More and more we're hearing about location-based socializing in the news – for example, Loopt and Latitude for keeping track of friends in a geographical sort of way, Facebook's new Places, the more game-like Foursquare, and Glympse for tracking kids for specific periods of time (like between 9pm and "curfew," up to 4 hours max). Well, in case you'd like a little primer on these location-based … [Read more...] about Social location-sharing
online safety
Watching students relate to a president
In its coverage of President Obama's back-to-school speech this week, Youth Radio led with his point toward the end that gets to the core of defeating bullying and cyberbullying (among other social ills!): "If you take away one thing from my speech," the President told students at Masterman Lab School in Philadelphia, "I want you to take away the notion that life is precious, and part of what … [Read more...] about Watching students relate to a president
Continuing decline in child sexual abuse
In a talk we ConnectSafely folk give, we have a slide with the question, "Has the growth in young people's use of the Internet correlated with a rise in sexual abuse against children?" We follow that with an emphatic "no" and a chart from the Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) at the University of New Hampshire that actually shows a 51% decline in child sexual victimization in the US … [Read more...] about Continuing decline in child sexual abuse
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!
What do you think of YouTube’s safety tools?
Hey, parents, if you use and like YouTube's safety features (Safety Mode, the profanity filter for comments, and its video-rich Help section), you might post your comments below their blog post about "Celebrating Internet Safety Month." It would be interesting to get parents' views. Judging by the comments under their post, most people who have something to say about YouTube's safety features are … [Read more...] about What do you think of YouTube’s safety tools?