Category: social media

Posted in Bookmark It!, digital parenting, resources to read, social media, web research

Keeping Track During a Disaster — A Helpful Kind of Tracking: Bookmark It!

Posted on by Marti Weston
Nixle helps to aggregate data sources during a disaster.

If you haven’t had enough of hurricane Irene, PC Magazine just published 10 Mobile Apps for Tracking Hurricane Irene. Some are free and others are downloadable for a small charge.

Applications come from government agencies like NOAA, but there are also some that are more survival oriented. One helps users develop and share a disaster plan.

Nixle, the application on the left, allows a user to set up connections with data sources so the information comes to you. Every app is not available for every mobile platform.

Check out the PC Magazine presentation, featuring something for every type of disaster tracking personality.

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

Learning More About What You Don’t Know

Posted on by Marti Weston

I am just back from a huge technology conference in Philadelphia, the International Society for Technology in Education(ISTE), and I blogged from the event uploading nine or ten entries on a separate MediaTechParenting page. I also tweeted — sometimes using Twitter myself and at other times just watching, reading, and processing the tweets of others.

During the week — before, during, and after the conference — Twitter was my most important communication too. Over the four days it let me know where especially great workshops and presentations were occurring, helped me discover other people who shared my interest, kept me up-to-date about who was blogging, informed me about presenters who were sharing resources beyond their presentation rooms, and yes, even announced the location of the special snacks each afternoon. Without the #ISTE11 Twitter handle, and also the continuing backchannel tweets on #edtech and #edchat, my week would have been slower, less interesting, and nowhere near as dynamic.

Continue reading “Learning More About What You Don’t Know” →

Posted in digital parenting, online security, parents and technology, privacy, social media, social networking

Best Instructions for Disabling Facebook Facial Recognition Feature

Posted on by Marti Weston

Facebook has tossed out another challenge to family members, including grandparents, who seek to maintain privacy while still enjoying the social interaction that the social network offers.

Here we go again with facial recognition.

Find instructions for disabling the new Facebook facial feature at the BBC blog, WebWise: A Beginner’s Guide to Using the Internet. I’ve compiled the basic steps after reading a number of posts about the new facial recognition addition, but read the whole BBC post for the simplest and most comprehensive explanation.

  • Go to Account.
  • Go to Privacy Settings.
  • Click on Customize Settings (itty-bitty blue link at the bottom).
  • Find the category, Things Others Share.
  • Find the words Suggest photos of me to friends and click the edit settings button.
  • Naturally…Facebook’s default has enabled the feature so you want to click on the button that disables the feature.
  • Click OK.

Continue reading “Best Instructions for Disabling Facebook Facial Recognition Feature” →

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

7 Ways Today’s Teens Communicate — Some Surprises

Posted on by Marti Weston

Check out this cool graphic from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

These graphs (click on the image to go to a larger picture at the Pew site) depict the various ways teens communicate. Notice how low e-mail ranks among the electronic forms of communication that today’s teens use. The data come from a survey of teens age 12 – 17 conducted as a part of the research for Pew’s report, Teens and Mobile Phones.

From the Pew Website

The graphic below shows daily use of a variety of communication technologies – and suggests that while text messaging as a daily activity for teens has grown astronomically over the past three years, other communicative technologies have remained relatively stable or have declined slightly, suggesting that the increase in texting has layered on top of the other modes of communication that teens employ.

Other Interesting Pew Internet Reports include Social Media and Young Adults and Teens and Sexting, both released in 2010.

Thanks to Pew for reminding me of this research via Twitter (@PewInternet).

Posted in answers to media questions, cultural changes, digital parenting, parents and technology, social media, social media friends, technology changes

Why Social Media? Especially Why in My Child’s Classroom??

Posted on by Marti Weston

Read this thought-provoking post, Why Social Media Tools Have a Place in the Classroom, over at the GigaOM blog. Writer Ryan Kim goes into considerable detail describing reactions to a recent New York Times article, Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media. Kim’s blog post then goes on to offer some compelling reasons why teachers (and probably parents, too) should examine social media more thoughtfully before rushing to judgement.

Learn a bit more about the GigaOM blog.

Posted in answers to media questions, family conversations, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Social Media, bin Laden and Student Reactions

Posted on by Marti Weston
Read this Spotlight Blog post.

Are you looking for an interesting overview of the surreal celebrations on Sunday night, May 1, 2011 after the announcement about the death of Osama bin Laden?  Check out this post on the MacArthur Foundation’s Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog.

The Rise of Social Media and the Death of Osama bin Laden: Students Debate the Meaning of it All includes quotes, links to various media coverage, social media communication and helpful resources that shed some light on the spontaneous and unusually celebratory events that occurred around the United States.

A link to the NPR story on the celebrations takes readers to one of the most interesting comments, for me anyway. Part of one comment is below.

Mr. ADAM EVAN ANGLE (Student, Boston University): So I grew up under the specter of Osama bin Laden as the boogeyman. He was our Lord Vuldemort, if you will, like in Harry Potter, you know. He was pretty much the face of evil.

As a teacher and parent who lived through years with the Harry Potter phenomenon, I can completely understand this comment.

Continue reading “Social Media, bin Laden and Student Reactions” →

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, privacy, social media

Do Your Kids Take Online Surveys and Quizzes?

Posted on by Marti Weston
A Quick Google Search for Quizzes

For sometime now I’ve considered writing a post on the problems with web surveys and quizzes. These tricky techniques use old-fashioned fun, emulating the magazine quiz features of the past and encouraging web users to happily divulge all sorts of personal information. Each of these activities is a small privacy invader using a “have fun and learn more” guise.

Instead of writing more on this subject here on MediaTech Parenting, I suggest your head over to visit the I Look Both Ways blog, where Linda Criddle has posted Online Quizzes and Surveys and the Real Risks These Represent. Linda’s post offers a comprehensive overview of the subject along with supplemental images.

Continue reading “Do Your Kids Take Online Surveys and Quizzes?” →