Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

"Inconvenient Youth, a new non-profit, non-partisan network for and by teens has started recruiting and training young people to fight global warming, according to an Aug. 15 press release. Today the group launched with a three-day workshop on climate change at Stanford University attended by youth from around the world. "

Enter social video games as a solution - immersive environments that simulate real-world problems. Today, technologically eager schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes in the process. Here's how they're doing it.

Phoebe Prince was tormented by bullies at school and online. Here's what we can learn from her suicide. When working to prevent the new mix of bullying and cyberbulling, schools can look at the lessons learned from an earlier effort to stop the traditional, in-person kind of kid cruelty.

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute - except for the time in school - using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

People who spend a lot of time browsing the net are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Findings from the PEW RESEARCH REPORT: "Social Media and Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults."

Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write properly.

Digital Nation is a new, open source PBS project that explores what it means to be human in an entirely new world -- a digital world. It consists of this Web site as well as a major FRONTLINE documentary to be broadcast on Feb. 2, 2010.

PBS/Digital Nation provides five focal areas for their latest documentary and multiple sub-topics among them: LIVING FASTER, RELATIONSHIPS, WAGING WAR, VIRTUAL WORLDS and LEARNING. All of the videos are captured at this site for use as future resources. There are also lessons for teachers and a discussion round table where you can leave feedback.

"Kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection. "

According to a study released in the Journal of Developmental Psychology (Jan 10), adolescent peer relationships and behavior problems predict young adults' communication on social networking websites.

On January 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit heard arguments in Miller, et al. v. Skumanick, a child pornography case that, oddly, involves no child pornography. The case goes back to 2006, when two girls aged 12 were photographed by another friend on her digital camera. The two girls were depicted from the waist up, wearing bras. In a separate situation, our third client was photographed as she emerged from the shower, with a towel wrapped around her waist and the upper body exposed. Neither of the photos depicted genitalia or any sexual activity or context. In 2008 the girls' school district learned that these and other photos were circulating, confiscated several students' cell phones, and turned the photos in question over to the Wyoming County district attorney, George Skumanick, Jr.

According to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation data, 8- to 18-year-olds are spending more than 50 hours a week with digital media. That's more than a full work week. Are e-mail, mp3s and the web affecting your child's brain? Dr. Gary Small is the director of UCLA's Memory and Aging Research Center.

The school has an anti-bullying program and a zero-tolerance policy for bullying. And even though the bullying didn't occur on school grounds, administrators stated that the district has a responsibility to get involved when an incident creates significant disruption or concern at school.

Wow, great resource for teaching copyright/fair-use in the classroom. Excellent videos!