research Center are well known for seeking answers to Internet questions using telephone surveys. Sometimes a part of one research project or another includes an interactive piece that people not involved in the survey can use.

In 2016 Pew researchers conducted such a survey project seeking to learn how much people know about cybersecurity. They sought answers by surveying online a nationally representative group of 1,055 randomly selected adult Internet users and using this cybersecurity quiz.

Continue reading “Quiz- How Much Do You Really Know About Cybersecurity?”

Posted in 21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, American history, citizenship, connected learning, digital learning, frightening events, Japanese internment, Library of Congress

Japanese Internment in the U.S. — Information to Share With Today’s Students

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https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a35053/

I have known six people whose families were forced to move into United States government Japanese internment camps. It’s been an honor for me and my family to listen to their stories — though not always easy to hear about or imagine the cruelty they experienced. The internment, a reaction to the war with Japan and called an evacuation by the United States government, began in 1942 and essentially imprisoned more than 117,000 people. Two-thirds of them were born as American citizens and over half were children,

February 19th, the day in 1942 that President Roosevelt signed an executive order known as the internment order, is a Day of Remembrance in many states. Educators and parents can use the day to understand more — and help 21st Century children learn more — about the internment of Japanese families during World War II. Today, as we deal with the challenges of increasing diversity in the United States and recognize our immigrant history, it’s more important than ever to understand what happened and why the United States now recognizes the internment policy as a mistake.

As U. S. President Gerald Ford said, “Not only was the evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans.”      Continue reading “Japanese Internment in the U.S. — Information to Share With Today’s Students”

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

10 Digital Wellness Thoughts to Consider

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!

Digital WellnessThese 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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Posted in 21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, digital learning, fake news, media literacy, parents and technology

Video Visually Demonstrates Sharing Fake News vs. Checking It First

A media company in Sweden, MetroSverige, shared this excellent video visualization that depicts the differences between checking on the validity of a piece of news and just sharing it without pausing to consider whether it or not it is fake news.

Posted in 21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, coding, digital learning, electronic toys, parents and technology, programming, robots, teaching

Teaching Kids to Code With Robots: Great New Yorker Article

Visit the Sphero website.
Visit the Sphero website.

Check out the May 16, 2016 New Yorker for the article A Whole New Ball Game: The Rolling Robot That Teaches Kids to Code. Author D.T. Max, describes how Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson invented the Sphero robot, and he explains how the ideas were conceived, how Sphero was designed, and the long process of promotion and sales. The article also includes explanations about how Sphero and other coding toys aim to help children develop 21st Century skills.

The comments from Sphero creators and from Paul Barberian, who became the first Sphero CEO, provide first-hand descriptions about working with and expanding ideas, connecting with a business incubator, and eventually starting a viable business. Max reminds readers about the Silicon Valley process — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test — and how this process is crucial to the success of new inventions and in the schools where students use robot toys to solve problems. The article also includes thoughts from Barberian about how the business is considering expansion ideas, especially thinking about robots that develop personal attachments with their owners — what’s called adaptive personality.              Continue reading “Teaching Kids to Code With Robots: Great New Yorker Article”