digital kids – Page 8 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century parenting, digital kids, digital learning, digital learning resources, digital literacy, parents and technology

My Two Blog Posts at A Platform for Good

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Marti Weston

Blogging can be a solitary endeavor, so it’s exciting when another cool website publishes a blogger’s thoughts and ideas. Over the past several weeks I’ve had two blog posts published over at A Platform for Good (PFG), a part of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).

PFG aims to encourage parents, kids, and educators to connect with one another and think about “doing good” in the digital world. The website and the blog focus on a range of interesting topics with lots of ideas on digital parenting, learning, growing up in today’s world, and many other authentic opportunities — all great for us to have access to in a connected world.

Continue reading “My Two Blog Posts at A Platform for Good” →

21st Century parenting, digital change, parents and technology

Three Basic — and Best — Digital Parenting Guidelines

Posted on December 9, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Whenever I have conversations about the challenges of digital parenting, people invariably ask how I might condense all of the 21st Century parenting guidance into just a few helpful suggestions.

Can you get it down to the three most important tips, I’m asked?

I’ll admit that I’ve tried, on one than one occasion, to identify and condense the many elements that combine to strengthen digital world parenting skills, but the challenge takes an enormous amount of thought and even more time. Moreover, any short and succinct advice has to make it clear that we parents can no longer think about living our lives in two parts — digital and non-digital. If tips are distilled down to the basics, they still need to help adults recognize that our world changes constantly, and also that it requires us to continually learn from our children — refining our parenting strategies as we go along.

The good news is that one of my colleagues, Craig Luntz at the Calvert School in Baltimore, has come up with a three-part framework to help families navigate through changing expectations in the 21st Century world. When he works with parents at his school Craig offers the following three-part digital parenting plan. Continue reading “Three Basic — and Best — Digital Parenting Guidelines” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital citizenship, digital kids, digital learning, digital parenting, educating digital natives, parents and technology

Observations from FOSI 2013 – Conference Post #1

Posted on November 6, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

I am away from school today, attending the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) 2013 conference in Washington, DC. I plan to post several times over the course of the two days, and because I am putting connected-world sharing above almost-perfect prose, I’ll make basic edits as I write but spend more time tonight and tomorrow fine-tuning my posts.

Check out the FOSI Annual Conference Program!

The conference, held in the Ronald Reagan International Trade Conference, features all sorts of digital life movers and shakers who offer information and guidance to parents, children, and educators.

One always has interesting first impressions at the beginning of any conference. Is it easy to get settled? Yes. Is the wifi ready and easy for us to use? Yes, and I am using it now. Are the people friendly and helpful? A definite yes. And finally, does the conference facility have a coat check? Yes! There’s nothing worse than toting around a coat all day during a conference. It remains to be seen if it will be easy to recharge my laptop when necessary, but I expect that will not be difficult either.

So now I get to excitedly anticipate the FOSI program. I await the panel on new research. I’m eager to hear from danah boyd (lower case intentional), especially about her upcoming book, It’s Complicated. (Editor’s Note: Even when I knew just a few of the many wonderful things about danah I was already a fan just because she attended the same university as my daughter.) Another author I’ll be interested to hear is Catherine Steiner-Adair, whose book, The Big Disconnect, is my current read and featured on the front of this blog.

Continue reading “Observations from FOSI 2013 – Conference Post #1” →

21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, digital citizenship, digital kids, kids changing lives, online safety, parents and technology

Digital Childhood and Technology: Another Good NPR Series

Posted on November 1, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Parents and educators can learn a lot about children’s digital lives — and the importance of helping young people develop strong digital citizenship skills — by listening to a series of broadcasts from National Public Radio (NPR) on raising digital natives (also available in print). The radio reports focus on children’s experiences in daily connected life and present wide-ranging information about the responsibilities of parenting 21st Century digital kids. All of the stories are posted at All Tech Considered blog, but I’ve included links for each story below.

The entire set of news stories, shared by a number of different NPR reporters, contains information that can help parents and educators think more carefully about how to strengthen their roles in children’s lives.

Exploring Digital Childhood on NPR – October 28, 2013
What You Need to Know about Babies, Toddlers, and Screen Time – October 28, 2013
Raising Social Media Teens Means Constant Parental Learning – October 29, 2013
How You Handle Screen – Technology Time With Your Kids – October 29, 2013
How Video Games Are Getting Inside Your Head and Your Wallet – October 29, 2013
For the Tablet Generation a Lesson in Digital Citizenship – November 1, 2013
Tech Week That Was: Kids and Screens – NSA and Our Data – November 1, 2013

Continue reading “Digital Childhood and Technology: Another Good NPR Series” →

21st Century parenting, digital devices, gadget ownership, mobile media devices, parents and technology, too much media?

Children’s Media Use in America – 2013 Report

Posted on October 28, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Common Sense Media 2013 report finding — Check out the other survey findings.

Common Sense Media has published a 2013 report on young children and their access and use of mobile media devices, Zero to Eight, Children’s Media Use in America 2013. The new research study aims to get a reading on how media use has changed since the organization completed and published its 2011 media and children study. Common Sense Media plans to redo this research biennially and publish the collected data.

The 2013 results are based on a nationally representative survey of parents with children under eight years of age. Researchers surveyed 1,463 parents utilizing the same methodology that was used in the 2011 survey and making sure that African-American and Latino representation was large enough to ensure statistically valid conclusions. To further ensure the reliability of the data, investigators provided devices and Internet access to survey participants when necessary.

Several of the Most Interesting 2013 Findings

The survey data indicate that almost twice as many children, eight years and younger now use mobile media when compared to the 2011 Common Sense Media results.
Television, DVD, and video game use on traditional screens is decreasing, but television still dominates.
Although access to mobile media for poor and underserved children has increased since the 2011 survey, a digital divide still exists.

Continue reading “Children’s Media Use in America – 2013 Report” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, 21st Century teaching, Library of Congress, parents and technology, plagiarism

Teach Digital Kids to Respect Ownership: Copyright Resource Update

Posted on October 27, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Some time ago I chatted with a parent about the concept of copyright. Both of us were 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.

Continue reading “Teach Digital Kids to Respect Ownership: Copyright Resource Update” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, connected learning, Great TED Talks, parent education, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Real Answers to Parents’ Digital Questions? You Bet!

Posted on October 22, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

My greatest connected learner satisfaction comes when I discover answers to questions that I haven’t yet thought to ask — something that occurs almost every day in my digital world. Online I’ll search on a topic, read, or merely glance over a site, and suddenly I discover a resource and think — I need to know about that!

As I read the blog post, Learning Online: Real Answers to Real Questions, by colleague and master teacher, Susan Lucille Davis, that’s exactly how I felt. Davis shares a range of digital parenting resources that help to answer parents’ 21st Century learning questions, and along the way, she helps us realize just how much more we can learn in our connected world.

Writing for A Platform for Good, Davis offers resource suggestions that parents can use to gain digital skill and knowledge right along with their children, and teachers can share with their students’ parents.

A Few of My Favorite Tips — For links and more information read the entire post.

I had no idea that parents can set up subsidiary e-mail accounts, despite the fact that I am on Google and Gmail countless times each day.
Somehow I’ve missed Joyce Valenza’s TEDTalk about helping kids expand online research skills, but it’s a resource to share widely in an academic community.
Good quality COPPA information sources, that provide basic information to share with parents, are hard to find, but Davis found one and it’s good.

I, too have found that parents need lots of information about digital kids and learning. On my “class-on-a-blog,” initially set up for parents at my school, I write about tools, apps, and sites. On this other site, Discover Your Child’s Digital World, my posts concentrate on digital adventures that kids experience and adults may not know much about.