Tag: Pew Internet and American Life Project

Posted in 21st Century Learning, educating digital natives, parents and technology, teaching digital kids, writing

English Teachers: The Skills Students Need for the Future

Posted on by Marti Weston
06 skills for future
English teachers suggest skills for the future.

A new report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools, shares the results of a survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers. Data were collected in online and in-person focus groups.

Pew researchers asked educators about the effect of digital tools on their students’ writing skills. They also wanted to gather more information about the digital tools that teachers use in their classrooms and find out whether these tools help students become better writers. Survey participants were also asked to share their views about the skills their 21st Century students’ will need to be successful in their future lives.

A Few of the Pew Findings

  • Many teachers believe that the increasing digital world audience for writers encourages students of all ages to taking writing more seriously.
  • Seventy-nine percent of the educators surveyed agree or strongly agree that digital tools encourage students to collaborate with one another.
Posted in digital learning, digital parenting, digital world conversations, interesting research, parents and technology, research on the web, social media, social networking

Parents Use More Social Media – Often to Ensure Children’s Security

Posted on by Marti Weston
pew parents teen social media responses
Graph from Pew Internet Teens and Privacy report

In November the Pew Center on Internet and American Life together with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society published a new survey, Parents, Teens, and Online Privacy. This 2012 Teens and Privacy Management Survey gathered data from 802 teens and their parents. Everyone who participated in the survey lived in the United States; however, participants could take the survey in either English or Spanish.

Interesting Results

  • Parents report they are using a lot more social media — 66% of parents with children who use social media now use it themselves (compared with 58% in the 2011 survey).
  • One reason that parents are increasing their use of social media sites is to be able to facilitate ongoing family conversations about content.
  • Parents appear to worry more about advertisers who gather information about a child’s online activities than about a child’s possible contact with unfamiliar people.
  • Some teens whose parents are friends have learned how to restrict the information that parents see, but in general, they are positive about friending a parent.
  • Parents are increasingly aware of privacy policies — 44% have read a policy for a social media that one of their children uses and 39% told the survey that they are helping their children set up social media privacy settings.
  • Parents are concerned about a child’s online reputation, but the concerns are the highest as children get closer to applying to college.
  • Reputation management, when juxtaposed with the adolescent years, is tricky for teens.
Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking, teens and technology

Pew Report on Teen Behavior and Social Media Sites

Posted on by Marti Weston
Pew infographic. Click and view larger version of this image.

Take a few minutes to read at least the main points of the November 2011 report on teens and social networking, published in November 2011 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The executive summary is a fairly quick read.

During the spring and summer of 2011 researchers made calls to 799 teens between the ages of 12 and 17, and they also spoke with a parent or guardian of each adolescent. Interestingly, a large number of the teens surveyed reported that their parents and teachers provided them with the best and most helpful advice on digital citizenship issues and other virtual concerns. The media were the third most significant influence.

Browse all of the infographics from this Pew Internet report.

A Few Other Interesting Points

Continue reading “Pew Report on Teen Behavior and Social Media Sites” →

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 digital citizenship, gadget ownership, parents and technology

Generations and Their Gadgets – from Pew

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click for a larger copy.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project just published (Feb 3, 2011) Generations and Their Gadgets (overview). Researchers surveyed 3001 Americans in late 2010 and discovered a lot about how technology tools and gadgets are used. Click on the image on the right to get a larger image of the summary chart.

I often think about how members of my family use computers, laptops, cell phones. Our three generations are a microcosm of gadget world users. Are we average? Do we have more gadgets or fewer? I don’t know.

  • My mother (83) uses a Dell desktop and occasionally a Dell laptop. My dad (87) uses a Dell laptop and an iPad. They have a cell phone and a landline and are contemplating removing the landline. Mom e-mails a lot, Dad a little.
  • My husband and I have a desktop, a couple of laptops, an iPad, an iPhone, a Blackberry, and a basic cell phone. I text, he does not. We both e-mail a lot. We, too, are contemplating removing the landline.
  • My daughter and her husband have all of the above, but more of them, as well as iPods and two iPhones. They text most of the time and e-mail much less  Their house does not have a landline.

My Thoughts After Reading the Pew Report Continue reading “Generations and Their Gadgets – from Pew” →