Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century Learning, digital citizenship, digital learning, evaluating web site resources, parents and technology

New Google Lessons: Understanding YouTube and Digital Citizenship

Posted on July 31, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Check out the Google interactive lessons, videos, and slides, all focused on digital citizenship, privacy, and YouTube best practices. Useful for teachers as well as parents, these discrete units are easy to use and share, especially when students need an organizational framework before beginning to look for school project resources. Each lesson is readily downloadable as a Google Doc and even for other presentation media such as PowerPoint.

Many of the Google videos include tips that can help students use YouTube more effectively while honoring copyright principles and evaluating content carefully. Google developed these digital resources for secondary students, but in many schools, the videos will also be valuable for middle schoolers. Even fifth grade teachers may find that some of the videos can help them in the context of curriculum units.

A conundrum exists, of course… Continue reading “New Google Lessons: Understanding YouTube and Digital Citizenship” →

digital parenting, family conversations, media literacy, parents and technology

Another Tragedy for Digital Kids to Absorb — Aurora, Colorado

Posted on July 23, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Explaining News to Kids — Watch the video at Common Sense Media.

Yet again we are living through a horrible tragedy, this time in Aurora, Colorado, and this incident is extra frightening because the shooting and killing occurred as people went about normal activities in a movie theater. What’s more a part of kids’ daily lives than movie theaters?

Any connected child or adolescent can learn about this event and others via a digital device or television. In the digital world, the news cycle never stops, and most children do not possess the media literacy skills to evaluate the sources of information. The traditional walls that used to insulate kids from information about violent events just aren’t that thick anymore.

What are digital parents and teachers to do?

If you need support or at least some extra perspective before you initiate a parent-child conversation in your family, check out a video, Explaining the News to Our Kids, over at the Common Sense Media. This short presentation provides thoughtful suggestions that can help adults get started with difficult conversations about the news when scary and discomforting events occur.

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

Summer, Social Media, and Digital-Age Parenting

Posted on July 19, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Pew INternet Kids Social Media — Read the research here.

Summer is a good time for parents to learn more about the social media activities of their children, developing additional skill and more understanding about what’s happening in the digital whirl that is a huge part of kids’ social lives.

A 2011 Pew Internet and American Life Project report, Teens, Kindness, and Cruelty on Social Networking Sites, noted that 95% of children ages 12 – 17 are online, many on social networking sites. Since that Pew report was published, media sources report that children several years younger than 12 are also using social media. Read the NPR piece, Social Networks: Thinking of the Children. Children continue to need guidance and limits-setting from their parents.

The goal is not to prevent children from exploring — that’s not realistic. Instead, parents need to gather enough information to be able to keep an eye on activities, facilitate discussions when required, and intervene when it’s necessary to insulate their kids from impulsive digital behavior on computers, smartphones, and tablets. Continue reading “Summer, Social Media, and Digital-Age Parenting” →

digital change, parents and technology

Phone Books: Are They Useful Anymore?

Posted on July 15, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Yesterday in my town the new phone books arrived on our porches. I brought mine in and put it in the cabinet where I keep them, pulling out the oldest one and depositing it in the recycling bin.

My neighbor used a different strategy. She took the new phone book off of her porch and put it immediately into the recycling bin.

I began thinking about the last time I used the phone book. I haven’t opened that cabinet for at least six months, perhaps longer — definitely a long time ago.

Are phone books at all useful anymore?

On the other hand, Northern Virginia, where I live, just experienced an epic storm, and many people were without power for four or five days. Even streetlights were dark. Landlines worked, but the Internet did not. Cell phones ran out of power. I wonder if anyone used the phone book?

21st Century Learning, digital citizenship, digital learning, digital literacy, parents and technology, web 2.0

Digital Footprints: Changing What We Teach

Posted on July 2, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

will's book — Check out Richardson’s Book.

Recently, after reading Will Richardson’s article Footprints in the Digital Age, I began thinking about how much attention we pay to online safety and security without thinking nearly as much about teaching kids how to be literate consumers and competent creators of content. Richardson’s article started me thinking about how I might refine the way I teach digital citizenship to fifth graders.

While safety and security will never be left out of the curriculum, the 2008 Educational Leadership article convinced me to put more effort into helping my students think of digital footprints as only one part of the digital life equation. The other part of this equation involves teaching children to think proactively about the online narratives that they are creating and helping them begin to understand how other people will be searching for each of them — and for appropriate reasons. My students and their parents need to become curators of the digital content in their profiles, just as any highly skilled museum curator creates an exhibition.

A strong digital profile, Richardson writes, “Google’s well.” Continue reading “Digital Footprints: Changing What We Teach” →

digital parenting, parents and technology, social media, social media friends

Facebook and Younger Kids: Will They or Won’t They?

Posted on June 19, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Earlier this month a spate of articles (see links below) reported that Facebook is testing features to help it decide whether to expand its social networking access to children under the age of 13.

Now a group of child advocacy organizations sent a June 18, 2012, letter to Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, strongly urging the company to avoid advertising for kids as well as to offer a guarantee of no tracking of children’s online activity. Read the entire letter at the bottom of this Consumer’s Union page.

The following organizations signed the letter:

Consumers Union, Center for Digital Democracy, Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for Media Justice, Center for Science in the Public Interest, ChangeLab Solutions/Public Health Law & Policy, Children Now, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Privacy Times, Public Citizen, and World Privacy Forum.

Articles to Read Continue reading “Facebook and Younger Kids: Will They or Won’t They?” →

21st Century Learning, blogging, generating content, online communication, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

British Girl’s Blog: Why Make Such a Big Deal About It?

Posted on June 18, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

You might enjoy reading British Girl’s Blog on School Lunch Stirs it Up in the Sunday, June 17, 2012 Washington Post about a nine-year-old girl who is blogging to change the quality of food in her school lunches and to raise money for a local charity, Mary’s Meals, that feeds the hungry. The blog, Never Seconds, has become a sensation…

… because some officials decided to make an impromptu rule — the young blogger cannot take any more pictures of her school lunches.

So let me get this straight. A child or adolescent starts writing about an issue or a topic and doing it well. She offends no one as she points out that change is necessary — in fact, she writes rather respectfully while taking a stand on making the meals better. People are short-sighted enough to try to stop her?

How long will it take adults in today’s world to understand that life, 21 Century skills, and communication have fundamentally changed — people can create good-quality digital content just about anywhere. They can share it and other people can also share. Reminder to Adults: Stopping this type of creating on a mere whim doesn’t work. Continue reading “British Girl’s Blog: Why Make Such a Big Deal About It?” →