Our teenage screentime was very different from our kids' screentime. Sure we have some nostalgia for family TV viewing because it's pretty much a thing of the past, but does that mean family togetherness is? What about the equally lightweight but higher-frequency connecting we do with our kids via text messages? The family gaming some of us do on the Wii or Kinect, in online social games, or World … [Read more...] about Our sitcoms (back then) vs. their social networking
digital media
Why digital citizenship’s a hot topic
Digital citizenship keeps coming up in more and more places.... It just came up at the Social Good Summit in New York this week I just co-moderated a multinational panel on it at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilnius, Lithuania, last week The European Schoolnet and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) just announced a new category for Europe's eLearning … [Read more...] about Why digital citizenship’s a hot topic
Media-loaded brain ‘breaks’: Reality check
Sociality- or media-loaded, digitally enhanced intervals in lines, on the bus, at the gym may not actually be brain breaks after all, and in fact may be depriving us (and our kids) of the kind of down time we and our brains really need. Technology like smart phones, iPods, and Kindles "makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive," the New York Times reports. "But … [Read more...] about Media-loaded brain ‘breaks’: Reality check
The goal for digital citizenship: Turn it into a verb!
Readers, this is turning out to be a series on digital citizenship, because the "Jessi Slaughter" story powerfully illustrated why and how much this baseline online-safety education is needed. Yesterday in Part 1, I looked at the kind of online behavior that citizenship lessons need to address and how we can help our children avoid it. Today: the goal of citizenship instruction, which hopefully … [Read more...] about The goal for digital citizenship: Turn it into a verb!