Category: digital parenting

Posted in digital parenting, healthy media images, media literacy, parents and technology, technology support

Location, Location, Location (Services, that is…)

Posted on by Marti Weston

A tech-savvy middle school parent sent me the link to the video at the end of this post. She added a comment: “This is scary. Should I let it upset me?” As of mid-April 2011, according to YouTube, the video has been viewed nearly 2.8 million times

There is nothing quite like the queasy feeling a parent gets when a media outlet airs a story with shrill content that aims to frighten and questions the safety of their children. In this case, the report included a solution at the end of the news segment, but by then many viewers were probably too upset to focus. YouTube makes it all so easy, and we can view the segment again and again and then pass it on to others. If each of us had more media literacy skill, we’d hit the stop button, move on to something else, and not even think about forwarding it to our friends.

Specifically, this video addresses two concepts: geotagging and location services on smartphones. Setting aside the anxiety about the information revealed by digital pictures, the video highlights a critical digital-age dilemma for parents: how to develop basic knowledge about the digital devices that they purchase for their children. Location service happens to be the current concern, but by the time the next round of must-have gadgets arrives on the scene, another issue will emerge. Knowledge is power.

Continue reading “Location, Location, Location (Services, that is…)” →

Posted in data collecting, data sharing, digital parenting, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking, teens and technology

Quiz: How Much do You Know About Social Media?

Posted on by Marti Weston
Take the quiz!

To get a sense of how much you really know about the social networking world and the movers and shakers who are actively developing and tweaking it, take a social media quiz. The Big Social Media Quiz over at the Liberate Media website.

A user needs 70% to pass this quiz, and though I know all sorts of minutia about social media, I only answered 50% of the questions correctly. Sigh!

Liberate Media is a PR firm with social media expertise.

Posted in Bookmark It!, digital parenting, homework, parents and technology

Presentations Without the Power Point Hassle — Bookmark It!

Posted on by Marti Weston

Just about every parent knows the experience. A child prepares a great PowerPoint presentation, takes it to school, and then it doesn’t work — for some reason. Maybe it was huge with way too many graphics and did not transfer correctly to a CD or flash drive. Or perhaps your kid made a presentation on a Mac, but glitches occur when the presentation is on a PC?

Click to visit Discovery Ed!

Solve this problem and explore several ways to refine the whole process — writing, developing, and presenting — on a quality website, and live life without the file transfer hassles. At any number of Web 2.0 presentation sites a user, signs in, creates, works steadily on a project, saves, and can access it again to continue working or presenting as long as a computer is connected to the web.

Discovery Education features a page with four of these presentation tools, including one that allows a user to upload a Powerpoint file to the web and then present it. Discovery provides thumbnail descriptions of  Prezi, SlideShare, Picsviewr, and 280Slides along with links to each of the websites. Continue reading “Presentations Without the Power Point Hassle — Bookmark It!” →

Posted in acceptable use, digital citizenship, digital parenting, leaving comments online, online education, parents and technology

If Every Family Had a Blog…

Posted on by Marti Weston

How would digital literacy and behavior improve if more families saw blogging as a way to communicate, connect with extended family members, and teach their children the basics about global communication? Would they be thrilled that their children had a big head start developing digital citizenship skills? Would they be delighted at all of the writing taking place and take pride as they watched children develop stronger writing skills?

Blogging is safe and easily managed. While we’ve all heard the scary stories, such as people going online and writing mean comments or nasty rumors that go public or even viral — in truth just about all blogging is safe and fun. Blogging teaches people to write, revise, write more, and publish for a community of readers.

Imagine, for a moment, if a family with two children, age five and seven, along with a bunch of relatives, starts a blog.

  • Family members, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins write, post, and comment. Parents are editors and managers, at least at the beginning, modeling and demonstrating how to use technology (social media) appropriately. Gradually family members share responsibilities.
    Continue reading “If Every Family Had a Blog…” →
Posted in American Academy of Pediatricians, cyber-bullying, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, supervising kids, teens and technology

Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part II

Posted on by Marti Weston

Last Monday I read three powerful articles, and they fit together like a puzzle. They illustrate how a generational digital divide accentuates adolescent virtual world problems — a result of the contradictory digital perceptions of teens and adults.

POISONED WEB: A Girl’s Nude Photo and Altered Lives, appeared in the New York Times. The article describes how small, teenage misjudgments in the unsupervised world of instant web, smartphones, and cyber-bullying, can magnify hate and cause terrible pain. Reporter Jan Hoffman quotes adults who wish they had supervised more carefully and pledge to do more in the future. I wondered, as I often do when I read these articles, what leads adults not to supervise in the first place? Reading about the teachers, administrators, and officials who attempted to create opportunities for growth and learning out of the senseless hurt and cruelty was a highlight of the article.

 

Are We Ready to Stop Labeling Ourselves Digital Immigrants? — an amazing and thoughtful post at A Space for Learning, gets to the heart of the digital divide issue. The author writes: Continue reading “Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part II” →

Posted in American Academy of Pediatrics, digital parenting, media literacy, parent education, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Scary Headlines? Main Media Outlets Need Media Literacy Training!

Posted on by Marti Weston

Who writes these headlines? On it’s HealthyChildren.org site, The American Academy of Pediatrics comes out with a balanced, well-written, and thoughtful social media guide for physicians — one that encourages pediatricians to focus on wellness by paying attention to the media and social media activities of their patients, and this is the headline (at Time)?

“Facebook depression” is a small part of the policy statement, but the benefits and the learning opportunities offered by social media are a larger part. Rather than focusing on the positives and on the recommendations for moderation, the media is shouting out the negatives. My fifth grade media literacy students can run circles around these headline writers.

A recent US News and World Report article features a headline that is balanced and far more sensible.

Continue reading “Scary Headlines? Main Media Outlets Need Media Literacy Training!” →

Posted in acceptable use, American Academy of Pediatrics, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parent education, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part I

Posted on by Marti Weston
AAP Media History Form

This morning I was thrilled to read the newest American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy focusing on social media and children. The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families, written by a group of pediatricians and led by Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe (also the author of CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Digital Kids in the World of Texting, Gaming and Social Media), provides a set of social media guidelines for physicians to use with teen and tween patients as well as with parents. Published in March 28, 2011 edition of the journal Pediatrics, the social media statement describes the benefits and risks of the digital world, avoids judgmental comments, and suggests strategies that can make is safer for children.

Continue reading “Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part I” →