When educators and homework helpers think of Wikipedia.org, they probably shake their heads over its monopoly on students' encyclopedia look-ups (see "Victim of Wikipedia: Microsoft to shut down Encarta"). But think of it in a different light: as digital-citizenship teaching tool. A recent commentary in the New York Times compares Wikipedia - with the more than 2.8 million collaboratively edited … [Read more...] about Wikipedia: A model for digital citizenship training?
Literacy & Citizenship
Fight videos: The new ’15 min. of fame’?
Of fame or infamy? Who knows how many such "brawls" are staged for YouTube, but eSchoolNews reports that growing numbers of students rush to the scene with videocams and phones when they hear "Fight! Fight!", and "some of those videos have been viewed more than a million times." The upside is that school authorities who miss the fight itself can use the YouTube version to ID participants, they … [Read more...] about Fight videos: The new ’15 min. of fame’?
A great teen-adult conversation to join
I've just joined the Focus on Digital Media community and hope you will too. This three-week-long online conversation starts April 13 (but you can register now here) and is the "first-ever among parents, educators, and teens about ethical questions in digital life ... questions like, "Should parents and teacher ‘friend’ their kids on Facebook?" It's a joint project of New York-based Global Kids, a … [Read more...] about A great teen-adult conversation to join
Views of Net users young & old: Studies
Lots of international (individual and family) Internet-user data has been released via various studies this past week, courtesy of Symantec, Google, Yahoo, and Skype. Symantec's Norton Online Living Report was very family-oriented, having gathered the views of 9,000 adults and young people in 12 countries! Some interesting findings NetworkWorld led with were that "one in five children admitted … [Read more...] about Views of Net users young & old: Studies
Young practitioners of social media literacy!
What do you get when you cross Greek mythology with a media literacy class on paid political advertising? Well, if you're media literacy teacher Marianne Malmstrom, you get 30-sec. video ads about kicking various lesser gods off Olympus that end with "I am Zeus, and I approve of this message" (see "The Dog Ate My Homework" project at the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, N.J.). This is media … [Read more...] about Young practitioners of social media literacy!