Category: digital parenting

Posted in digital learning, digital parenting, digital world conversations, interesting research, parents and technology, research on the web, social media, social networking

Parents Use More Social Media – Often to Ensure Children’s Security

Posted on by Marti Weston
pew parents teen social media responses
Graph from Pew Internet Teens and Privacy report

In November the Pew Center on Internet and American Life together with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society published a new survey, Parents, Teens, and Online Privacy. This 2012 Teens and Privacy Management Survey gathered data from 802 teens and their parents. Everyone who participated in the survey lived in the United States; however, participants could take the survey in either English or Spanish.

Interesting Results

  • Parents report they are using a lot more social media — 66% of parents with children who use social media now use it themselves (compared with 58% in the 2011 survey).
  • One reason that parents are increasing their use of social media sites is to be able to facilitate ongoing family conversations about content.
  • Parents appear to worry more about advertisers who gather information about a child’s online activities than about a child’s possible contact with unfamiliar people.
  • Some teens whose parents are friends have learned how to restrict the information that parents see, but in general, they are positive about friending a parent.
  • Parents are increasingly aware of privacy policies — 44% have read a policy for a social media that one of their children uses and 39% told the survey that they are helping their children set up social media privacy settings.
  • Parents are concerned about a child’s online reputation, but the concerns are the highest as children get closer to applying to college.
  • Reputation management, when juxtaposed with the adolescent years, is tricky for teens.
Posted in digital change, digital parenting, educating digital natives, kids changing lives, parents and technology, teachers, teaching digital kids

Do Today’s Digital Kids Learn Differently?

Posted on by Marti Weston
Image from Children, Teans, and Entertainment Media: The View from the Classroom
Image from Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View from the Classroom

In case you missed it, check out the November 1, 2012 New York Times article, Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say.

Technology reporter Matt Richtel shares information about two recent studies that examine, on the basis of educator surveys, how today’s digital children may be learning differently than in the past. Although individual responses are subjective, the results of the surveys “are considered significant because of the vantage points of teachers who spend hours a day observing students.”

One survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, examined responses from 2,462 teachers. The other, conducted by Common Sense Media, surveyed 685 educators.

It all comes down to attention span. In both surveys, teachers expressed concern that students, used to fast-paced, always changing activities, are less able to focus on an academic task for a prolonged period.

Continue reading “Do Today’s Digital Kids Learn Differently?” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, American Academy of Pediatrics, digital learning, digital parenting, parents and technology, teaching digital kids, wireless gadgets

8 Tips to Help Parents Raise Stronger 21st Century Learners

Posted on by Marti Weston

As we approach the end of 2012 and the holiday season that will surely introduce new gadgets and devices into many of our households, it’s a good time to reassess family digital expectations.

Learning in the 21st Century requires that children competently use digital resources much of the time. To do this each student needs plenty of experience making choices, understanding limits, and mastering the art of filtering out what is immaterial at any given point. Children who get this guidance at home and at school are the most prepared to become effective learners.

These eight tips aim to help parents of digital kids to get started. If you teach, consider sharing them with your students’ parents.

1. Place computers and tablet devices in central, well-traveled locations — away from bedrooms and private spaces.

2. Make adults, not children, the administrators on all computers, including laptops until you are certain of each child’s decision-making. Know what is installed on your child’s mobile devices.

3. Print and post rules and expectations. Specify the times when you do not want your children using computers. Emphasize that your family rules are in effect when your child goes to a friend’s house.

4. Help your children to come up with a strategy that helps them to distance themselves whenever and wherever inappropriate digital activities occur.

5. If your children have mobile phones, have you discussed appropriate use, texting, and limits on a phone’s digital camera? Download a PDF of my cell phone contract.  Check out my contracts and agreement page.                     Continue reading “8 Tips to Help Parents Raise Stronger 21st Century Learners” →

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, digital world conversations, electronic communication, family conversations, parent education, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

E-mail, Scandals, and Digital Footprints — AGAIN!

Posted on by Marti Weston
One of the digital citizenship posters made by my students a year or two ago.

On a fairly regular basis, a public scandal occurs, and these days just about every one of them reminds us of how ignorant people are about the transparency of their digital footprints.

If reading about the most recent scandal doesn’t convince you of how easily accessible digital footprints can be, then this November 17, 2012 Washington Post article should. In The FBI’s Long Reach Into Digital Lives, reporters Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima describe how easily the FBI gets into an individual’s e-mails and how accessing one account leads to exploring the accounts of other people who have sent or received e-mails.

Interesting Quote from the Post Article

Investigators with a warrant to search a house for drugs can seize evidence of another crime… But the warrant does not allow them to barge into the house next door… But what are the comparable boundaries online? Does a warrant to search an e-mail account expose the communications of anyone who exchanged messages with the target?

Scandals arising from common digital mistakes can provide opportunities for adults and children to participate in family conversations, learning more about their online and networked world. However, if you do not want to talk about the scandal, that’s fine — talk about the lack of privacy that everyone experiences today. Children who make mistakes have no protection as they explore the digital world, because what they do can easily become public and embarrassing. In any past era their common and developmentally appropriate errors would mostly remain private, but with today’s speedy and electronic communication tools, that’s less and less likely.

We are not trying to scare children, but we are trying hard to make common sense second nature.
Continue reading “E-mail, Scandals, and Digital Footprints — AGAIN!” →

Posted in digital parenting, media literacy, parents and technology, social media

The Children are Watching and Seeing, Listening and and Hearing

Posted on by Marti Weston

They watch us all the time. The students, that is. They listen to us sometimes. They learn from all that watching and listening.

                            –Theodore and Nancy Faust Sizer, The Students are Watching, 1999, Beacon Press

The Sizers wrote about classrooms and schools, explaining that students learn from what their teachers do and say and also from the things their teachers do not do or say. The authors illustrated their points in many ways, demonstrating how much our students learn from the things we do not do.

I read the Sizer’s book in the later 1990s with my growing child at home, so it was easy to see how the lessons applied not just to teachers but also to everyday family life. The message — that children learn from what we don’t do and don’t say as much as from the things we intentionally teach — applies well at home and at school.

This week, with so many media-rich events, I thought about the Sizers’ book. Adults spent a huge amount of time-consuming news about superstorm Sandy, the election, and for a few minutes, many of us gazed at a viral short video of a little girl crying out “No more Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney.” We encountered non-stop negative television commercials, disaster pictures and videos, television news programs, robo telephone calls, radios tuned into programs all day long (yes, I am guilty of keeping NPR on most of the day when I am home), and plain old-fashioned magazines and newspapers. Lot’s of us may have felt like crying. But my question is, “Why did Abby hear or see so much that she started to cry?”

Muppet Lydia Whatnot summed things up in her YouTube response

Continue reading “The Children are Watching and Seeing, Listening and and Hearing” →

Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, media literacy, parent child conversations, parents and technology, web research

Before and After the Super Storm: Resources for Parents

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click to access the tips (in PDF form).

If ever there is a time to keep our media literacy skills front and center, it’s after a national disaster. Adults need to regulate and monitor what children see and, more importantly, adults need to remember that children see and hear a lot more than we sometimes think.

Check out the blog posting Protecting Children From the Media’s Storm Coverage. Written by K.J. Dell’Antonia, the New York Times Motherlode blogger, the November 2, 2012 article focuses on the need to limit children’s exposure to storm-related media coverage.
The Motherlode article directs readers to a two-page document that offers even more information about protecting children from prolonged traumatic event coverage — a free PDF available from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website. The two-page article, Protecting Children from Disturbing Media Reports During Traumatic Events, offers tips for parents and caregivers, going into detail about what children understand at each age level.        Continue reading “Before and After the Super Storm: Resources for Parents” →

Posted in blogging, choosing reliable resources, digital learning, digital parenting, digital photography, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Hurricane Sandy: Finding Reliable Information That Helps You Learn as Well as Look

Posted on by Marti Weston

When a super storm event like Hurricane Sandy occurs, digital kids and their families get a good, and sometimes sobering opportunity to learn a lot more about the work of journalists — professional and citizen — as well as first responders. Much suffering, as well as amazing feats of service to others, occur during these events, so it’s important to view and consume the most authentic of resources available.

Hurricane Sandy damaged the
Ocean Grove Great Auditorium.
Photo by Paul Goldfinger  and Blogfinger.net. Used with permission.

Lots of Hurricane Sandy coverage can be found in newspapers, blogs, and other social media, offering us opportunities learn together as families — as we share the content about the storm, the terrible damage it caused, and the ways that people responded. Children and adults will also use these resources in the coming days to figure out how to help, and in the process we all strengthen our media literacy skills (important in today’s world) by identifying the best and most reliable sources of information.

The other day I discovered an amazing blog as I searched for coverage of the storm and its effects on Ocean Grove, New Jersey (where I spent many happy summers as a child). Run by Paul Goldfinger and colleagues, Blogfinger.net offers me on-the-scene hurricane reports from the little beach town, so dear to me and my family, and now without its own newspaper.

Blogfinger — I discovered it thanks to my cousin, also know as Sandy — turned out to be a terrific resource. It has solid  information, great pictures, and well-written narrative. The picture to the right, shows the damage to the Great Auditorium, a structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a place where I’ve attended dozens of worship services and concerts. You can check out many other Ocean Grove photographs at the Blogfinger site.

One does not need to look far, however, to find examples of unreliable sources.                 Continue reading “Hurricane Sandy: Finding Reliable Information That Helps You Learn as Well as Look” →