Tag: digital parenting

Posted in 21st Century Learning, copyright, creative commons, digital learning, parents and technology

Teaching Digital Kids to Respect Intellectual Property: Copyright Resources

Posted on by Marti Weston

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.

Three Other Resources and a Good Video                                Continue reading “Teaching Digital Kids to Respect Intellectual Property: Copyright Resources” →

Posted in digital parenting, media literacy, parents and technology, social media

The Children are Watching and Seeing, Listening and and Hearing

Posted on by Marti Weston

They watch us all the time. The students, that is. They listen to us sometimes. They learn from all that watching and listening.

                            –Theodore and Nancy Faust Sizer, The Students are Watching, 1999, Beacon Press

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 short video 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?”

Muppet Lydia Whatnot summed things up in her YouTube response

Continue reading “The Children are Watching and Seeing, Listening and and Hearing” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, choosing reliable resources, digital photography, evaluating web site resources, healthy media images, parents and technology, social media

7 Questions to Ask Before Sharing Hurricane Sandy Media With Kids

Posted on by Marti Weston
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” →

Posted in blogging, choosing reliable resources, digital learning, digital parenting, digital photography, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Hurricane Sandy: Finding Reliable Information That Helps You Learn as Well as Look

Posted on by Marti Weston

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.

One does not need to look far, however, to find examples of unreliable sources.                 Continue reading “Hurricane Sandy: Finding Reliable Information That Helps You Learn as Well as Look” →

Posted in 21st century job hunting, digital change, digital parenting, family conversations, generating content, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Just How Much Social Media Is There?

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click on the image to visit Gary’s Social Media Counter.

Have you ever wondered about how much social media interaction occurs in the digital world at any given point in time? Recently I discovered an excellent social media teaching and learning tool that helps people gaze into the always-changing world of social media content.

Over at PersonalizedMedia.com, blogger Gary P. Hayes offer a living widget with algorithms that track the approximate number of interactions in a range of social media categories — all in real time. He’s also turned his counter into an iPad app.

Visit Social Media Counts — a living statistical chart originally published in 2009 but upgraded in 2011 and 2012 — and start counting the moment you open the page. The site offers a progressive snapshot of what’s occurring in the social media universe as time moves along. It continues counting until a visitor closes the web page, and it starts counting again if the page is reloaded or if a user clicks the “now button.”

Leave the page up on your browser, come back a while later, and gaze in wonder at the growing statistics. Users can also click on the day, week, or month buttons to see different, and more massive social media statistics.

Continue reading “Just How Much Social Media Is There?” →

Posted in cultural changes, digital change, digital parenting, future of the Internet, online communication, parents and technology, social media, social media friends, social networking

Looking into Our Kids’ Futures: Will Social Media Be There?

Posted on by Marti Weston

If you missed this set of essays, Is Facebook a Fad? Will Our Children Tweet?, published in the June 19, 2012, New York Times, take some time to read these short pieces on social media and contemporary life.

As a part of a regular Times’ feature, Room for Debate opinion, readers can learn what six knowledgeable media commentators think about the always evolving digital world.

For instance, MIT Professor Sherry Turkle describes the tendency of social media users to “hide” from one another, substituting quick text nuggets for what used to be face-to-face interaction. Morra Aarons Mele, a digital manager and founder of Women Online, acknowledges the communication downsides, but says that social media and the digital professional work it has created make the world more egalitarian.           Continue reading “Looking into Our Kids’ Futures: Will Social Media Be There?” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, digital learning, digital parenting, family conversations, online learning, parents and technology

Helping Children Navigate Digital Streets: Ideas for Parents (and Teachers, Too)

Posted on by Marti Weston

Several times recently I’ve mentioned a colleague’s blog post, A Letter to Parents of Digital-Age Students. Published at Getting Smart, this piece is so good that I’ve already shared it with half-a-dozen colleagues and handed it to several parents at my school.

Read the post.

Susan Lucille Davis, a colleague of mine and — lucky for me — a member of my personal learning network, writes about the strategies that we adults must use if we want our children to become savvy and safe digital consumers. The task for adults, whether we know a lot or a little about technology, is to support, guide, and help children as they go about learning to manage the challenges in today’s digital world. We must be adult trail guides.

While Susan Davis directs her post primarily toward parents, educators can also take her information to heart.

Three Important Points in this Article                            Continue reading “Helping Children Navigate Digital Streets: Ideas for Parents (and Teachers, Too)” →