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FarmVille

Gaming for the Japan relief effort

April 11, 2011 By Anne Leave a Comment

Buy a certain virtual crop in Farmville or building in Cityville and – with the help of Save the Children and the Red Cross – your money goes to Japan earthquake relief, EngageDigital.com reports. "Social games can deploy charity items rapidly in response to disasters." Zynga (via its Farmville and Cityville games) started in mid-March. Sony Online Entertainment started its relief effort in late … [Read more...] about Gaming for the Japan relief effort

Filed Under: gaming, Social Media Tagged With: Cityville, EverQuest, FarmVille, Free Realms, Gaia Online, gPotato, online games, Playfish, PoxNora, social games, Star Wars, WeeWorld

Parents, you’re not just focusing on FB, right?

October 13, 2010 By Anne 4 Comments

It's great that parents are getting the message that they can monitor their kids on Facebook by joining it, but they also need to remember that Facebook isn't the all of teen online socializing (even though it's in the news a lot!). It's just the big social utility that aggregates basically "everybody" in teens' real-world school and social lives. But there's plenty more social activity happening … [Read more...] about Parents, you’re not just focusing on FB, right?

Filed Under: Parenting, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, FarmVille, IMVU, meez, monitoring, myYearbook, Parenting, Piggyback, PlanetCazmo, Social Media, TrendMicro, Whyville.net, Woozworld

How social gaming works & who likes it

August 17, 2010 By Anne Leave a Comment

Xbox Live-like game chat has gone mainstream, it seems. The Washington Post says a 31-year-old mom and clinical social worker who has plenty of "real world" friends but sometimes catches up with them in a "Scrabble-like" cellphone game called Words with Friends is a good example of social gamers. Words with Friends is her favorite among all features and apps on her iPhone, and she taps into it … [Read more...] about How social gaming works & who likes it

Filed Under: gaming, Social Media Tagged With: FarmVille, gaming, social gaming, Words with Friends

UK child’s Farmville debt

June 24, 2010 By Anne Leave a Comment

A 12-year-old in the UK has put a new twist on farm debt. So caught up in playing Farmville this past spring, he ran through all his savings of 288 pounds (about $430), then used his mother's credit card to buy 625 pounds ($936) worth of virtual farm objects, The Guardian reports. The mother asked Zynga, Farmville's publisher, and Facebook, where her son played the game, to refund the money but … [Read more...] about UK child’s Farmville debt

Filed Under: gaming, Social Media, virtual worlds Tagged With: FarmVille, Zynga

Social gaming’s social engineering

May 3, 2010 By Anne Leave a Comment

Zynga, creator of Farmville, claims 70 million active players in all of its social-Web games a day (Farmville getting nearly half of them), reports eModeration CEO Tamara Littleton in iabUK.net, and Zynga's just-launched Treasure Isle "gained an extraordinary 5.4 million players in its first week." Littleton says Zynga CEO Mark Pincus chalks it up to meeting three basic criteria: "interaction with … [Read more...] about Social gaming’s social engineering

Filed Under: gaming, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, FarmVille, online safety, social engineering, social gaming, Zynga

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Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Connect with me on LinkedIn
Follow me on MASTODON
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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