Category: parents and technology

Posted in parents and technology

Goodbye Steve Jobs! Most Insightful Memorial Writers

Posted on by Marti Weston
Memorial messages at the Apple store near my home.

The other day when my 88-year-old dad wrote a daily blog post — about the life and achievements of Steve Jobs — I realized, once again, just how much Jobs’ life, vision, and achievements are a part of our general culture. More importantly, how much Jobs changed our lives.

One doesn’t need to be digitally savvy, a gadget fanatic, an iPhone evangelist, or even a Macintosh loyalist. All that’s required is experience with one intuitive Apple product — in this case, my dad writing on his iPad — and an interest in the news.

Over the many years that I’ve spent working in the educational technology field, that’s the way it’s gone again and again. Give students, teachers, a senior adult — in fact just about anyone — a Mac computer or iPad, and they use it and work with it independently. We tech people barely see them because they are off using their computers.

As Farhad Manjoo wrote in his Slate appreciation of Steve Jobs, “…he changed what you do every day.”

Memorial Posts Worth Reading Continue reading “Goodbye Steve Jobs! Most Insightful Memorial Writers” →

Posted in parents and technology

Laptop Don’ts

Posted on by Marti Weston

Check out the laptop care article, Make Sure the Problem is Not in Your Chair, in the September 30, 2011 New York Times. I found half a dozen suggestions for laptop maintenance that I don’t do. The article is written by Kate Murphy. (The headline refers to the laptop problem being the person in the chair, not the laptop.)

Here are things that I do wrong, according to the article.

1. I use the laptop while it’s in my lap or on a squishy pillow — causing too much heat to accumulate.

2. I close my laptop and get up while it is still processing and barely finished saving data.

3. I never put my laptop to sleep when I am ready to move around.

4.  I do not shut down and reboot my computer every few days.  Instead I wait until a freeze or some other indication that a restart is needed.

Read the article.

Posted in digital parenting, electronic communication, parents and technology, privacy

Online Privacy for Kids: FTC Requests Comments

Posted on by Marti Weston
FCC, another agency, provides this publication on net safety, and privacy. (Free)

Parents of digital kids will want to keep abreast of proposed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revisions to online privacy regulations that, if implemented, would increase and expand online privacy protections for children. The changes will alter the  Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

A September 16, 2011 press release from the FTC announces the proposed regulation changes and seeks comments from the public. The increasing use of mobile devices by children is one reason the agency believes that changes are necessary, and the expanded regulations would add locational data as additional personal information that needs to be protected.

Three Proposed Changes

1. Notify parents in advance if their children’s personal information is collected and may be used or sold.

2. Encourage the development of better parental consent methods, using any  developing technology that might improve how parents are contacted and ask for consent. Stop using the e-mail-confirmation method. Continue reading “Online Privacy for Kids: FTC Requests Comments” →

Posted in digital learning, digital parenting, online research, parents and technology

Common Sense Media — Research for Kids

Posted on by Marti Weston

Common Sense Media recently published a solid piece aimed at helping parents and kids refine and strengthen digital research skills.

Teach Your Kids the Secrets of Smart Web Searching focuses on good research practices, with tips on how to search effectively and and explanations about why it matters. This piece can help parents stay front and center, guiding their kids (and themselves) on the road to becoming stronger digital information consumers.

Also included are a few Google tips  — ideas that can help Google work for the learner rather than the other way around.

Also check out a post from this blog, How Much Does Your Child Search Links?

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, electronic communication, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Young Social Media Users Support the First Amendment

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click to view this image, by Column Five Media, depicting survey results.

Via Milwaukee Journal Online, an interesting article, As Social Media Grow, So Does First Amendment Appreciation, describes research conducted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation has taken four surveys, beginning in 2001, to learn more about what high school students know and understand about the First Amendment of the Constitution. (Read the First Amendment here.) The Knight Foundation website explains how that group got started with this work

… after surveys of American adults conducted by The Freedom Forum showed that even modern-day support for the First Amendment is neither universal nor stable. In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, support for the First Amendment plummeted. Suddenly,  the nation was almost evenly split on the question of whether or not the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.’’ Continue reading “Young Social Media Users Support the First Amendment” →

Posted in Back-to-school digital reading, digital learning, Evaluating Web Resources, online research, parents and technology, supervising kids

Websites: Reliable or Bogus?

Posted on by Marti Weston

When we adults were students, we learned to write content-filled essays and reports, introducing the important facts about a subject. We discovered these facts by using quality reference materials, often at a library.

With today’s digitized resources and websites, a student follows roughly the same routine, but resource reliability is a significant issue. While it’s easy to find sites with information about a topic, identifying reliable and significant information is more of a challenge. The trick is to discover whether or not a site is a reliable resource.

Help your child determine the quality and reliability of a site before using it as a digital resource. The University of Maryland posts this short handout that explains how to go about evaluating a website.

Many sites appear to be real as well as reliable, but they are bogus. An entertaining website for you and your child to explore features bogus websites designed to look accurate and authoritative. Except that they aren’t. Take a few minutes to explore these bogus sites.

Better yet, explore them with your children.

Posted in cultural changes, digital citizenship, digital parenting, family conversations, gadget ownership, parents and technology

Digital Kids to Parents: Please Learn More…

Posted on by Marti Weston

With more than 30 years as a teacher including over 20 in the educational technology field, I’ve heard many kids reflect thoughtfully, and not so thoughtfully, on their parents’ digital skills.

Here are the seven most common “I Wish” statements that I’ve heard expressed by children over the last 16 or 17 years. Two of them my daughter told me.

Kids wish their parents and other adults would:

Continue reading “Digital Kids to Parents: Please Learn More…” →