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This brief 11 minute video is a good introduction to protecting oneself against identity theft, but is especially applicable to raising the awareness of young people, many of whom are completely unaware of the dangers of exposing personal identifying information freely.

Presentation for 2006's FBLA National Leadership Conference in Nashville, TN. Placed THIRD in the nation with student-made video.\n

Pinned to the wall of my daughter's grade one classroom is a sheet of butcher's paper, listing questions she and her classmates would like to answer.\n\nWill the water run out? How many children travel to school in a sustainable way? Are cities a good idea? The next sheet lists ways they will find out the answers. First on the list: check the internet. These six and seven-year-olds are part of the emerging generation Z . Demographers and social researchers have banged on endlessly about gen Y and their rapid embrace of new technology but gen Z is the first generation born into a digital world.

David Kosslyn and two other students are in the process of developing StudyBuddy - an online academic social networking site that allows students to form study groups with others taking courses in the same subject areas, both on/off the same campus.

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, New Image for Computing (NIC) is currently in the first stage of what is planned as a multi-phase project that aims to improve the image of computer science among high school students (with a special focus on gender and ethnic disparities) and encourage greater participation in computer science at the postsecondary level. Download the full report.

Ask a teacher to name the most irritating invention of recent years and they will often nominate the mobile phone. Exasperated by the distractions and problems they create, many headteachers have ordered that pupils must keep their phones switched off at school. Others have told pupils to leave them at home. However, education researchers at The University of Nottingham believe it is time that phone bans were reassessed - because mobile phones can be a powerful learning aid, they say.

As any parent knows, tweens are crazy about cellphones. Those hoping to delay such a purchase--despite cries of "But everyone else has one!"--take note: 46% of U.S. tweens (ages 8 to 12) use cellphones, but only 26% own them, according to data released Wednesday by Nielsen Mobile. These "mobile borrowers" use their parents' phones when they go out with friends or on short trips, says Sally DePiro, a Nielsen product manager who worked on the report. The borrowing is more than an occasional habit: About 50% take their parents' phones more than three times a week. The key age for these early adopters is 10. While kids start using borrowed cellphones, on average, at around age eight-and-a-half, American tweens generally acquire their own phones between the ages of 10 and 11, reports Nielsen.

Obama Works is an independent grassroots organization that helps Obama supporters in neighborhoods across the country to organize community service events. The group was founded in early 2008 by a group of Yale students who were inspired by Barack Obama and felt that the energy surrounding his campaign could be channeled to do more than generate votes.

According to a new report from OTX and The Intelligence Group, teens actually prefer real world interaction to the virtual worlds offered online.

Sage advice on teen texting etiquette, posted by Houston mom, Francisca Ortega.

A pair of 2007 studies conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that teens are steadily drifting away from the "old-fashioned medium" of e-mail. While 92 percent of surveyed adults said they regularly used e-mail, only 16 percent of teens made it a part of daily life while text messaging (36 percent), instant messaging (29 percent) and social network site messaging (23 percent) gained in popularity. As teens, 20-somethings and, increasingly, other generations bypass their in-box in favor of other formats, is e-mail endangered?

For most teenagers, texting has become an integrated part of their social networking. It is, however, still a mystery and possibly a cause of concern for many parents and teachers not familiar with the phenomenon. We see letters like "ttyl" and wonder what in the world these kids are saying (talk to you later). Teachers see kids who have become so adept at texting that they can send messages from the pocket of their pants to avoid detection, and we wonder what they are up to. I recently had a conversation with about 90 of my students (all high school juniors and seniors) and asked them to give me the heads up on current texting practices.

After interviewing a college student in June, Tory Johnson thought she had found the qualified and enthusiastic intern she craved for her small recruiting firm. Then she received the candidate's thank-you note, laced with words like "hiya" and "thanx," along with three exclamation points and a smiley-face emoticon.
"That e-mail just ruined it for me," says Johnson, president of New York-based Women For Hire Inc. "This looks like a text message."

William Glass III, 14, sends text messages like a middle-aged, technology-clueless English teacher. Properly spelled words. Correct punctuation. Precise capitalization. Lengthy paragraphs. No shortened words.

bNetS@vvy is a bimonthly publication of the National Education Association Health Information Network (NEA HIN), the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and Sprint. It is designed to give adults tools to connect with kids and help they stay safer online. bNetS@avvy provides resources from a range of perspectives to help adults understand the problem and connect with young teens to reduce the risks that they will become bullies or victims online. Lawyers, School Psychologists, Classroom Teachers and Teens contribute to the bi-monthly publication. Recent issues have covered Cyberbullying topics and Web 2.0

This issue of bNets@vvy focuses on texting and includes articles on: Understanding the Benefits and Risks of Texting, A Pediatrician's Advice for Managing Your Child's Texting Activity, Parents Share Their Strategies for Managing Kids' Texting Behavior, A Teen Talks About Texting and What Parents/Educators Need to Know About It, What's Up with Texting? A Teacher Asks Her Students to Clue Her In

We show this excellent video from the MacArthur Foundation at the start of many CTAP workshops to give our audiences a sense of kids and their digital world. It shows how student' worlds are changing because of digital media and includes conversations with kids and teachers. You can download it to your desktop and save it as a Quicktime video.

A commericial solution to social networking in the classroom. ConnectYard enables schools to leverage popular social media for teaching students where they live and socialize, online. The platform offers K-12 schools their own private learning communities with controlled access that are integrated with popular social networks like Facebook, which serves to make course work more social and collaborative by keeping students involved and engaged both in and outside of the classroom. Only users approved by the school are permitted to join the community and interact with other users. This eliminates a primary concern of both parents and administrators.\n\nConnectYard also provides teachers with the ability to audit student groups, walls, etc. This serves to ensure that both the interactions and information being shared are appropriate, which helps to guard against cyber bullying or posting of copyrighted materials. Thus fostering safe and secure learning communities, or Yards, that improve the student educational experience and chances for success.

Privacy and security concerns are among the many barriers holding back the use of social networking tools in schools, new research suggests--but a number of child-friendly applications have emerged.

Anne - has anyone compiled a general list of CFSNT?

Anne - has anyone compiled a general list of CFSNT?

FACEBOOK, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia are considered valuable educational tools by some who embrace the learning potential of the internet; they are also seen as a massive distraction with no academic benefit by others. Research in Nottingham and Notts suggests split opinions over the internet in the classroom. Some 1,500 interviews with teachers, parents and students nationwide showed the 'net was an integral part of children's personal lives, with 57% of 13 to 18-year-olds in Notts using blogs in their spare time and 58% in Nottingham. More than 60% of Nottingham teens use social networking sites. They are a big feature of leisure time - but now the science version of You Tube, developed by academics at The University of Nottingham, has been honoured in the US this week. The showcase of science videos shares the work of engineers and students online. However just a quarter of teachers use social networking tools in the classroom and their teaching, preferring to leave children to investigate outside school.

Over the last five years, scholars say, the meteoric rise of social media sites, including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, has sparked a public explosion in self-documentation, making the "me" in multimedia more prominent than ever.