Group items tagged

"LETTERBOX has been looking into the effects that the digital age is having on younger minds and has generated the fascinating infographic below that's teeming with interesting details. For example, did you know that there are more than 5 million users below the age of ten on Facebook, despite the minimum age requirement being 13? Of these users, over 200,000 of them are aged six or younger. These statistics and others listed below all point to the incredible fact that the average age for a child to start regularly consuming online media is now only 8-years-old."

"Social network sites must ensure that children's profiles are visible only to the child's friends and cannot be found on a search engine, the European Commission has said. The Commission adopted its stance after a survey (13-page / 198KB PDF) found that an increasing number of children were flouting social network age limits to set up their accounts. The survey was funded by the Commission and published by the EUKidsOnline network. EUKidsOnline quizzed 25,000 young people across Europe and found that 38% of children aged between 9 and 12 have a social network profile. The figure was 77% for children aged between 13 and 16. Most social networks ban children under the age of 13 from having profiles. "Growing numbers of children are on social networking sites but many are not taking all necessary steps to protect themselves online. These children are placing themselves in harm's way, vulnerable to stalkers and groomers," Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda said."

Discusses the origin of the 13+ age restriction for social media (COPPA applicable in the USA) and what it means for parents in an Australian context

The digital world is a vast expanse of learning and entertainment. But it is in this digital world that kids are also exposed to many risks, such as cyberbullying, technology addiction, obscene and violent content, radicalization, scams and data theft. The problem lies in the fast and ever evolving nature of the digital world, where proper internet governance and policies for child protection are slow to catch up, rendering them ineffective. Moreover, there is the digital age gap. The way children use technology is very different from adults. This gap makes it difficult for parents and educators to fully understand the risks and threats that children could face online. As a result, adults may feel unable to advise children on the safe and responsible use of digital technologies. Likewise, this gap gives rise to different perspectives of what is considered acceptable behaviour. So how can we, as parents, educators and leaders, prepare our children for the digital age? Without a doubt, it is critical for us to equip them with digital intelligence.

There are a number of labels to describe the young people currently studying at school, college and university. They include the digital natives, the net generation, the Google generation or the millenials. All of these terms are being used to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of young people (Gibbons, 2007). For some, new technologies have been such a defining feature in the lives of younger generations that they predict a fundamental change in the way young people communicate, socialise, create and learn. They argue that this shift has profound implications for education (e.g. Prensky, 2001a; Gibbons, 2007; Rainie, 2006 and Underwood, 2007). Typically, supporters of this concept view the differences between those who are or who are not digital natives as primarily about when a person was born. This paper will critique and show new evidence against this conception of the digital native as based purely on generational differences. The paper will separate the 'doing' from the 'being', that is it will propose a number of digital activities (doing) that indicate digital nativeness and then examine which types of people (being) are most likely to demonstrate these characteristics. The paper will show that breadth of use, experience, self-efficacy and education are just as, if not more, important than age in explaining how people become digital natives.

This toolkit is the result of the collective efforts of the Global Citizenship Education Working Group (GCED-WG), a collegium of 90 organizations and experts co-convened by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, and the United Nations Secretary General's Global Education First Initiative's Youth Advocacy Group (GEFI-YAG). To gather the measurement tools in this collection, the working group surveyed GCED programs and initiatives that target youth (ages 15-24). For the purposes of this project, GCED was defined as any educational effort that aims to provide the skills, knowledge, and experiences and to encourage the behaviors, attitudes, and values that allow young persons to be agents of long-term, positive changes in their own lives and in the lives of people in their immediate and larger communities (with the community including the environment).

Definetheline.ca: Clarifying the Blurred Lines between Cyber-bullying and Socially Responsible Digital Citizenship. Welcome to Definetheline.ca. The objective of our research team at McGill University is to share our expertise with policy-makers, teachers, parents, educators and youth (11 - 17) in user-friendly ways that help all stakeholders engage, learn from, and share resources on our website. We also have a fun section for children (ages 5 - 11) that will promote responsible, thoughtful and considerate digital citizens from an early age. Defining Digital Citizenship and Socially Responsible Online Communication: Social media and a range of digital technologies provide enormous opportunities for peaceful and supportive global interaction, international learning collaboration and fruitful educational partnerships. Every digital user has the potential to reach communities in all corners of the world through transformational online leadership and responsible digital citizenship by embracing the fundamental principles that underlie constitutional rights to free expression, privacy, safety, fair and equality.

"In Digital Age, Learning Civics Means Doing Civics Traditional civic education has required students to memorize basic facts about American government, call it the what, who, and when model for civic literacy. The primary source of information has been textbooks, a source of literacy that has not always been the most accurate or inclusive. And while books (in various forms) will certainly continue to play a role in civic education emerging digital media platforms will be key in the effort to engage, invigorate, and create an informed citizenry. The rise of digital media offers a unique opportunity to add a more experiential dimension to civic education. Digital technologies can, of course, be used to teach kids basic civic facts, but they can also serve as an entry point into "doing" civics. This happened in a Minneapolis third grade class I visited earlier this year. "

Found in Communication Research and Practice: Vol 6, No 1 Abstract: Around the world policymakers are exploring the kinds of skills and competencies that teenagers need to have to contribute to society as digital citizens. Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child framework, and informed by critical analysis of discourses around digital citizenship, this paper explores the competencies already demonstrated by many adolescents and addresses the priorities identified by policymakers. It compares the top-down adult policymakers' blueprints for digital citizenship with the performances of citizenship by many young people, who mobilise digital resources to communicate with powerful others as a means of progressing their aims. Drawing upon examples of small-scale teenage activism, and linking these to some of the big questions of the age: climate change, gender equity and social justice, the paper moves beyond discussions of tech-addiction and online passivity to investigate adolescents' strategic engagement in digital spaces to achieve a more equitable future.

The concepts of digital citizenship and citizenship 2.0 are particularly relevant in the context of globalisation and the knowledge economy. The most recent technology standards for students published by ISTE enshrine a major category for digital citizenship (ISTE, 2007). "Digital citizenship" is now being dubbed as "citizen 2.0" and in the simplest terms it refers to the ability to participate in society online and to use technology appropriately. Digital citizenship represents capacity, belonging, and the potential for political and economic engagement in society in the information age (O‟Brien, 2008). Digital citizens practice conscientious use of technology, demonstrate responsible use of information, and maintain a positive attitude to learning with technology (ISTE 2007 cited in Richards, 2010). The affordances of the recent raft of web 2.0 technologies - sharing, collaborating, networking, customising and personalization enable new forms of civic participation which are changing existing social relations (Punie & Cabrera, 2006). Social communication technologies offer new channels for political engagement, contacting officials, and discussing issues. The network effects or benefits of bringing people together online exceed the satisfaction gained by individual participants - creating what economists call "positive externalities" or spill over benefits.

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.

Sesame Workshop and The Joan Ganz Cooney Center today released the report Always Connected which examines the media usage patterns of young children. Findings include: * Nearly 80 percent of young children (ages 0 to 5) use the internet at least once a week and just under half of all 6-year-olds play video games. * Almost nine out of ten children over age 5 are TV viewers -- at least three hours daily. * A gap remains in access to technologies, especially among low income and ethnic minority children and also notable differences in usage.

Abstract: In the July/August 2011 edition of TechTrends, a group of AECT members and academic professionals explored the state of digital citizenship for students in K-12 through an article entitled: Digital Citizenship in K-12: It Takes a Village. Identified was a significant need for digital citizenship awareness by parents, educators, and students through a series of interviews, exploration of resources, reports, and surveys. In this current article, the purpose is to provide an updated perspective of the state of digital citizenship in the K-12 academic and professional environments as gathered from re-administering the 2010 survey and interviewing experts quoted in the 2010 article. Results showed the need for teaching digital citizenship at an earlier age, improved digital citizenship awareness by both educators and administrators, and a continued focus on the misuse and abuse of technology.

Designed to inform on the types of digital activities children of different ages are likely to be interested/participate in. Also provides a general overview of interests and attitudes of children by age group. Provides an area for parents as well as educators so they can align their teachings.

"More and more, social media is becoming a part of our daily lives. Just today, Mashable is out with a report that says Pintrest (which is less than a year old) is the #3 social network in the U.S. This report mentions that the amount of monthly traffic Facebook receives is seven billion page views, and Twitter receives 182. Again, these are just U.S. statistics. If we were to look at the numbers worldwide, I would guess they would be much, much higher. But it isn't just adults who are moving more of their lives to online spaces. In a recent Pew Internet survey, 73 percent of all teens used social networks daily. The most popular of these is Facebook; however, Twitter, Myspace and even LinkedIn are not far behind. And it isn't just teens. The #1 social network for kids under the age of 13 is Club Penguin. It is visited more times each day than the New York Times. "

"Search engines such as Google and popular cloud computing services may have been "sued out of existence" if they started in Australia, while consumers who make remixes or mash-ups of copyright songs and videos are also breaching the law. These are just some of the glaring issues with the Copyright Act that have been raised today by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and copyright experts. The ALRC has released a new issues paper for its inquiry into whether Australia's copyright laws have kept up with the digital age."

"It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi nightmares - a stranger hacking your baby cam and shouting abuse at your toddler. Someone controlling your home's lights and power points via a system that should only respond to your smartphone. Criminals watching you and your family from your smart TV without your knowledge. But each of these has already happened, and mark the beginning of a cyber crime wave threatening business, governments and individuals around the world. The number of smart devices being connected online in what's called the "Internet of Things" will rocket from 13 billion to an estimated 50 billion by 2020. The problem, says LA security consultant Marc Goodman, is that they're all hackable."

This is an interesting and challenging examination of learning in the three ages of information by Bill Rankin. It looks at the role of information in learning and in shaping culture through Western history and the effect that access to information has had on education. I don't agree with everything that Bill says but he is affirming of the continuing role of teachers and librarians in this third information age.

Your students may be able to update their Facebook status in a heartbeat, but can they also write a thoughtful letter to the editor, voice their opinion on a call-in radio show, or access local media to advocate for community action? How well would parents or teachers in your community do at those tasks? In Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, media literacy expert Renee Hobbs makes a strong case for deepening digital literacy -- not only for youth but for Americans of all ages. Improving our digital and media literacy will require nothing less than a national community education effort, Hobbs argues in a position paper recently published by the Aspen Institute and Knight Foundation. Sorting through the flood of information most of us encounter daily requires new knowledge and critical-thinking skills, she says.

"At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." "