With the emergence of web 2.0 has come the opportunity for anyone to contribute to what was being said on the Internet. Web 2.0 has made it easy for people to be a part of different communities where they make friends and maintain friends. Once you use these technologies you can become interconnected to people on the Internet. Talking with them everyday, or maybe just seeing their tweets or status updates and likewise with them and you.
As with any friends you talk a lot and put a lot of information online. These days it seems everyone is part of some social networking site. It becomes easy to want to share your information with friends or even family online. There is one major underlining concern when your children do this. What are they going to share? “Stolen innocence: Child identity theft” an article by bankrate.com says that over 5% of identity thefts reported to the Federal Trade Commission in 2005 were of people under the age of 18 and the number was growing. Children’s identity thefts are on the rise because it goes unnoticed until the child tries to establish credit. This gives the thief a much longer time with the stolen identity then he would have if he stole an adult’s identity.
Children when using these technologies don’t think about the predators that are all over the Internet waiting for personal information to surface that they can use. That is why it is essential for parents to go over with their children what is and isn’t acceptable to share online and how public what they are posting truly is. Teach them how to avoid phishing? Phishing is were predators fish for personal information about potential victims. Once predators get your information they can use it for anything they want from stealing your identity to flaming.
Privacy is the biggest concern when worrying about your children posting information on the Internet. Loss of privacy is a very bad thing as we found out several weeks ago when we read the article “Privacy and Technology” by Gary T. Marx. One of the reasons privacy is good, that the article gives, is that privacy is necessary for the American ideal of a fresh start. When you lose this people know more about you and it makes it impossible to completely start fresh.
Posting things online is not the only way media on the Internet can get people in trouble. In the last little while a news story came out about the craigslist killer. A man in debt used craigslist to get into peoples’ apartments were he then tied them up, raped, robbed, and in one case killed them. With all these new medias it is never too early to start teaching your child about how to view and use new media safely.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Kid Friendly Video Games
Video games have been historically made for the purpose of entertainment. In the beginning games like Pong, Pac Man, and Mario Bros were sensations in 80’s and 90’s. Later came the bigger more intense games but they were still centered on one single concept of entertainment.
Video games for so long have been centered on only entertainment. This has caused a negative perception for letting kids spend a lot of time playing video games. Just having a child plop in front of the T.V. and “waste” his time playing mindless and often repetitive tasks on a video game that has no real world implementations has been the parents concern for the last twenty years.
There has been a movement through the realm of video games to get away from simply entertainment to more rewarding games. The most common feature being added to games to get more out of them then just playing is gaming communities. Gaming communities allow gamers to be entertained while they play but still connect with people and share ideas.
There is a new genre of video games that have come out with the purpose of teaching children while entertaining them. The goal is to take the entertainment of video games and find a way to keep the entertainment but add the element of learning. Video games have been tailor made to teach everything from the abc’s to typing to learning about cancer. Here is a video about how a video game helped teach a cancer patient about what he was dealing with.
With educational video games it is no longer a worry for a parent to simply plug in your child to a video game and let him/her be entertained. However educational video games are not only for children. There are many educational video games for adults these days. An example of this is Food Force, but even the regular video games have proven to be of value for some professionals. The most well documented example is surgeons playing video games. The academic article “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century“ shows that surgeons that play video games in excess of 3 hours a week made 37% fewer errors and completed surgery 27% faster.
I think that video games have come to be a very helpful tool for children when played in moderation. The fact that a video game is a mean that requires full participation helps educational video games teach children. It seems hard to even get full participation in classrooms these days, which is why I believe video games have huge potential for teaching children. This is something that parents need to utilize.
Video games for so long have been centered on only entertainment. This has caused a negative perception for letting kids spend a lot of time playing video games. Just having a child plop in front of the T.V. and “waste” his time playing mindless and often repetitive tasks on a video game that has no real world implementations has been the parents concern for the last twenty years.
There has been a movement through the realm of video games to get away from simply entertainment to more rewarding games. The most common feature being added to games to get more out of them then just playing is gaming communities. Gaming communities allow gamers to be entertained while they play but still connect with people and share ideas.
There is a new genre of video games that have come out with the purpose of teaching children while entertaining them. The goal is to take the entertainment of video games and find a way to keep the entertainment but add the element of learning. Video games have been tailor made to teach everything from the abc’s to typing to learning about cancer. Here is a video about how a video game helped teach a cancer patient about what he was dealing with.
With educational video games it is no longer a worry for a parent to simply plug in your child to a video game and let him/her be entertained. However educational video games are not only for children. There are many educational video games for adults these days. An example of this is Food Force, but even the regular video games have proven to be of value for some professionals. The most well documented example is surgeons playing video games. The academic article “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century“ shows that surgeons that play video games in excess of 3 hours a week made 37% fewer errors and completed surgery 27% faster.
I think that video games have come to be a very helpful tool for children when played in moderation. The fact that a video game is a mean that requires full participation helps educational video games teach children. It seems hard to even get full participation in classrooms these days, which is why I believe video games have huge potential for teaching children. This is something that parents need to utilize.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Schools and New Media Troubles
In my last blog post I talked about new media in education and of course one of the biggest new medias in education is the Internet. In this blog post I’m going to continue talking about schools and Internet but I’m also going to talk about Texting.
There have been a lot of articles about students getting in trouble misusing technology in schools and with school friends. This week at Forbes Elementary School in American Fork, Utah the police were contacted about two eleven-year old elementary school children. What could they have been doing that needed police involvement?
The children used school computers to view a pornographic site. They then went and told more of their classmates to view the pornographic images. Eleven fifth graders had seen the porn site before any adults realized what was being viewed.
After an investigation it was decided that the school was not to blame. They were using a filter through the Utah Education Network, which wasn’t blocking the search word lesbian. If it’s not the schools fault then whose fault is it? I think this is a common question that parents of this school are currently asking themselves.
The Deseret News interviewed a local child psychologist who recommended that parents take the following steps to protect their children and keep situations like this from happening again;
* Make sure the computer is in a public place
* Install a Web filter
* Require a password to enter the computer, known only by the adults
* Monitor viewing history and cookies
* Be around when your children are using the Internet so you can supervise
* Talk to your children about what they're viewing online
* Teach them how to deal with disturbing images if they stumble across them accidentally (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705297477/Porn-viewed-on-school-computer-spurs-worry.html).
The Internet is not the only new media in which school children can be exposed to inappropriate images. Now that cell phones are becoming more and more common in high school a new phenomenon is hitting American teens, sexting. Sexting is combining sex and texting and it’s terrifying for parents. It’s not only confined to high school but is happening in middle school also. In fact in Los Alamitos Middle School in California, a girl took naked pictures of herself and sent them to her boyfriend. A big problem is that her boyfriend showed them to his friends.
At young ages without fully developed brains children won’t fully think through consequences of their actions. Not only is the girl going to be completely embarrassed by these photos circulating around her school but her boyfriend was showing and distributing the pictures to his friends which is considered distributing child pornography since his girlfriend was under eighteen so her boyfriend could face criminal charges.
I don’t think parents understand the magnitude of the issue. “Last fall, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy surveyed teens and young adults about sexting or posting such materials online. The results revealed that 39 percent of teens are sending or posting sexually suggestive messages, and 48 percent reported receiving such messages (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29740960/).”
There have been a lot of articles about students getting in trouble misusing technology in schools and with school friends. This week at Forbes Elementary School in American Fork, Utah the police were contacted about two eleven-year old elementary school children. What could they have been doing that needed police involvement?
The children used school computers to view a pornographic site. They then went and told more of their classmates to view the pornographic images. Eleven fifth graders had seen the porn site before any adults realized what was being viewed.
After an investigation it was decided that the school was not to blame. They were using a filter through the Utah Education Network, which wasn’t blocking the search word lesbian. If it’s not the schools fault then whose fault is it? I think this is a common question that parents of this school are currently asking themselves.
The Deseret News interviewed a local child psychologist who recommended that parents take the following steps to protect their children and keep situations like this from happening again;
* Make sure the computer is in a public place
* Install a Web filter
* Require a password to enter the computer, known only by the adults
* Monitor viewing history and cookies
* Be around when your children are using the Internet so you can supervise
* Talk to your children about what they're viewing online
* Teach them how to deal with disturbing images if they stumble across them accidentally (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705297477/Porn-viewed-on-school-computer-spurs-worry.html).
The Internet is not the only new media in which school children can be exposed to inappropriate images. Now that cell phones are becoming more and more common in high school a new phenomenon is hitting American teens, sexting. Sexting is combining sex and texting and it’s terrifying for parents. It’s not only confined to high school but is happening in middle school also. In fact in Los Alamitos Middle School in California, a girl took naked pictures of herself and sent them to her boyfriend. A big problem is that her boyfriend showed them to his friends.
At young ages without fully developed brains children won’t fully think through consequences of their actions. Not only is the girl going to be completely embarrassed by these photos circulating around her school but her boyfriend was showing and distributing the pictures to his friends which is considered distributing child pornography since his girlfriend was under eighteen so her boyfriend could face criminal charges.
I don’t think parents understand the magnitude of the issue. “Last fall, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy surveyed teens and young adults about sexting or posting such materials online. The results revealed that 39 percent of teens are sending or posting sexually suggestive messages, and 48 percent reported receiving such messages (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29740960/).”
Friday, April 10, 2009
Parents and new media education
There is a push for more and more education to be put online. With this there is more and more choices for parents on how to get their children the education they need. Online education actually started for the older generation like college students and older but is now being revamped for younger generations. The first focus of an online education was the working person. Someone who has started their career but wants to further it by continuing their education but can't take time off for the classes they need to take. For example a person who has a full time job who needs that money to support a family or to pay the bills they currently have. This person can't work a smaller workload because they would loose the money they need to support themselves. It is also a key for the working adult with a family. Completing an online education allows the adult to focus on the family and still work towards their goal of further education on their own schedules. It allows them to do the work on the time they have available.
Today it is to find a college that doesn’t have online classes for students to take. In fact you can now get an online degree from Kaplan University. These online classes create flexibility to the students to take classes that better fit their schedules so they can work or travel. It also allows the universities to reach out to a group of people that may not be able to take classes if the flexibility was not available. Now, these means and mediums are being focused towards younger generations. The refocus is a way to engage younger students in learning in the new medias that they are using in other aspects of their lives.
Carone Fitness and the UPSTART program are two great examples of this push for changing the medium of how children learn from the classroom to online where it can be accessed anywhere. Carone Fitness is a physical fitness class for grades 6-12 that schools can sign up to and then the students go online to get the P.E. credit.
Schools and local governments across the country are starting to embrace this new technology for younger students by adding money to their budgets for program development. The Utah legislature just passed a bill in 2009 that starts a pilot pre-school program called UPSTART. It gives parents the opportunity to give their 4-year-old children at home free preparation for kindergarten and costs the state about 2.3 million in total. The program teaches the children skills through video games.
One might think such a young age is too young to start this kind of technological development. Actually some 23 percent of children in nursery school — kids age 3, 4 or 5 — have gone online and up to 80 percent of kindergarteners have used a computer according to the article I Know My URLs who got their facts from the Education Department.
I Know my URLs can be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8102475/
This article was edited by Megan
Today it is to find a college that doesn’t have online classes for students to take. In fact you can now get an online degree from Kaplan University. These online classes create flexibility to the students to take classes that better fit their schedules so they can work or travel. It also allows the universities to reach out to a group of people that may not be able to take classes if the flexibility was not available. Now, these means and mediums are being focused towards younger generations. The refocus is a way to engage younger students in learning in the new medias that they are using in other aspects of their lives.
Carone Fitness and the UPSTART program are two great examples of this push for changing the medium of how children learn from the classroom to online where it can be accessed anywhere. Carone Fitness is a physical fitness class for grades 6-12 that schools can sign up to and then the students go online to get the P.E. credit.
Schools and local governments across the country are starting to embrace this new technology for younger students by adding money to their budgets for program development. The Utah legislature just passed a bill in 2009 that starts a pilot pre-school program called UPSTART. It gives parents the opportunity to give their 4-year-old children at home free preparation for kindergarten and costs the state about 2.3 million in total. The program teaches the children skills through video games.
One might think such a young age is too young to start this kind of technological development. Actually some 23 percent of children in nursery school — kids age 3, 4 or 5 — have gone online and up to 80 percent of kindergarteners have used a computer according to the article I Know My URLs who got their facts from the Education Department.
I Know my URLs can be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
This article was edited by Megan
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Parents controlling new media
With the rise of new media and technology has come the fears from parents about their children using these medias and being exposed to inappropriate things at young ages. There are however many new devices that focus on this concern and help parents control what media is coming into their houses. These can range from the v-chip for your television to controlling the content which a child can view on the Internet.
Some of the most common controls are the v-chip, parental controls that are set on the Internet, and disabling features on a child's cell phone. All these help a parent have more control over what media can be used and seen by their child.
Most of the media control has to do with what is seen on the family’s television. The most general form of controlling the media beamed into your living room is the v-chip. The v-chip is a chip in your television that has the ability to block programs based on the television rating that program has. This means that TV MA shows can be blocked automatically while TV PG shows are allowed to be seen.
Media control on televisions doesn't stop there though. Parents can use other devices that filter media seen on their television. This can be done by filtering DVDs or simply buying or renting a clean version of a DVD they like from a store like Clean Flicks. To filter regular DVDs you can use a product such as a Clear Play DVD Player. With Clear Play you simply buy their DVD player then you can set twelve categories of content you want to be shown or not shown on the DVD you are watching from their website. After this you download from their website filters that were created based on your preferences for the DVD you want to watch with your child. The DVD player now will dynamically filter the regular DVD you are watching from the filters you downloaded.
With all these great new ways of controlling content that comes into the house parents have more control then ever on what media can be viewed by their children. No this is exactly the opposite of what is happening. While such medias as parenting magazines, books, and online communities are making it easier for parents to gain information to help raise children more new medias and technologies are being created by and for the young generation. With this flood of information and new ways of getting information it is being implausible to think you can control media being seen by your children.
With more and more ways of getting online such as going to your school, library, or Internet cafe to get online child have more ways of by passing media controls. It is not just the increasing way of getting online but the increasing number of things that are going online. Even new sprinkler systems have Internet connectivity now. The sprinkler system will periodically go online and check the weather forecasts to see if it should run the sprinkler system today or not. If it is going to rain then the system won't run the sprinklers without you ever having to do anything. With all these new ways and things that can get media can we expect the same kind of media protection for our children that we got as children?
Some of the most common controls are the v-chip, parental controls that are set on the Internet, and disabling features on a child's cell phone. All these help a parent have more control over what media can be used and seen by their child.
Most of the media control has to do with what is seen on the family’s television. The most general form of controlling the media beamed into your living room is the v-chip. The v-chip is a chip in your television that has the ability to block programs based on the television rating that program has. This means that TV MA shows can be blocked automatically while TV PG shows are allowed to be seen.
Media control on televisions doesn't stop there though. Parents can use other devices that filter media seen on their television. This can be done by filtering DVDs or simply buying or renting a clean version of a DVD they like from a store like Clean Flicks. To filter regular DVDs you can use a product such as a Clear Play DVD Player. With Clear Play you simply buy their DVD player then you can set twelve categories of content you want to be shown or not shown on the DVD you are watching from their website. After this you download from their website filters that were created based on your preferences for the DVD you want to watch with your child. The DVD player now will dynamically filter the regular DVD you are watching from the filters you downloaded.
With all these great new ways of controlling content that comes into the house parents have more control then ever on what media can be viewed by their children. No this is exactly the opposite of what is happening. While such medias as parenting magazines, books, and online communities are making it easier for parents to gain information to help raise children more new medias and technologies are being created by and for the young generation. With this flood of information and new ways of getting information it is being implausible to think you can control media being seen by your children.
With more and more ways of getting online such as going to your school, library, or Internet cafe to get online child have more ways of by passing media controls. It is not just the increasing way of getting online but the increasing number of things that are going online. Even new sprinkler systems have Internet connectivity now. The sprinkler system will periodically go online and check the weather forecasts to see if it should run the sprinkler system today or not. If it is going to rain then the system won't run the sprinklers without you ever having to do anything. With all these new ways and things that can get media can we expect the same kind of media protection for our children that we got as children?
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