Watch a great TED Talk by New York Times Technology reporter and columnist David Pogue. In his talk, 10 Top Time-saving Tech Tips, Pogue shares some cool ways to to save little bits of time (that can add up) when you are using a digital device or surfing around the web. This is the fourth time David Pogue has given a TED Talk.
Category: parents and technology
Keeping Track of Passwords
If you are anything like me, you find password management to be challenging — thinking of them, storing them, and recalling them. I’ve tried several password security programs on my iPhone. They work well, but not in a way that satisfies my concern about privacy. and security. I still have to type in my passwords, which means that anyone on an unsecured network where I am working can potentially discover my passwords.
Of course, our digital children need lots of practice when it comes to secure passwords. Twenty-first Century learners need to understand how to be safe, savvy, and secure as they go about their digital lives. But how can we set good examples when it’s hard to do it for ourselves?
Help appears to be on the way.
In his June 5, 2013 New York Times column, tech reporter and guru David Pogue shared information about password memorization programs, and in the process he addressed many of my concerns. In Remember All Those Passwords? No Need Pogue writes that he is especially fond of Dashlane, a free program that memorizes passwords and also fills them in for a user, so no typing is involved. Because the program remembers the passwords, a person does not need to recall them, and that means it’s possible to use words or phrases that are long, detailed, and extra secure. Dashlane can also be used to automatically fill in credit card info — another set of personal information that it’s wise to avoid typing. Continue reading “Keeping Track of Passwords”
Ode to Teachers: A Back-to-School Reflection
… Who Helped My Daughter Learn and Grow
The school year will begin over the next several weeks, mostly right after a relaxing three-day Labor Day weekend. Each year at this time I reflect on the teachers who influenced members of my family.
Last year my three-days were more special than most, because I spent the time with my thirty-something daughter. As I thought about beginning the school year my mind kept wandering back to the years the two of us started school together, she as a student and me as a teacher.
During a recent Labor Day holiday I listened to my daughter, now a physician, talk about her work and her life, marveling at her competence, eagerness to learn, empathy, discipline, and, yes, her sense of fun. More than once during our conversations I thought about the teachers who helped her develop and strengthen these skills, people who took her interests into consideration — as well as the required topics.
A preschool teacher encouraged my daughter to get up and keep going after a fall or a spat, and her kindergarten teacher recognized her love of books but also reminded her to relax and play. In second grade her teacher came to the rescue when my daughter wanted to bring a book to read at recess, and this same gifted educator suggested that she “become an author” and write her own books.
Continue reading “Ode to Teachers: A Back-to-School Reflection”
Privacy: I’ve Got Nothing to Hide So I’m Not Worried …
I often hear people of all ages, including children, say, “It doesn’t matter that my digital information is collected because I have nothing to hide.” What bothers me most about this comment is the limited understanding that it demonstrates — a lack of knowledge about how fast the traditional walls of privacy are tumbling down and how little of it has to do with the bad things that people do.
- People who make the comment usually know little about what happens to collected digital data, most of it documenting everything we do in our daily digital lives and almost none of it destined to identify wrongdoings or help to find “bad guys.” So much data is now collected about each of us in so many different ways, that almost nothing about us cannot be found out.
Our phones document where we go, our cars move through intersections with mounted cameras that note our license plates, the grocery stores keep track of the foods we prefer, and our Internet searches document the things we want to do, what we want to purchase, and often our worries about how to solve certain problems. Our data even document our medical conditions (despite physicians and insurance companies complying obsessively with HIPPA privacy rules) as we go about checking on symptoms and prescription side effects, or merely try to learn more.
So I was pleased to discover a May 2013 article, Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have Nothing to Hide, by Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University. In easy-to-understand terms, Professor Solove addresses the myths associated with narrow interpretations of privacy issues.
Continue reading “Privacy: I’ve Got Nothing to Hide So I’m Not Worried …”
English Teachers: The Skills Students Need for the Future
A new report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools, shares the results of a survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers. Data were collected in online and in-person focus groups.
Pew researchers asked educators about the effect of digital tools on their students’ writing skills. They also wanted to gather more information about the digital tools that teachers use in their classrooms and find out whether these tools help students become better writers. Survey participants were also asked to share their views about the skills their 21st Century students’ will need to be successful in their future lives.
A Few of the Pew Findings
- Many teachers believe that the increasing digital world audience for writers encourages students of all ages to taking writing more seriously.
- Seventy-nine percent of the educators surveyed agree or strongly agree that digital tools encourage students to collaborate with one another.
- Fifty percent of the teachers report that digital tools make it easier for them to help students improve their writing. Interestingly, thirty-one percent say that these tools make little or no difference. Continue reading “English Teachers: The Skills Students Need for the Future”
Common Sense Questions to Ask Before Posting Photos
Twenty-first Century learners are great when it comes to intrinsically understanding how to easily use resources and share information in the digital world, but they often need assistance making careful judgments about what is appropriate to share (and what is not). When a problem occurs, it’s often because a child makes an instantaneous decision to send off an image — and it turns out to be the wrong decision. It’s just so easy to share!
Check out this terrific poster, with questions to ask before sharing a photo, easily used when you discuss social media and digital common sense issues at home or in a classroom. We all make digital errors from time to time, but this graphic can help us develop a visual memory that assists with decision-making.
The image is available at Common Sense Media, and I discovered it on the Edudemic blog. It will serve as a great jumping off point anytime image-sharing issues arise.
Continue reading “Common Sense Questions to Ask Before Posting Photos”
Thoughts About Plagiarism in the Digital World
Originality matters when digital children write and learn, but many 21st Century students have considerable difficulty understanding what the idea of original content really means.
Check out How the Internet Affects Plagiarism at KQED Mindshift, a blog post that describes how plagiarism is evolving in today’s digital world. According to the article, students today do less looking for “unoriginal content” at sites that sell papers or other pre-written documents (compared to the past), and they use lots more content from the almost unlimited digital resources that are available on the Internet.
Mindshift’s post is based on a recently published white paper published by TurnItIn, one of the most well-known plagiarism detection software tools. The paper points out how today’s students tend to discover and share work via social media, use Wikipedia regularly, and continue to copy content from encyclopedias. Read the article for a more thorough summary. Continue reading “Thoughts About Plagiarism in the Digital World”
Media! Tech! Parenting! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.