Rare is the opportunity to get insights into cyberbullying in elementary school because most US research has focused on youth aged 12 and up. The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) really delivered by surveying a huge sample – more than 11,700 – 3rd, 4th and 5th graders three times over a year and a half, [...]
About Anne Collier
Author Archive | Anne Collier
Kids these days: ‘Better than we were,’ the President says
President Obama gave a preliminary statement last Sunday right after the jury gave its verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, but then after watching the controversy unfold in the days that followed, he said yesterday (7/19/13) in the White House briefing room that he thought it might be useful to expand on that a bit. [...]
Media siege mentality: Antidote for parents
Over the 15-or-so years I’ve been covering family technology, I’ve noticed a kind of siege mentality that developed among parents about kids’ use of digital media. Then, a few years ago, when sociology professor David Finkelhor at the University of New Hampshire gave his milestone talk, “The Internet, Youth Deviance & the Problem of Juvenoia,” [...]
Social media more like medieval than mass media: Example
In a way, social media’s circling us back to medieval times, when media “products” were never really finished – they were crowd-sourced, adaptive, and usually shared by their developers (minstrels and storytellers) in public spaces, from castles to villages. The makeup and mood of the crowd had a lot of impact on the content of [...]
GromSocial.com: By a teen, for teens
No pressure or anything, but we’ll be watching GromSocial.com – a social network site for people under 16 – to see if it isn’t one of the best ways for kids to learn safe, constructive use of social media. It was started by 13-year-old Zach Marks in Florida after his parents kicked him off of [...]
Safety tools for summer video viewing & search
Do the YouTube and Google search fans at your house know about SafeSearch and Safety Mode? Google made these safety tools available starting a few years ago (see my 2009 post about the former here), but software engineer Matthias Heiler just posted a heads-up about them for users who might be a little more active [...]
For families: Connecting mindfully vs ‘digital detox’
It takes a lot more than “digital sabbaths” to become grounded, but it sounds like the creators of Camp Grounded in northern California get that. I think. As described by writer Matt Haber in the New York Times, the three days were as gluten-free as they were tech-free and packed with activities aimed at human [...]
Involving our kids in their own digital media learning
Just as neither blackboards (technology) nor the words or numbers on them (media) weren’t the source of learning in the 19th century, digital devices and the games, apps, and other media on them aren’t the source of our kids’ learning in this century. They’re just learning tools. It’s how they’re used by teacher and students, [...]
Minecraft & the shared, creative safety of gaming, social media
Reporters and reviewers write about Minecraft as if it’s just like any other videogame. Even this highly readable piece about its creator (Markus Persson, aka “Notch”) and its parent company (Mojang) by Harry McCracken in Time magazine doesn’t cover what makes it different from other games specifically for its kid (and parent) players. But he [...]
Parents’ Guides to Instagram & Snapchat
Check out Connectsafely’s new Parents’ Guides to both Instagram and Snapchat.
NetFamilyNews
- Parents more protectionist than empowering: Study
- Cyberbullying in grades 3-5: Important study
- Kids these days: ‘Better than we were,’ the President says
- Media siege mentality: Antidote for parents
- Social media more like medieval than mass media: Example
- GromSocial.com: By a teen, for teens
- Safety tools for summer video viewing & search
- For families: Connecting mindfully vs ‘digital detox’
SafeKids
- Researchers at Black Hat show how to hack an iPhone with rogue charger
- Twitter improves abuse reporting
- Are you being stalked via cell phone?
- Agreement calls for mobile app privacy disclosures
- Korean students aren’t the only ones “addicted” to smartphones
- President Obama: “Kids have more sense than we did”
- 10 rules for safe family cell phone use
- Brick and mortar stores tracking your cell phone
Parents more protectionist than empowering: Study
This post (like a few others, recently) is inspired by my participation on the Aspen Institute Task Force on Learning and the Internet that got started last month. The task force would love to have you join us in what we hope will become a nationwide conversation about safe, successful and connected learning. Pls sign [...]