Category: parents and technology

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

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

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click to visit Learning to Give

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!” →

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

5 Ways Parents Can Get a Grip on Social Media

Posted on 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

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.

Continue reading “5 Ways Parents Can Get a Grip on Social Media” →

Posted in media literacy, parent child conversations, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Media Literate Disaster Discussions Balance Concern with Hope

Posted on by Marti Weston
NOAA Chart Comparing Distance from Earthquake Epicenter and Wave Height

After a disaster like the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear catastrophe in Japan, media — both social and traditional — saturate our lives. We process the events as radios and televisions blare the news and our smartphones, laptops, and computers constantly update. Paper editions of newspapers, quaintly behind the news cycle, nevertheless provide a kind of security, allowing us to hold a finite amount of news right in our hands — amounts we can process.

By the time children are in fourth or fifth grade, the pervasive media coverage ensures that almost nothing remains hidden for long, despite adult attempts to shield their children from the most frightening images. Media literacy matters at times such as these, but conversations with children about the news can still be challenging. I address this topic in an earlier post, Talking to Children About the News. That blog piece included online resources to support family discussions.

When a disaster occurs and the news churns on about it, I am always on the lookout for the unique article or media story that allows children balance concern and anxiety with hope and resilience.

Continue reading “Media Literate Disaster Discussions Balance Concern with Hope” →

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

Quick YouTube Guidance for Parents at Your School or Organization

Posted on 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” →

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

Summary of White House Bullying Prevention Summit

Posted on 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).

Other Articles About the Bullying Prevention Summit

Posted in parents and technology

Typing Web Touch Typing Site: BookMark It!

Posted on by Marti Weston

It’s been some time since I’ve found keyboarding lessons that look good, really focus on touch typing, and are as enjoyable as typing lessons can ever be when a youngster has to develop a visual memory of the keyboard. However, here’s a keyboarding site — discovered a few days ago in a Twitter feed — that just may fit the bill.

I think that Typing Web may be a find — lessons that can help kids master keyboarding without lots of distractions and violent games. It’s web-based — a web 2.0 interactive site — so kids can use it at home or teachers can introduce it to a class at school. The site includes plenty of lessons and and good games (some of them made me laugh). A related site, Fun to Type, has more games.

If you have children who need keyboarding practice, give this site a try.

Continue reading “Typing Web Touch Typing Site: BookMark It!” →

Posted in acceptable use, cultural changes, digital parenting, family conversations, parent child conversations, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?

Posted on 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.

Continue reading “Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?” →