digital parenting – Page 27 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

digital parenting, online safety, parents and technology, service-learning, technology support, teens and mentoring

Seniors, Cell Phones, and Teen Mentors

Posted on March 27, 2011February 27, 2015 by Marti Weston

I saw this article, Want to Know What Your Cell Phone Can Do? Ask a Teenager, published in a Patch.com Reston,Virginia edition. It’s a wonderful story and presents an idea — students and seniors working together — that any family, school, or church group can easily replicate.

The article describes how middle and high school students, from the Reston, Virginia area, volunteered to be cell phone tutors with seniors, helping them learn how to use mobile phone features such as texting and checking voice mail. While many of the senior participants attending Cell Phone 101 had purchased phones for safety reasons, most were not able to use other phone capabilities. The student mobile phone mentors demonstrated how seniors could use their phone more effectively, and voicemail tutorials appeared to be especially popular. Students also explained how some of the phone capabilities cost extra money to use.

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Bookmark It!, digital parenting, parent child conversations, parents and technology, service-learning

Kids’ Service, Giving, and Philanthropy — Bookmark It!

Posted on March 24, 2011February 27, 2015 by Marti Weston

Since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan two weeks ago, I’ve thought a lot about teaching children the importance of making contributions and volunteering all of the time, not just when a catastrophe occurs and relief efforts are all over the news.

Recently I discovered Learning to Give, a long-established website that helps children learn about volunteerism, giving, service learning, and civic engagement. The organization encourages parents, church leaders, and educators to make service learning and philanthropy a significant presence in the lives of children.

Learning to Give, which gets nearly half-a-million hits a month, features digital and downloadable resources for parents, teachers, and church leaders to use with children. Materials on the site include: Continue reading “Kids’ Service, Giving, and Philanthropy — Bookmark It!” →

acceptable use, cultural changes, digital parenting, family conversations, parents and technology

5 Ways Parents Can Get a Grip on Social Media

Posted on March 21, 2011February 26, 2015 by Marti Weston

Wringing your hands over social media? Don’t.

Instead, use your energy to learn as much as you can. A parent’s goal is to develop enough knowledge to provide guidance and supervision based on significant family values, even as these media continue to evolve. Continued learning is always required if one aims to help children avoid potential pitfalls.

Thinking that social media will eventually disappear wastes time and energy.

Five Tips to Help You Get Going

web2.0 pic — Check out more web 2.0 tools!

1. Ask your child on a regular basis — and definitely without belittling yourself — to help you learn a new technology skill. Start with some of the easier web 2.0 interactive sites such as Wordle to make cool word designs or Diigo to save your bookmarks in a place accessible from anywhere. Keep learning.

2. Accept that social networking is not a fad and that life is not the way it used to be when you were young. Any doubt? Watch this video on the social media revolution.

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digital parenting, family conversations, parent child conversations, parents and technology, social media

Quick YouTube Guidance for Parents at Your School or Organization

Posted on March 14, 2011November 19, 2013 by Marti Weston

Last week an acquaintance asked me how a parent might protect their kids, at least a bit, from some of the more inappropriate content that YouTube may show to young children. Like so much in the social media world, YouTube is fun to use and filled with amazing and seemingly unlimited content, but the best guides are parents and teachers who are confident and careful users.

The best guidance I’ve found is at the Common Sense Media site. The organization’s YouTube and Your Kids page contains explanations, suggestions, and a link to a parent handout about YouTube. YouTube also has a Parent Resources page on its site, developed in collaboration with Common Sense Media.

When your children use YouTube, it’s easy to turn on the Safety Mode using the link at the bottom of the page (see illustration above). To keep Safety Mode on permanently one needs to be a registered user (easy to do) and signed-in to YouTube. Check out this YouTube video about the Safety Mode. (Remember that no safety mode or filter works perfectly.) The YouTube safety issues page addresses other questions, though the location could a be a lot more user-friendly. Also check out the YouTube Community Guidelines page.

More About YouTube Continue reading “Quick YouTube Guidance for Parents at Your School or Organization” →

cyber-bullying, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, social media

Summary of White House Bullying Prevention Summit

Posted on March 14, 2011March 13, 2011 by Marti Weston

Over at Net Family News, Ann Collier has provided a superb summary of the Bullying Prevention Summit held last Thursday at the White House. Her blog post, Takeaways from the Bullying Prevention Summit, includes a list of presenters, links to organizations that are working on national plans to deal with cyberbullying, and a list of federal government initiatives.

Early in January 2011 this blog published a short post, Bullying and Cyberbullying: Myths and Reality, describing an Washington Post article, Five Myths About Bullying by one of the summit presenters, Susan Swearer-Napolitano. Swearer, a professor at the University of Nebraska, co-authored the book, Bullying Prevention and Intervention (under the name Susan M. Swearer).

Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?

Posted on March 12, 2011March 12, 2011 by Marti Weston

Join Facebook? For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, and of course the kids at school were all over it, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. Way too different, I thought. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook (she spoke these words in bold). Still I refrained.

At some point, however, I became aware that my mother and my twenty-something daughter were communicating with each other more than usual. They knew things about each other that I did not know. Finally my daughter mentioned that her grandmother — my mother — was on Facebook and that the two of them had “friended’ one another. That’s when I called Mom, at that time age 81. She explained that her fellow workers from the Obama campaign, exceptional young people she called them, had arranged virtual reunions on Facebook. They wanted her to participate and helped her get started.

So, like many of today’s parents, I found that I was in the middle, but basically out of the generational communication loop. By the time I tuned in, my mother had over 100 friends, all people she knew in one way or another (no strangers and privacy settings in place, she reassured me), and quite a few in her age-range. I signed up for Facebook.

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digital parenting, television

TV Habits and the Winter Months

Posted on March 4, 2011March 4, 2011 by Marti Weston

Read Mommy, Why Can’t I Watch More TV, over at Boston.com. Author Beth Teitell describes the how many of us let our children watch increased amounts of television and play more video games like Wii during vacations, winter months, and especially after big snowstorms when school is closed.

According to the March 1. 2011 article, which also quotes Children’s Hospital Boston Mediatrician, Michael Rich, MD, it’s not always easy to retrench after periods of excess media activities.