It's exciting to see the signs of adult support for youth voices and participation multiplying. It's important and it's time. Here is just a sampler of this encouraging trend: Agency for citizenship. In Internet safety circles, we're seeing increasing focus on citizenship (online and offline) rather than on safety alone – safety as a means to competent participation and expression in … [Read more...] about Youth participation’s growing momentum
Of student digital privacy & schools demanding passwords
For Data Privacy Day (1/28), let's take a look at students' data privacy – as in the data on their cellphones and whether school administrators have the right to search the devices. The ACLU says they don't. It called out a school board in Tennessee for violating the constitutional rights of students by implementing a policy that allows school officials to search digital devices kids bring to … [Read more...] about Of student digital privacy & schools demanding passwords
Sexting & the plummeting teen pregnancy rate
Don't believe anything you hear about sexting causing an increase in teen pregnancy. There is no way it can be true. How can I say that? Because teen pregnancy in the US has plummeted since 2007. "For five years now, America's teen birth rate has plummeted at an unprecedented rate, falling faster and faster. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of babies born to teens annually fell by 38.4%," … [Read more...] about Sexting & the plummeting teen pregnancy rate
MySpace’s nonexistence greatly exaggerated
MySpace is alive and well and apparently never lost its core group of users, music fans. More than 50 million people visited what many people think of as the original social network service this past November (the latest monthly figure available), a 575% increase, the Wall Street Journal reports. And they viewed more than 300 million videos in the month of November (the latest monthly figure … [Read more...] about MySpace’s nonexistence greatly exaggerated
‘State of the Union’ & the student part of student privacy protection
There's a lot of confusion in the air about student data privacy, and some widely quoted words about it from President Obama in his address Tuesday night didn't help (but I suspect his speechwriters were just looking for a spot to put a high-priority topic into "a simple, dramatic message about economic fairness," as the New York Times put it: "No foreign nation, no hacker should be able to … [Read more...] about ‘State of the Union’ & the student part of student privacy protection