Not all infographics are equal. Some play it a little fast and loose with source data in the interest of grabbing eyeballs – watching out for that is a good lesson in media literacy. But this one from ASCD represents data from Pew/Internet, Project Tomorrow, National School Boards Assoc., and other credible sources. It says social media is "where students live"; "how they want to learn"; "where … [Read more...] about Picturing social media in school
Check out our ‘Parents’ Guide to Google+’!
I'm tooting our ConnectSafely horn, here, but we had a launch of our own this week: that of our Google+ guide for parents. You can download the PDF at PlusParents.org, or read it chunk by chunk at the Google Safety Center. In it, my co-author and ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid and I offer you a little context on where this service fits into both the rest of Google and teen social networking … [Read more...] about Check out our ‘Parents’ Guide to Google+’!
Google+ for teens launched
Google has just made its Google+ social networking service teen-friendly. What that means is, all the features that some 90 million Google+ users have now – Circles, Hangouts (group videochat), photo-sharing, games, etc. – are available to people under 18 but now with added protections in place. For example, the San Jose Mercury News reports, "Google+ will ask [teens] to confirm a public post … [Read more...] about Google+ for teens launched
Surge in kids’ apps: Parents & providers sorting it out
I've done it, have you? I have a feeling most of us have passed our cellphones back to a kid in the backseat so we could drive in peace while the child (who has been hounding us to let it happen) plays a game app. Of course, increasingly, this is happening with really little kids, because the bigger ones have their own cellphones ("way back" in 2010, Pew/Internet reported that 75% of US … [Read more...] about Surge in kids’ apps: Parents & providers sorting it out
SOPA & citizenship in a digital age
You could call Internet users "citizen lobbyists." This week, in a post-Arab Spring sign of how participatory media – and its participants – are powerfully changing things, they successfully went head-to-head with some powerful forces and won. Christopher Dodd, the head of the film industry trade group that lobbied and failed to push through the Stop Online Piracy Act (along with the US Chamber of … [Read more...] about SOPA & citizenship in a digital age