NetFamilyNews

WoW: The guild effect for teachers

2009-11-20T07:41:00.004-07:00

There are lots of good reasons why an assistant superintendent of schools would start a guild in World of Warcraft (WoW) – all laid out in a fascinating profile of the Cognitive Dissonance Guild and its educator members in The Journal this month. But the reason why Catherine Parsons, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction, and pupil personnel services for Pine Plains Central School District, N.Y., started the guild was "to uncover education's brass ring: student engagement." A lot of teachers' professional development happens in the guild as well (the name reflects the seeming disconnect between several pairs: public perceptions of videogames on the one hand and on the other hand: 1) what videogames can teach teachers about learning; 2) what massively multiplayer online games can teach teachers about education worldwide when they're all playing a game together; 3) the members' professional development and networking; and 4) traditional or formal learning.

But the members simply aren't feeling any such cognitive dissonance, and their ranks are growing. The guild now has 100 active members around the world – all in the field of education. Here are some things they've learned about learning in WoW: The game "draws on multiple skills across multiple disciplines," higher-order thinking, and problem-solving. Players have to be able to read, communicate, and use analytical and statistical skills (e.g., a statistical comparison of one weapon vs. another). They learn economic concepts such as supply and demand and budgeting. Parsons told The Journal that the four wars going on in WoW pattern conflicts in world history. So players learn concepts involved in social studies and history and "writing and lore." She says players even use a form of statistical analysis in building their characters - what sort of talents to use, what weapons to use. She said 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old students whom teachers can't get to do "those kinds of computations" in class have no problem doing them in World of Warcraft. Tech coordinator Lucas Gillispie, who runs the WoW in School site, "took inspiration from observing that a particular herb [in the game] that allowed his avatar to go invisible was always growing in a thick clump of weeds." He thought of a lesson plan for comparing WoW ecology to real-world ecology.

My own first piece about the guild effect – in terms of online/offline well-being and safety – is here. See also "The power of play" and "Play, Part 2."

A lesson in US lawmaker's call for P2P ban

2009-11-19T16:03:00.003-07:00

Whether or not even feasible, a call in Congress for a ban on P2P file-sharing by government workers is very instructive for households where kids share a lot of music. The main takeaway: A lot more than music can get shared. But let's back up. The story is that Rep. Edolphus Towns (D) of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is calling for the ban because of "an embarrassing security breach [that] revealed details of dozens of ethics investigations," the Washington Post reports. "The information came from a committee document that a junior staffer had exposed on her home computer, which was using peer-to-peer technology. A non-congressional source with no connection to the committee accessed the document and gave a copy to The Post." Clearly the file-sharing software on her computer wasn't configured to share only music files. And clearly a huge mistake. But if not at the federal level, the solution at the household level is simple: With any file-sharers at your house, look at the preferences and see how they're configured. See which folders on the computer are designated for sharing files – hopefully not income tax files, household budget files, family correspondence, medical files. Personal security breaches have been known to happen. See "P2P's risks: New study" and "FTC on P2P."

Vietnamese fear Facebook blockage

2009-11-19T13:47:00.003-07:00

Vietnam's more than 1 million Facebook users are worried that their government may be blocking the social network site, the San Jose Mercury News reports. "Over the past week, access to Facebook has been intermittent in the country, whose government tightly controls the flow of information. The severity of the problem appears to depend on which Internet service provider a customer uses." One ISP's technician said his company had been ordered by government officials to block Facebook, but senior management said that hadn't happened. "Access to other popular Web sites appears to be uninterrupted in Vietnam, a nation of 86 million with 22 million Internet users."

'Meep,' a principal & students' free speech

2009-11-18T12:56:00.004-07:00

It's against school rules to say "meep" at Danvers (Mass.) High School. In fact, it's also apparently against school rules or the law – not sure – for a lawyer in New York to email that indefinable word to the principal of Danvers High because, when she did, she got a reply saying her email had been forwarded to the Danvers police, that attorney blogged. This and other "meep" stories that have been flying around the fixed and mobile Web is actually a story about authority in the post-mass-media age. If it ever got to court, student calls to yell "meep" en masse at some point during the school day, for example, could possibly pass the substantial-disruption test that, if met, courts have said permits schools to discipline students who are otherwise exercising their free-speech rights (see "Court rules on student's blog post").

But could something this fun and nonsensical get to court? I mean, "meep" is the favorite (or only) word in the vocabulary of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew’s lab assistant on The Muppet Show, the Calgary Herald reports (but also the Roadrunner's favorite "word" - remember him?). Which fact only heightens the predicament of Danvers High's principal. School administrators really need to know how the Internet works. As GeekDad points out in his Wired blog, "the principal’s warning sounds awfully like a challenge." Exactly. Attorney Theodora Michaels explains that, on the Internet, "attempts to silence information – or even nonsense – are consistently met with a proliferation of that very information (or nonsense) beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Anyone who tries to stop people's honest criticism of their conduct – especially if they show that they're highly sensitive to criticism (Going to the police? Seriously?) – is likely to be the target of further criticism. Their overreaction becomes a source of lulz," which can have quite a snowballing effect (see UrbanDictionary.com for more). Which means that, in the post-mass-media age, authority gets dispersed – or distributed.

Murdoch & 'fair use'

2009-11-18T09:53:00.003-07:00

For students, teachers, and parents interested in the ongoing conversation about the "fair use" of other people's content in the classroom, Web profiles, presentations, blogs, etc., this article in BNET.com is great: It's the view from two intellectual property lawyers of News Corp's Rupert Murdoch's threat to block Google from searching his news sites (you know, minor sites like the Wall Street Journal's and Times of London). He says that he's trying actually to monetize his content at the same time that Google's making it free. The thing is, Google allows anyone to block its Web crawlers (which index the Web for its search engine) by using the Robots Exclusion Protocol (simply adding that exclusion code into the software code of their sites). So the lawyers in the article think Murdoch "must have other reasons for these threats" (like somehow changing Fair Use law?). [Thanks to teacher and Flat Classroom Project founder Vicki Davis for point this piece out. See also "Remixes & mashups" and "EFF's copyright curriculum for students."]

Afterthought: Social norming & digital citizenship

2009-11-17T16:33:00.004-07:00

This is an addendum to my earlier post on digital citizenship. Would appreciate any/all feedback.

About a year ago I heard a great story on NPR about a successful risk-prevention program at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville that "relies on peer counseling, social events and solid information to challenge misperceptions students have about drinking" instead of the less successful rules-and-enforcement programs at most colleges and universities. I thought, "Yes! That's what online-safety education needs!" We'd been working on the "solid information" part for years (often hobbled by misrepresentation of the research in order to scare the public). But more emphasis needed to be on the social and peer-counseling part of this risk-prevention discussion, I thought.

That's where digital citizenship comes in. Peer mentoring, social norming, being there for friends engaged in self-destructive behavior, being the sort of bystander who helps end bullying situations demonstrate the "Internet safety" of the participatory Web. Community – a sense of belonging – further reinforces that peer support. Belonging to, conscious citizenship in, a community is protective. I think that kind of peer support might be more automatic or reflexive in communities of strong shared interest like a World of Warcraft guild, a writers group, or fandom, but if the public discussion about Net safety encourages "users" to view themselves as "citizens" or stakeholders in their communities' well-being, we may see more of this in the huge, more general "spaces" like Facebook and MySpace too. After all, these sites aggregate smaller affinity communities, and Facebook is just a giant collection of its members' social networks, each its own mini community.

So maybe – if we all really focus our messaging and education on this protective, empowering approach, on citizenship – "Internet safety" will be largely preventive (of course with intervention for youth engaging in risk), meaningful to young people, a support rather than a barrier to 21st-century teaching and learning in their schools, and part of the solution to eating-disorder, self-harm, and other self-destructive community online.

Teen texting while driving: Data

2009-11-17T08:55:00.002-07:00

A quarter of teen drivers in the US (26%) say they have texted while driving and "half (48%) of all teens ages 12 to 17 say they’ve been a passenger while a driver has texted behind the wheel," the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports. "Boys and girls are equally likely to report texting behind the wheel as well as riding with texting drivers," Pew adds, and the likelihood of riding with drivers who text grows as teens get older. It's not that they don't understand the risks, Pew senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart suggested, it's just that teens' strong desire to stay connected can outweigh safety. Some related data: 75% of all US 12-to-17-year-olds own a cell phone, and 66% use their phones to text; 82% of 16- and 17-year-olds have a cellphone and 76% of them text. [See also: "Teen drivers: Take a text stop."]

From users to citizens: How to make digital citizenship relevant

2009-11-16T14:23:00.009-07:00

"Digital citizenship" is a rapidly expanding conversation in the online-safety field. Is it one we should be having? Is it relevant to young people, the "citizens" we all have in mind? On a recent conference panel, Prof. Tanya Byron of the UK seemed to suggest not – too abstract or complicated maybe. I agree with her a lot of the time but not on this point, because I think digital citizenship is what makes online safety relevant to the people Net safety is supposed to protect.

In a participatory media environment, focusing on citizenship helps everybody understand that: 1) they're stakeholders in their own well-being online, 2) they're stakeholders in their community's well-being as well as that of fellow participants (because in a user-driven environment safety can't logically be the sole responsibility of the community's host), and 3) they have rights and responsibilities online. Digital citizens have a right to the support of fellow members, as well as of the community as a whole, and in turn the responsibility to provide support as well as cultivate a supportive environment. As my friends at Childnet International in London say at Digizen.org, digital citizenship is about "using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same."

Two other recent conversations got me thinking about how digital citizenship might be made even more relevant to youth:

A student on a conference panel saying, "My friends and I never read the terms of service." (Of course not; they're written by lawyers.)

A colleague in another country wondering if "citizenship" means the same in his country as in mine. ("Digital citizenship" was mentioned a lot at last month's Safer Internet Forum attended by representatives from more than two dozen European countries plus Brazil, New Zealand, and Malaysia - see this account.)

Continuing the latter conversation, I asked my colleague what it meant to people in his country and, reflexively, he mentioned "rights and responsibilities." We all need to talk about this more, probably, but based on what I heard at the Safer Internet Forum and in this conversation, we have a viably universal, workable concept.

What do terms of service have to do with it? On the social Web, services (games, social network sites, virtual worlds, etc.), the communities of users they host, and users themselves all have rights and responsibilities. So I suggest that...

"Terms of service" are really Statements of Rights & Responsibilities but might at least incorporate language to that effect and have terms of both the site's rights and responsibilities and those of its users. Maybe this would help make the statements more readable. It might also help shift thinking away from a narrow legal focus to a broad participatory approach that fits the current media environment (I wrote a bit about community self-regulation or "the guild effect" here).

Service-wide support. Social media services such as Facebook, MySpace, Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, and cellphone carriers support good citizenship, or user rights and responsibilities, not just in terms of service but also in features, documentation, moderation and customer service, and marketing – as an industry best practice.

Support at home & school. Parents and educators blend the online and digital versions of citizenship into conversations and lessons about behavior, empathy, social norms, ethics, and critical thinking from the moment children begin using technology, at least in preschool.

The equation's incomplete without all the above, I think. For example, we can't reasonably expect a social site's support of citizenship to end bullying behavior all by itself, but it can help when backed up by similar messaging in users' homes and schools. But "what's the big deal about citizenship?" we might be asked by teens and Tanya Byron. The simplest answer in the research is that people who engage in aggressive behavior online are more than twice as likely to be victimized (see "Digital risk, digital citizenship"), so the civility of good citizenship is protective.

But Tanya, I'm right with you: If "digital citizenship" becomes just another term adults use or yet another "subject" students have to learn – if youth don't see it as their ticket to full, rich, healthy participation and membership in the highly participatory media, culture, and society they find compelling – we're talking to ourselves.

Related links

"A [proposed] definition of digital literacy & citizenship" for educators to consider (send your thoughts to anne[at]netfamilynews.org!)

A team of 12- and 13-year-old New Zealanders won that country's national Community Problem Solving Competition with their project "Creative Cyber Citizens," which uses Hector's World to teach younger students digital citizenship. Hector's World is an internationally recognized educational site designed to teach 2-to-9-year-olds online safety and digital citizenship, the latter now being the main focus Net safety in New Zealand. The winners will now work with a college in NZ to raise money to compete in the International Future Problem Solving finals in the US next May.

"Parents have rules to follow online too," a post in the Facebook blog by parent and CommonSenseMedia.org editorial director Liz Perle. Great tips! I only add one: Approach your children/students and their social media use with respect.

"Online Safety 3.0: Empowering & Protecting Youth"

My avatar, my self

2009-11-13T08:39:00.003-07:00

Neuroscientists are looking into the relationship between self and avatar. A study of World of Warcraft players in their 20s (14 men and 1 woman) who spend an average of 23 hours a week in the game/world was recently presented at the Society of Neuroscience, NewScientist.com reports. From fMRI scans of the players' brains, the study found "next to no difference" in activity in the areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgment at times when the players were thinking about their virtual selves vs. times when they were thinking about their actual selves. "Disentangling how the brain regards avatars versus real individuals may help explain why some people spend large chunks of their life playing immersive online games," the study's lead author, Kristina Caudle, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth University, said. In future, she wants "to study volunteers who spend less time playing World of Warcraft to see if there are differences in how their brains discriminate between real and virtual worlds."

Social lives, media in their pockets

2009-11-12T13:42:00.004-07:00

If our kids text, 80% of us do too, according to The Nielsen Company. Nielsen doesn't say why, but we all know: Our kids "hear" us better when we text them, and – besides – it's fun to text with them! Here's some more interesting cellphone data from Nielsen:

Phone owners are getting younger: Last year kids typically got their first phone at age 10.1; by the beginning of this year 2009, the phone ownership age "was down to 9.7." Same for borrowing: In 2008, the average age when kids started to borrow a cell phone was 8.6 years"; now it's 8.

How they use phones: 66% of tween phone owners took photos with their phones in the past year; half played pre-installed games; 40% activated the speakerphone feature; 28% filmed a video clip; 24% listened to tunes. We've already seen this reported, but "the average 13-17 year old sends more than 2,000 text messages per month."

Younger phone owners: more than half of 8-year-old owners "used their cell to send text messages in the last 12 months. "That figure soared to 81% for 12-year-old mobile users," with "the vast majority" (90%) of those texts going to friends and family."

Parental controls: More than half of cellphone users' parents don't use parental controls. Among the minority who do, "20% limit the number of calls, texts or instant messages, followed by download limits (17%), talk time or voice minute allocations (16%), mobile website access limits (15%), locator services and restricted in/outgoing number access (13% each), time of day restrictions (11%), and alerts to unauthorized texts, IMs or callers (6% each); 60% of parents "forbid downloads onto their children’s phone for financial and security reasons."

For parents' own views, see also a piece in the Washington Post about when texting becomes nagging; "When Dad banned text messaging" in a New York Times blog; and another mom's view of her kids' texting at TMCnet.com.

New tool for keeping Web searches safe

2009-11-11T11:27:00.004-07:00

A few simple household rules can help kids at your house avoid stumbling upon inappropriate Web content: 1. If you're not absolutely sure of a URL, don't just type it into the browser window. Use a search engine. 2. Use only our family's search-engine pick (one that offers filtered search). 3. Nobody changes the settings or preferences in the search engine. We've had these rules at our house for years, and they've worked great (we're fortunate to have a pretty rule-abiding crew). But now one search engine, Google, has made family rule compliance a lot easier: It has a new feature that lets parents lock the computers kids use into the strictest SafeSearch setting (as long as Google's the search-engine pick, of course). All parents need to do is log into their Google account on any computer the kids use, click on Settings, then Search Settings in the upper right-hand corner of the page. On the page that takes you to, scroll down to SafeSearch Filtering and click "Lock SafeSearch." The rest will be clear. But here's a little 95-sec. demo. The only thing to remember is that you need to do this with any browser used on that computer – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc. This is a lighter touch with parental controls that might be a good place to start (and some parents may find it meets their household adult-content-blocking needs). We've found that tech tools are best used when layered on top of parent-child discussions about what is and isn't appropriate for our family and why. Here's Google's Help page on the locking tool.

States' report card for school innovation

2009-11-11T07:25:00.001-07:00

The US states' report card for innovation in education wasn't all bad news: For example, "Massachusetts, Colorado, and Rhode Island got gold stars for their policies to promote extended learning time in schools." But all of those states got Ds for tech innovation. The report – "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation" – was not pretty, with "most states earning Cs, Ds, or even Fs in such key areas as technology, high school quality, and removal of ineffective teachers," Education Week reports. Sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and the American Enterprise Institute, the report used "state data and existing and original research to assign letter grades to states." Technology grades were based on criteria such as teachers' technology proficiency, student access to tech, whether there are online schools in the state, and whether the state assesses return on investments in technology. Six states got As for technology: Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia. Twelve states got Bs; 14 Cs; 18 Ds (including the District of Columbia), and one – Nevada – got an F for tech innovation. A key critic of the report was the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, which said its recommendations fit with "the factory model of education." The full report can be downloaded from the US Chamber site in PDF format, and the Tech section starts on p. 46.

Filters for classroom management?

2009-11-10T12:06:00.003-07:00

No. Really not a good use for filters, writes instructional technologist Bud Hunt at St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado, where they've been filtering less since the beginning of the school year. Hunt's thoughtful response to requests from teachers and other staff to block resources that are distractions in the classroom is that "we will no longer use the Web filter as a classroom management tool. Blocking one distraction doesn’t solve the problem of students off task – it just encourages them to find another site to distract them. Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem." Hunt later adds that the best filters in a classroom are the people in it. I do agree. Here's why – but don't miss Bud's complete response to technological-classroom-management requests, linked to above. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with filtering, just with uncritical use of it, or any technology. [See also "Filtering critics, issues in 3 countries."]

Social gaming cleaning up its act?

2009-11-10T11:36:00.001-07:00

Well, some social gaming companies, it appears. If you're not sure what's meant by "social gaming," you may've heard of Farmville, an extremely popular little game in Facebook. TechCrunch recently ran an exposé that called this gaming ecosystem "scamville" - great family-discussion fuel. He wrote that the games "try to get people to pay cash for in-game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of 'offers' [that get] them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers)." A week later, TechCrunch reports, Farmville's parent, Zynga, has announced it will "remove all offer advertising from their games [right away]. This isn't a meaningless action. Offers account for 1/3 or so of Zynga's rumored $250 million in revenue." But social media – which is a blend of user-produced and professionally produced media – is all about lack of control by the companies that host it. So here's the tricky thing about this situation: Zynga itself can't control the offers or ad content in its games, its CEO Mark Pincus said, which is why it's just deleting them for now. Zynga also participated in the latest Online Safety & Technology Working Group meeting in Washington – an added sign that, like other corporate members, it believes that corporate responsibility ultimately pays off.

Media sharing's upside, downside & advice on what to do about it

2009-11-09T15:16:00.006-07:00

Why do people share innermost thoughts, unretouched photos, and rants and what they ate for lunch in texts, photos, and blogs? And why is this not just a narcissistic passing fad like streaking or something, a baby boomer, someone who grew up with mass media, might ask? Consider this: "In part, it is the very human need to be heard and to connect with others. It is the desire to make a difference, to influence the world around us.... And it is the ongoing quest for authenticity in a world governed by image." That was from The Nielsen Company's Pete Blackshaw in a talk he gave for the Children's Advertising Review Unit last month. [I agree. I think authenticity-seeking is one of the forces behind social media's momentum, probably in more concentrated form where young people are concerned.]

Interestingly, while some are calling it a major media shift, Blackshaw called social media a movement, as he cited the cellphone's contribution to it: "Mobile devices represent a major impetus behind the social media movement, driving part of the 250% audience increase for the year ending February 2009."

Two governments and a whole lot of other adults, however, are concerned about the downside of this media-sharing, user-produced epoch that's upon us. Canada's Privacy Commissioner has a site for youth headed: "myprivacy. mychoice. mylife," including "mycontest": Canada's 2009 "My Privacy and Me" national video competition. The Australian government launched a campaign aimed at youth whose centerpiece is the downloadable brochure, "private i: Your ultimate privacy survival guide." For the parent-child team, I agree that "the privacy conversation starts before the cell phone or the Club Penguin account," as the Togetherville blogger writes. The blog then reprints CommonSenseMedia.org's great tips for avoiding oversharing, but the originals are here. And the NYLawBlog cuts right to what people need to know about a possible outcome of nasty oversharing: "What you need to know about defamation and Web 2.0."

Two related links are: "Not actually extreme teens" (about the need to be always-on teen "PR machines") and "Social networkers = spin doctors (I hope)."

Turning young players into game designers

2009-11-06T07:15:00.002-07:00

Microsoft Research is literally creating code kids can play with. It's called Kodu – a play on the word "code" – and it's a programming language for creating games on Xbox that's "designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone," Microsoft says on its Web page about it. You design with a game controller (and my 12-year-old thought he was going to have to learn game design in college!). But you're actually designing a game while playing a game – how cool is that? Chris Wilson at Slate tried it and writes that it's "also actually fun!" [See also "From 'chalk 'n' talk' to learning by doing" for a story about a school in New York, Quest to Learn, that teaches with videogames – subjects from math and history to videogame design – and for links to great resources on learning in play.]

School libraries: Vital filter developers

2009-11-05T08:09:00.007-07:00

Actually, the library is both a filter and a developer of the most effective filter there is: the software between students' ears (as my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid first put it years ago). It's a great filter as school's nerve center of media competency and literacy (hopefully including new media as well as the traditional kind).

As for the filter the library helps develop in students' heads: If properly developed, it can guide and empower them the rest of their lives. Its other pluses:

Comes universally pre-installed, free of charge

Has no socio-economic barriers to "adoption"

Is automatically customized in micro detail as it's used

Works at the "operating system" level

Not only doesn't conflict with, but supports and enhances, all other "applications"

Improves with use

Is the No. 1 online-safety tool.

Critical thinking – about what one is posting, producing, and uploading as well as reading, consuming, and downloading – has never been more important for personal and academic success because of the flood of media flowing to and from the Internet's most active and social users, youth. But now – because media is also social, or behavioral – media literacy is also protective. If it teaches critical thinking about incoming social influencing (by friends, ex-friends, advertisers, predators – see this) and about their own behavior in social media, media literacy will go far in helping students have enriching, constructive experiences online and offline now and in the future. Critical thinking about one's behavior in and with media is protective because people who engage in aggressive behavior are more than twice as likely to be victimized in social media, researchers reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine in 2007.

So I hope schools are engaged in an important shift, not entirely away from tech filters, but at least toward understanding how vital librarians and other media-literacy teachers are to students' safe, constructive use of media and technology. [Besides, in many schools, tech filters are "knee-high fences" that only trip up adults at school (see this commentary in the Washington Post).] I see librarians in a key role of helping administrators, parents, and teachers of all subjects to 1) see the value and effectiveness of the cognitive filter, 2) loosen dependency on tech filtering and other tech "panaceas," and 3) become comfortable with social media. Then schools will be free to do for new media what they've done for traditional media for centuries: guide and enrich students' experience with them (see "School & social media: Uber big picture").

As Joyce Kasman Valenza and Doug Johnson recently wrote in School Library Journal, "It is the best time in history to be a librarian," but they seem to share my sense of urgency about the need for everybody, including librarians, to understand why.

[I guess I've been thinking about this so much lately because School Library Journal just published my view of "online safety 3.0" here.]

Related links

Here's a librarian who's clearly developing that filter. The article doesn't say if she's folding the behavioral part of new media into her literacy instruction (critical thinking about what students are uploading, sharing, and producing as well as downloading and reading), but she probably is.

The 2009 small, medium, and large school districts honored for technology performance in Converge magazine

I'd love librarians' feedback on this proposed definition of new media lit.

Of new media literacy in Europe

President Obama and new media literacy

The media literacy part of parenting

A new online safety: The means not the end

Adults' status updates on the rise: Study

2009-11-04T12:22:00.003-07:00

If anybody considers Twitter and other status-update tools all about self-exposure (I don't, but glad to "talk" with you about that in Twitter, Facebook, email, or the ConnectSafely forum), and consequently all about youth, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has evidence to the contrary - just out today. It found that "one out of five Internet users now say they use Twitter or some other service to share status updates about themselves, or to keep tabs on others." That's from a survey of adult Internet users - 2,200 of them. The 19% who now use status-update services is up from 11% last April. Here's more in a Wall Street Journal blog.

Students sue school for social Web-related discipline

2009-11-03T05:49:00.003-07:00

The two Indiana girls who, during a sleepover before their sophomore year started this fall, posted some sexually suggestive photos in a MySpace profile set to private, thought of it as a joke among friends, says the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit on the girls' behalf. "The suit contends that someone copied the pictures and shared them with school officials, and they eventually were given to the principal," the Washington Post reports. "None of the photos made any reference to the school," it adds. The girls, athletes, were suspended from all "all extracurricular activities for the year" at first, but the school later "reduced the penalty to 25% of fall semester activities after the girls completed three counseling sessions and apologized to the coaches board." The school's attorney "said [the principal] was enforcing the northeast Indiana school's athletic code, which allows the principal to bar from school activities any student-athlete whose behavior in or out of school "creates a disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral or educational environment at Churubusco High School." Do you think the school's definition of "material disruption" (of students' ability to learn, a test that has been used in a number of cases involving student free speech and off-campus behavior in social media) is too broad? Your comments welcome, via email (anne[at]netfamilynews.org) or, better, posted in our forum at ConnectSafely.org.

Ning adds virtual gifts

2009-11-02T09:00:00.003-07:00

Seems all the social sites are taking a queue from virtual worlds and letting users buy and sell virtual goods (e.g., virtual clothes, furnishings, holiday stuff, even hair-dos). Now Ning.com, the site that lets users create their own social networks, is letting them create their own virtual gifts, "bringing a built-in virtual goods store to the site’s 1.6 million networks," TechCrunch reports. So, for example, the "Brooklyn Art Project network can offer gifts that are miniature versions of hand-drawn artwork" and "the New Kids on the Block" network can sell gifts like the bandmembers’ faces," TechCrunch adds. Meanwhile, Marketing Vox reports that the virtual goods market will hit $1 billion this year. For background on Ning, see "Zillions of social network sites" and "Anyone can have a social site now."

And we thought Facebook was big...

2009-10-30T12:09:00.001-06:00

Skype now has 521 million users, a 41% increase over the previous quarter (April-June '09), TechCrunch reports. "That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months," it adds. This is not just Internet telephony used for free or incredibly on the cheap by people all over the world. Oprah uses Skype all the time for and on her TV show. Here's her page explaining (and promoting) it – Skype has become one of her sponsors. As for us regular people, TechCrunch continues: "Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74% to 27.7 billion minutes [this past quarter], whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44% to 3.1 billion minutes."

Europe's amazing Internet-safety work

2009-10-29T12:44:00.004-06:00

Last week I had the great good fortune of participating in Safer Internet Forum 2009 in Luxembourg. What a fantastic experience, connecting with online-safety experts representing the 27 EU member countries plus Malaysia, Brazil, and New Zealand. I spoke on "Online Safety 3.0" and felt right at home (imagine how confirming it is to have colleagues from Bulgaria and Slovenia come up afterwards and say how much they could relate!). The Forum included teen panelists (aged 14-18) from 26 of the 27 countries.

This year's focus was "Promoting Online Safety in Schools." Here are highlights – things I heard from presenters over the four days of Forum and INSAFE meetings (INSAFE coordinates the European Commission's network of Safer Internet Centres, one in each member country):

POV is key: "What adults see as risks, young people see as opportunities - there's no easy line between risk and opportunity"; "what we want young people to grow up to be is resilient; the only way for that to happen is for them to encounter risk," suggesting that the need is for adults to support their development process; Internet safety is part of media literacy, part of the wider media picture – we need to enable them to make constructive, critical judgments in context." – from Prof. Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics & Political Science and lead author of the huge, ongoing pan-European EUKidsOnline comparative research project

"We must not be afraid to learn along with our kids." – from Prof. Gianna Cappello at U. of Palermo, Italy

Sound familiar?: "Both parents and students look to school for Internet safety advice, while schools struggle to take on this agenda," Livingstone of the UK said. Teen participants echoed this throughout the day they were with us (schools' struggle with the Net-safety-ed needs).

A way to think about school: Elisabetta Pupuzza of Safer Internet Centre Italy said, "We need to think of schools not just as places but as educational agencies and contexts of relationships."

Holistic approach needed. A representative from Germany said, "We need a Media Blueprint for schools – one that takes an integrative approach, not merely teach cybersafety, but rather cybersafety as part of a complete range: technology skills, media skills, and life skills." I spoke, too, about the need to teach and model life literacy, as teachers have always done (this is why Net-safety ed, if we can even call it that much longer, is naturally integrated into all subjects, pre-K-12). And Janice Richardson, head of Europe's INSAFE network, told me they work on promoting "social literacy," which almost says it all (you can see we're all seeking the best terminology).

Embedded & contextualized. UK representative Karl Hopwood also called for embedded Net-safety ed, and a colleague from the same country said students need context, need to be shown how social technologies affect them, and on the same panel a Slovenian representative agreed, saying that this means every teacher teaching appropriate use whenever appropriate throughout the day (perhaps like working with books and other traditional media?). Slovenia is teaching safe Net use, ethics, privacy, etc. through all elementary-school subjects and grades.

Even more on this: "We can't possibly include one more subject in school – the only way to teach this [new] media literacy is to integrate it throughout the curriculum," said a representative from Luxembourg's Ministry of Education. He said his country is now rolling out Net-safety ed in all primary schools, having just begun distribution of a manual to all primary school teachers: "It's modular, adapted to the needs on the ground, in classrooms." To make sure it's adopted well, teachers will take a basic training class, and if something comes up in school, teachers can contact the trainer to help them deal with situations in a flexible way. "We've found we don't need to teach the technologies, we need to teach how to work with them well," he added.

Simply digital citizenship. New Zealand defines "Internet safety" as digital citizenship. Period. Full stop. Netsafe for all New Zealanders and Hector's World for 2-to-9-year-olds focus "developing caring and capable digital citizens – and transforming the culture of a school to implement these technologies in meaningful ways," including in "the early childhood sector," which in NZ includes homes and noncompulsory preschool.

Kids want communication. "Youth are looking for ways to communicate more and better with their parents and teachers about their Internet use," said mental health expert Pauline Ostner from Sweden.

Adult fears push kids away. In Portugal, the Safer Internet Centre works directly with the Ministry of Education and tells schools that they must not invite law enforcement to speak to parents on Internet safety without the Safer Internet Centre there too; the representative said that it's vital not to scare parents. Portugal now teaches Internet security and citizenship from the 5th-grade level.

Not about technology: An educator from Italy said that, when regular teachers are resistant to technology, Net safety is left to school IT people and then becomes a technical issue, which is not good. This was echoed by panelists from the UK and Cypress (one solution that occurs to me is programs like the US's GenYes, where students teach technology to teachers!).

Clever videos. Saw clips of some great safety-awareness videos at Norway's Dubestemmer.no about how "information sticks to you through both space [school and beyond] and time [later in life]." Don't miss this one presenting a fairly uncomfortable student-parent-teacher conference (with English subtitles). ["Dubestermmer" means "You Decide" in Norwegian.] The presenter told us digital literacy is a basic skill required in all Norwegian schools.

Peer mentoring: Finland has a 40-year-old "peer-support" program that operates in 90% of Finnish schools which has folded Net use into its student2student mentoring; its 750 adult instructors train the country's 14,000 "peer students" each year; middle school students give Net-safety lessons in primary schools.

Social-networking educators. "We're introducing Ning for teachers' social networking nationwide," said a speaker from the Austrian Education Ministry. She said all of Austria's schools already use the open-source virtual-learning environment Moodle.

Social Web's mobile too: Mobile carriers Vodafone (UK-based) and Orange Spain have recently launched Web-based parents' guides to the technologies youth use. I didn't hear many other references during the four days to safety on the mobile social Web.

Not one-size-fits-all. Over the four days, I didn't hear much about different levels of online risk prevention and education, which we're beginning to think about here in the US because of the research showing that not all youth are equally at risk. There was absolutely no evidence at the Forum of scary online-safety messaging, all of it seems firmly research-based. I did hear experts calling for more academic evaluation of Net-safety messaging and programs, a need that has been identified here in the US too.

There is no question in my mind that more dialogue and collaboration between the US and Europe would be good for all, especially youth.

Projects I'd love to see happen in the US:

1. For parents: As in the Netherlands, a "Cyberparent" program, training a parent or group of Cyberparents or Techparents in every school, possibly associated with PTOs and PTAs, working with the school and peer-mentoring fellow parents
2. For schools: A pilot project supported by the US Department of Education, with a half-dozen school districts around the country implementing a holistic Tech Skills, Media Skills, and Life Skills program pre-K-12 (an idea I got while on a panel with a representative from UK education-technology agency Becta)
3. For students: A nationwide school-based peer-mentoring program like Finland's (mentioned above).

Related links

The EC's page on the Safer Internet Programme, including a map of participating countries and a list of countries showing whether they have helplines and hotlines (for reporting Net crimes to law enforcement) as well as Net-safety education centers. The hotlines work along the lines of the US's CyberTipline.com and Canada's Cybertip.ca. Mexico just this year launched its own helpline (Europe has 20 helplines).

INSAFE coordinates Europe's network of Safer Internet Centres.

Almost all of the Safer Internet Centres have Youth Panels of 14-to-18-year-olds. The panels' sizes "vary between 6 to 28 participants," according to the EC site. The Czech Republic's has 6 members, Germany's 9, Bulgaria's 25, and Finland's 28. Meeting frequency varies too, of course. Cyprus's "meets once a month, and adults are not allowed to take part in their discussions." In Germany and Finland, the youth panels meeting 2-3 weeks. "In the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovenia, and Denmark the panels meet 3-5 times a year."

Virtual Halloween, real fun

2009-10-28T10:06:00.002-06:00

Curious about how Halloween is celebrated virtually? WeeWorld.com's some 30 million WeeMees (registered users), who take the holiday pretty seriously, offer some examples. WeeWorld says that about 60% of all virtual goods purchased and "the vast majority of the gifts being given" in-world this month are Halloween-related (market researcher In-Stat predicts the total revenue in virtual worlds – driven primarily by the sale of virtual goods – will exceed $3 billion by 2012). "The most popular costumes for WeeMees this season are a cute witch for girls and a Saw-inspired mask for boys [see the home page for examples]. WeeMees can have pets, or Cweetures, and there are special limited-edition ones available only at Halloween time. "WeeMees are also: decorating their rooms with animated zombies, skeletons, pumpkins and more; sending branded gifts, getting movie-themed gear and watching the premier of the movie Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. Then there's the ever-popular costume contest and a haunted house. Meanwhile, "WeeMees are trying not to get 'tricked' this year by their friends, e.g. being turned into a pumpkin or toilet papered."

Net stimulates the brain: Study

2009-10-27T11:28:00.003-06:00

A study presented this month at the Society for Neuroscience found that Internet training "could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults," ScienceDaily.com reports. Researchers at University California, Los Angeles, worked with two groups of "neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78." Everything else being pretty equal, one group was made up of regular Internet users, the other had very little online experience. The latter group "performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity." After training and just seven days of an hour a day of Web research over a period of two weeks, the newly Net-savvy group "were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning," displaying "brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users." Here's a host of coverage.

iPhone app for teen's location

2009-10-26T14:32:00.001-06:00

Called iCurfew, it's aimed at getting teens and parents collaborating. "This app builds trust," writes Vanessa Van Petten of RadicalParenting.com. "iCurfew is an easy way for kids and parents to check-in with each other remotely." With this 99-cent app, the young person sends a link to a Google Map showing his or her current location to the parent's email address. "Kids can add their own message on pick up time, change of plans, etc." Any software that promotes parent-child communication is software that runs compatibly with the most important filter there is: the one that runs in kids' heads!