We unplugged all of our gadgets in case a surge occurred when the power came on.
Check out the November 9, 2012 New York Times piece, Hurricane Sandy Reveals a Life Unplugged. The article by reporter, Aimee Lee Ball, describes the experiences of New York and New Jersey families who lost power and home access to their computers and digital devices during and after Superstorm Sandy.
Each family handled the situation differently, but many children and their parents found it was a challenge to engage in non-digital activities over a longer period of time.
The Best Quotes in the Article
“One of greatest skills you can teach a child is: You don’t have to be hooked up to any machine to get through life,” said Mr. Powers, the author of “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.”
“The problem I see us bumping against is how attached we adults are to our own digital devices,” said Ms. Frederick. …“You have to check yourself if you’re going to lay down the law for your kids.”
The other day I chatted with a parent about the concept of copyright. Both of us are concerned that digital kids understand very little about intellectual property. The free-for-all digital information climate ensures that children have considerable ease accessing information and considerable difficulty comprehending what belongs to whom. Given this easy access parents and educators need to spend time helping children understand the basics.
Copyright laws are arcane, and even a bit crazy, but it’s critical to teach kids that protecting the intellectual property of others is a necessary 21st Century skill. With your child take the Copyright Challenge quiz at Copyright for Kids to see how much you know. When you finish the quiz check out these frequently asked questions about copyright.
Younger children might enjoy taking the Cyberbee Copyright Quiz by moving the mouse over pictures of students. When the mouse hovers over an image, a question flashes. To get the answer, click on the picture.
The Sizers wrote about classrooms and schools, explaining that students learn from what their teachers do and say and also from the things their teachers do not do or say. The authors illustrated their points in many ways, demonstrating how much our students learn from the things we do not do.
I read the Sizer’s book in the later 1990s with my growing child at home, so it was easy to see how the lessons applied not just to teachers but also to everyday family life. The message — that children learn from what we don’t do and don’t say as much as from the things we intentionally teach — applies well at home and at school.
This week, with so many media-rich events, I thought about the Sizers’ book. Adults spent a huge amount of time-consuming news about superstorm Sandy, the election, and for a few minutes, many of us gazed at a viral shortvideo of a little girl crying out “No more Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney.” We encountered non-stop negative television commercials, disaster pictures and videos, television news programs, robo telephone calls, radios tuned into programs all day long (yes, I am guilty of keeping NPR on most of the day when I am home), and plain old-fashioned magazines and newspapers. Lot’s of us may have felt like crying. But my question is, “Why did Abby hear or see so much that she started to cry?”
If ever there is a time to keep our media literacy skills front and center, it’s after a national disaster. Adults need to regulate and monitor what children see and, more importantly, adults need to remember that children see and hear a lot more than we sometimes think.
The Pier Before the Storm Photo by Marti Weston, 2008
Parents and teachers of digital kids should make it a habit to evaluate media for authenticity and reliability rather than automatically sharing dramatic images with children. Evaluating media is a critical 21st Century skill — for adults and children
The other day a friend sent me a link to a storm picture. The image featured a familiar ocean pier with huge waves about to crash onto its farthest end. (The photo at left is the pier long before the storm). While the drama of the image intrigued me, on reflection I was bothered because I could not learn anything about the website that hosted the image. Other than labeling the town and the storm, the photograph offered no other identifying narrative.
With its ethereal quality, the image looked as if the pier was superimposed over a dramatic ocean scene — the waves and spray crashing at one end while the rest of the structure was clear without any water or spray obstructions. Moreover, since I was familiar with the location, I could not figure out where the photographer stood to take the picture. Perhaps I was wrong, but since I could not discover anything more about the picture, I decided not to send it to anyone else, and I am not even posting it here.
When a huge emergency like Hurricane Sandy occurs, digital pictures and videos circulate all over the web and via social media. A fair amount of these digital materials misrepresent the situation. To avoid focusing too much on the misrepresentations we need to apply some 21st Century common sense. Continue reading “7 Questions to Ask Before Sharing Hurricane Sandy Media With Kids”→
When a super storm event like Hurricane Sandy occurs, digital kids and their families get a good, and sometimes sobering opportunity to learn a lot more about the work of journalists — professional and citizen — as well as first responders. Much suffering, as well as amazing feats of service to others, occur during these events, so it’s important to view and consume the most authentic of resources available.
Hurricane Sandy damaged the Ocean Grove Great Auditorium. Photo by Paul Goldfinger and Blogfinger.net. Used with permission.
Lots of Hurricane Sandy coverage can be found in newspapers, blogs, and other social media, offering us opportunities learn together as families — as we share the content about the storm, the terrible damage it caused, and the ways that people responded. Children and adults will also use these resources in the coming days to figure out how to help, and in the process we all strengthen our media literacy skills (important in today’s world) by identifying the best and most reliable sources of information.
The other day I discovered an amazing blog as I searched for coverage of the storm and its effects on Ocean Grove, New Jersey (where I spent many happy summers as a child). Run by Paul Goldfinger and colleagues, Blogfinger.net offers me on-the-scene hurricane reports from the little beach town, so dear to me and my family, and now without its own newspaper.
Blogfinger — I discovered it thanks to my cousin, also know as Sandy — turned out to be a terrific resource. It has solid information, great pictures, and well-written narrative. The picture to the right, shows the damage to the Great Auditorium, a structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a place where I’ve attended dozens of worship services and concerts. You can check out many other Ocean Grove photographs at the Blogfinger site.
Click to visit iTunes and learn more about the new Common Sense Media app.
Today Common Sense Media (CSM) announced the release of a new mobile app for families. This new app offers the organization’s reliable ratings and well-written website reviews in a new format that can be easily accessed on mobile devices.
Freely available from iTunes, the new CSM app will make it easy for parents to pull out their iPhones and learn more about movies — even when they are away from home and on the go.
An Android version of the app will be available in November 2012.
Read the information on the image to the left of this post, click on it to visit the iTunes store, and learn lots more. You can also read the October 24, 2012 Common Sense Media press releasefor more details about the new app.
Media! Tech! Parenting! 
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