Group items tagged

As a group, libraries have embraced the digital age," said Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which has surveyed public attitudes toward libraries. "They've added collections, added software and hardware, upgraded the skills of their staff. A lot of institutions have had to change in the Internet age, but libraries still have a very robust and large constituency." A December 2007 Pew survey found that more than half of Americans — 53% — visited a library in the past year. That's expected to grow as more people look for free resources and entertainment in a slowing economy.

At the one-room Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Interim Library in the District of Columbia, books still line the shelves. But on one recent day, almost every adult at the library sat in front of a computer, surfing the Web, checking e-mail or visiting a social networking site.

The analysis found that libraries are thriving in the Internet age: •Attendance increased roughly 10% between 2002 and 2006 to about 1.3 billion. Regionally, Southern states lag the rest of the country in visits per capita. •Circulation, which measures how often library visitors check out print or electronic materials, increased about 9%, from 1.66 billion to 1.81 billion during the five-year period.

One study even looked at whether playing "World of Warcraft," the world's biggest multiplayer online game, can improve scientific thinking. The conclusion? Certain types of video games can have benefits beyond the virtual thrills of blowing up demons or shooting aliens.

In one study, 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade students were asked to think out loud for 20 minutes while playing a game they had never seen before. Researchers studied the statements the children made to see if playing the game improved cognitive and perceptual skills. While older children seemed more interested in just playing the game, younger children showed more of an interest in setting up a series of short-term goals needed to help them learn the game.

"The younger kids are focusing more on their planning and problem solving while they are actually playing the game, while adolescents are focusing less on their planning and strategizing and more on the here and now," said researcher and Fordham University psychologist Fran Blumberg. "They're thinking less strategically than the younger kids."

But the story line here is a miscarriage of justice at best -- even erroneously describing file sharing as a city crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

The purpose is basically to educate kids -- middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television," said Lorri Montgomery, the center's communications director.

The piracy story has two plots. One is of the file sharer's grandmother fighting eminent domain proceedings to keep her house while Megan the criminal file sharer deals with the charges against her

he new law takes effect January 1st and provides that the Internet safety curriculums in schools will begin with the 2009-2010 school year. The bill allows the age-appropriate unit of instruction to be incorporated into the current courses of study regularly taught in the districts’ schools.

Illinois’ partnership with the Netsmartz national Internet safety program was a Governor’s initiative that was launched in 2006.

Earlier this week, Governor Blagojevich signed into law the state’s new Cyberbullying law. It clarifies the definition of harassing someone by using electronic communication such as the Internet and text messaging and enables the prosecution of someone who anonymously bullies in this capacity.

Nancy Willard, author of "An Educators Guide to Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats" breaks down cyberbullying into the following categories: Flaming. Online fights using electronic messages with angry or vulgar language. Harassment. Repeatedly sending nasty, mean, an insulting messages. Denigration. "Dissing" someone online. Sending or posting gossip or rumors about a person to damage his or her reputation or friendships. Impersonation. Pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material to get that person in trouble or damage their reputation. Outing. Sharing someone's secrets or embarrassing information or images online. Trickery. Tricking someone into revealing secrets or embarrassing information and then sharing it online. Exclusion. Intentionally and cruelly excluding someone. Cyberstalking. Repeated, intense harassment and denigration that includes threats or creates significant fear (Willard, 2006).

ead teachers are being advised to draw up new rules on mobile phone use amid a growing number of cases of what is now known as “cyber-bullying”. In many secondary schools, over 90% of bullying cases are through text messages or internet chatrooms. It is hoped that the rules about mobile phone use will protect children from abusive texts, stop phones going off in class and prevent mobiles being taken into exam halls.

Although the majority of kids who are harassed online aren’t physically bothered in person, the cyber-bully still takes a heavy emotional toll on his or her victims. Kids who are targeted online are more likely to get a detention or be suspended, skip school and experience emotional distress, the medical journal reports. Teenagers who receive rude or nasty comments via text messages are six times more likely to say they feel unsafe at school.

The problem is that bullying is still perceived by many educators and parents as a problem that involves physical contact. Most enforcement efforts focus on bullying in school classrooms, corridors and toilets. But given that 80% of adolescents use mobile phones or computers, “social interactions have increasingly moved from personal contact at school to virtual contact in the chatroom,'’ write Kirk R. Williams and Nancy G. Guerra, co-authors of one of the journal reports. “Internet bullying has emerged as a new and growing form of social cruelty.'’

Carrill is part of the Platte County Sheriff’s Office. He also leads the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force. One of his primary missions is to track down and arrest online predators who trade in child pornography.And all these cameras only make his job more challenging. About 40 percent of the nation’s minors have access to Webcams, Carrill explained, devices for uploading live video to the Internet. About 65 percent of all children have access to cell phone cameras.

erhaps the biggest issue is that fact that kids don’t understand that when a picture is posted online, it’s nearly impossible to remove.“Once that image is taken, it’s out there forever,” Shehan said. “The No. 1 issue that we’ve seen with Webcams is teenagers self-producing pornography.”

All we can tell them is, ‘I’m sorry,’” Carrill said. “The minute the camera clicks, you no longer own that image. It has the potential to harm that person years from now.”A Webcam placed in a child’s bedroom is another bad combination, according to Shehan and Carrill. Sexual predators search for kids who use Webcams in the privacy of their own rooms, then lure or blackmail the child into providing pictures of themselves.“We see cases time after time of children who take pictures, send them to a predator and get a pornographic collage back that the predator uses to blackmail the child into providing more images,” Shehan said.

hildren like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

n fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.

Education is the key. Teach children safe practices for online use. Help them learn to spot the dangerous alleyways of that Internet boomtown. They need to learn who the law is, and who the desperados are.