Category: digital parenting

Posted in digital parenting, digital world reading habits, electronic reading, parents and technology

Kids and Reading: Widening Digital Opportunities

Posted on by Marti Weston
Check out the app!

Recently NPR reporter, Lynn Neary, broadcast a report, Children’s Book Apps: A New World of Learning.  You can also listen to the story.

In her March 28, 2011 radio report, Neary describes the increasing number of children’s books that are available as apps, useable on smartphones and especially on iPads. These applications make reading children’s books into a multimedia experience.

Some added features of these digital books include:

  • Words that highlight as the story is read.
  • Object words that are spelled when a child taps an image.
  • Activities that relate to the story.

While many parents and teachers love these apps, some experts believe that the reading process is dramatically changed by the addition of other features.  One expert, a professor at Kansas State University, suggests that we need a new word to describe the enhanced reading that takes place in the app storybook environment, but he is hesitant to label these interactions as pure reading. Continue reading “Kids and Reading: Widening Digital Opportunities” →

Posted in digital parenting, grandparents, parents and technology, social media friends, social networking

Kids, Tech, Social Media, and Grandparents!

Posted on by Marti Weston
Read about my daughter and her grandmother on Facebook.

Great article in the Wall Street Journal about kids and grandparents and the ways they are communicating with one another. In her May 9, 2001 article, OMG! My Grandparents R My BFF!, reporter Molly Baker takes readers on a “magical mystery tour” highlighting the ways generations are interacting (and sometimes leaving out the generation in the middle).

Last August I wrote about this digital family experience in a post, Yes! Grandma is on Facebook, on my other blog, As Our Parents Age. Below is an excerpt of a post about my daughter and her grandmother.

Join Facebook?  For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook. Still I refrained.

Continue reading “Kids, Tech, Social Media, and Grandparents!” →

Posted in acceptable use, American Academy of Pediatrics, cell phones, digital citizenship, digital devices and gadgets, digital parenting, digital photography, parents and technology

Evaluating websites: Be Sure of the Quality!

Posted on by Marti Weston
Download the phone contract PDF.

It’s May and every year at this time I work extensively with fifth graders on podcasts and other multimedia projects. Each year the students’ conversations drift toward their anticipation of sixth grade, middle school … and new cell phones. A connection exists, in their minds, between the first year of Middle School and getting the all-important digital accessory. Actually, the kids feel it’s an accessory, but their parents consider it a lifeline — something to keep them connected to their children whenever it’s necessary (and sometimes when it isn’t that necessary).

A good getting-started article to read is the New York Times piece When to Buy Your Child a Cell Phone, written by reporter Stephanie Olsen in June 2010. While quite a few children now have cell phones in sixth grade, a few parents prefer to wait to purchase a child’s phone for a year or so beyond the start of Middle School. Common Sense Media’s cell phone page provides lots of helpful information for parents, including a short video to assist with the decision-making process. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Healthy Children website also has an article, Cell Phones, What’s the Right Age?

Continue reading “Evaluating websites: Be Sure of the Quality!” →

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, parent education, parents and technology

Collaboration and Technology on the Maryland Eastern Shore

Posted on by Marti Weston

I have just read a colleague’s post, Lessons of a Broken Window, over at The Learning Curve blog. The author, Chris Shriver, describes her son’s persistence as he practices throwing a baseball, even though a few of those pitches have broken windows. He has not let the occasional problem or temporary roadblock keep him from learning and fine-tuning his throwing skill as he seeks to become more expert at pitching.

Picture from NOAA.gov website.

I am spending three days with technology colleagues from a wide range of schools, and all of us are learning more about the ever-increasing technology tools in our lives. At a conference, held on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the goal is to discover, share, and learn as much as we can. We are continuously modeling appropriate behavior, discovering and exploring new technology devices and websites, mastering new skills, and figuring out how to manage our online social media personas rather than letting those personas manage us. All of this information will return to school with us, helping students learn and supporting parents as they confront complex and confusing digital parenting issues. Continue reading “Collaboration and Technology on the Maryland Eastern Shore” →

Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, parent child conversations, parents and technology, podcasts

5 Podcast Series that Teach About Technology

Posted on by Marti Weston

Parents with digital kids like to keep up with technology and stay as up-to-date as possible. One way that I keep up is to listen to technology podcasts — radio programs, really — except that they are downloadable and portable. Some podcasts start out as radio or TV programs and then they are uploaded as podcasts after the broadcast, however, most podcast hosts record their programs specifically for uploading to a website.

I’m a regular podcast listener. Every week or two I download various episodes to iTunes and from there it’s easy to sync them onto my phone. It’s convenient to listen to “casts” in the car, during my exercise sessions, or simply when I am walking from one place to another. I just need to remember to have headphones handy.

Podcasts are a great way to learn on the go, and they can help parents get started with those all-important digital conversations.

To get you started, here are a few of my favorites. Continue reading “5 Podcast Series that Teach About Technology” →

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, online security, parents and technology, when to give children email

Giving Kids E-mail this Summer? 5 Tips for Parents

Posted on by Marti Weston

What is the right age for children to get personal e-mail accounts? Most of us discover, usually in hindsight, that a child’s independent e-mail account changes the context of many childhood experiences and complicates our child-rearing concerns.

E-mail connects a child to the world in ways that we parents may want to postpone. Chain mail, spam, the occasional unkind note, crazy stories, and the appearance of strange links — all are experiences that cannot be avoided, even with the best parental monitoring and regular family discussions.  Complicating the situation are the regular and age-appropriate conversations children have with one another, talking about odd and unusual electronic encounters. It’s wise to chat with teachers at your child’s school because they observe digital interactions that are different from what parents see.

Hundreds of digital options — e-mail is only one of them — are available and waiting for your child to discover them, so in the final analysis, you cannot prevent digital access. You can, however, make decisions help you focus on educating your child about digital citizenship.

5  Options to Consider When Your Child Asks for E-mail Continue reading “Giving Kids E-mail this Summer? 5 Tips for Parents” →

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, privacy, social media

Do Your Kids Take Online Surveys and Quizzes?

Posted on by Marti Weston
A Quick Google Search for Quizzes

For sometime now I’ve considered writing a post on the problems with web surveys and quizzes. These tricky techniques use old-fashioned fun, emulating the magazine quiz features of the past and encouraging web users to happily divulge all sorts of personal information. Each of these activities is a small privacy invader using a “have fun and learn more” guise.

Instead of writing more on this subject here on MediaTech Parenting, I suggest your head over to visit the I Look Both Ways blog, where Linda Criddle has posted Online Quizzes and Surveys and the Real Risks These Represent. Linda’s post offers a comprehensive overview of the subject along with supplemental images.

Continue reading “Do Your Kids Take Online Surveys and Quizzes?” →