Most people online are "kind and supportive" and respectful community members, but there are some really nasty corners of the social Web, and Janet Kornblum zooms in on the why in a USATODAY article. She quotes Silicon Valley tech forecaster Paul Saffo as saying there are two ways to stand out among the online masses - to be really clever or really mean - and it's a lot easier, unfortunately, to … [Read more...] about ‘Mean streets’ of cyberspace
Literacy & Citizenship
Web video’s hot
Web video is quite the trend, and not just for online youth, though young people are on the lighter side of video-viewing. Three-quarters of all 18-to-29-year-old Net users in the US have watched videos online, and 60% of all US Net users have, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, citing a just-released study by the Pew Internet & American Life project. A fifth of Net users watch videos online … [Read more...] about Web video’s hot
Ethics & media literacy: Facebook in their yearbooks
Students at a Washington, D.C.-area high school found some of their Facebook photos published in their school’s yearbook, the Washington Post reports. There were pictures of everything from tailgate-party drinking to cellphone portraits to silly antics among friends. “Desperate and crunched for time, yearbook staffers resorted to filling pages with photographs downloaded from student Facebook … [Read more...] about Ethics & media literacy: Facebook in their yearbooks
Cyberethics training needed
“She was a little big for her age, her face still chubby and prepubescent,” writes ZooeysRoom.com’s Kaley Noonen in Edutopia.org. “She pulled me aside after the cyberbullying workshop I'd just given to a room full of 20 middle school girls. She looked as though she were hiding something. ‘Would you help me get my MySpace page shut down?’ she asked.” The girl explained to Kaley that an ex-friend … [Read more...] about Cyberethics training needed
Libraries as teen hangouts
Teens love creating and sharing digital media, and so it follows that teens increasingly love hanging out at the library, according to DailyHerald.com. Fourteen-year-old Liz and her friends love getting together, it reports, at the West Chicago Public Library, where they play video and board games, go online, and read. As media – books, movies, periodicals, etc. – get more digital, so do … [Read more...] about Libraries as teen hangouts