This past week I read a blog post about teacher's unions in Ohio asking teachers not to participate in social networking because they did not want them fraternizing with students online. This, coupled with criticism of the recent National School Boards Association report (L.A. Times, reg. required) on social networking from The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood, makes me want to say, "Stop the insanity." You can read my post when the report came out here. Not that I support commercialism in schools -- I absolutely do not. In fact I encourage parents and teachers to help teens become marketing literate and critical of the ad messages that appear on these sites. But I don't think that report was pushing an openness to social media in schools as a way to welcome brands into the classroom. If anything it was simply countering the onslaught of negative media coverage and well-meaning internet safety lectures that have teachers and parents running for the hills (and blocking everything) while teens and tweens continue to run to the "Virtual Hills."

If teachers are not encouraged to use social networking sites both personally and discuss social networking in class, they will be completely left behind. Students will also continue to suffer from having no adults teaching them how to use these sites appropriately. I'm not talking about how to just be safe by not sharing your home address. I'm talking about ethics, information literacy and an ongoing discussion of the new and complex socialization happening online. Teachers and students don't have to use MySpace or Facebook at school - although I strongly believe they should be accessible in all public libraries. I also think teachers need to be able to selectively unblock MySpace, YouTube and any other site that may have something educational to share with the class - A song on MySpace, a video on YouTube, etc.

If teachers want to use social networking educationally, they could research "white label" social networks that can be customized for use at school and that would be limited to students in a particular class. If they are interested in blogging they could check out companies like Gaggle that offer solutions for educators.

I also think teachers can create two profiles on sites like MySpace or Facebook -- one that is private, just for their personal friends and one that is a "teacher page," i.e. Mrs. Doe's Math Class profile, where she can post info for her students. You just need to warn the students that if they become friends with your teacher page, and you see something in one of their profiles that's inappropriate (i.e. drinking, drug use, etc.), you have to report it. Let's stop reacting and begin engaging with students around the tools that are transforming the way we all communicate.

Posted by anastasia at 8:17 PM | Permalink

That's the title of a new essay published in the Journal of Adolescent Research by Brendesha Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and of African American studies at Illinois. In a time where most of the headlines scream "danger!", It's nice to hear an academic voice articulating some of the educational benefits of teens spending time online. According to this summary of her essay from Science Daily, Professor Tynes says:

"We may do adolescents a disservice when we curtail their participation in these spaces, because the educational and psychosocial benefits of this type of communication can far outweigh the potential dangers."

Here are just some of the positives Tynes calls attention to:

- critical thinking and argumentation skills developed in online discussions
- finding support from online peer groups
- exploring questions of identity
- getting help with homework
- asking questions about sensitive issues they might be afraid to ask face to face
- developing their skills in understanding issues from the perspective of others

She also sees the internet as a forum for teens to discuss race or "the training wheels" for discussing these issues in person:

Some teenagers who believe racism no longer exists may readily find it in online discussions, Tynes said. Some may go online and spread false information or make insensitive remarks, but find themselves challenged, she said. Others may find the online environment a place to ask serious questions about race or ethnicity they would be afraid to ask in person, for fear of offending or causing a conflict, Tynes said.

In all of these cases, there is an opportunity to learn or gain a new perspective, she said. "It's sort of like having training wheels for engaging in interracial discussions (offline)," Tynes said.

Given the increasing segregation of U.S. schools along racial lines, Tynes thinks schools may even want to encourage online discussion as a substitute for what is missing in hallways and classrooms. "I think the Internet would be a perfect place to engage the racial issues that may not come up because of this re-segregation," she said.

Posted by anastasia at 9:26 PM | Permalink

Many first generation U.S. teens spend a lot of time translating for their parents -- translating English as well as customs and norms that are very different from where they may have immigrated from. It makes sense that they would also be translating technology. I really think all teens enjoy showing off their expertise as "digital natives" when parents ask for help. Some teens will role their eyes and make fun of their parents for needing help even though they secretly enjoying being asked. My guess is that for some teens, like immigrant teens, it's part of a whole host of lessons they get to teach their parents. And, according to this study, teens are helping "hard to reach" parents bridge the digital divide. So much so these parents are more connected than the average parent. From the press release:

A new study by EduGuide: Partnership for Learning has found that in their homes teens act like an eraser for the digital divide. Surprisingly, 80 percent of parents with less than a college degree, previously thought to be among the least connected, now use the Internet compared to 72 percent of all adults.

"Teens are digital super-connectors," said study author and EduGuide President Bryan Taylor. "Parents may feel slow compared to their teens. Yet trying to keep up with their kids puts these parents ahead of other adults."

But the results may be a surprise for educators. More than half estimated that 40 percent or less of parents, who didn't have a college degree, would use the Internet.

Posted by anastasia at 11:56 PM | Permalink

As virtual worlds for kids like Club Penguin and Webkinz continue to multiply (it seems like every toy company is launching one), I continue to get a lot of questions from parents about both the educational value of these websites for children as well as concern about screen time. With Sesame Workshop, Disney and Noggin all launching sites for preschoolers, these are legitimate questions to be asking. While I don't have the answers, I did find this article in the Boston Globe about a researcher at Tufts who has developed an online experience for 11-16 year olds with some of these questions in mind. From the article:

Marina Bers, who last year was among 20 US scientists to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in a ceremony at the White House, is pioneering technology that marries two independent disciplines - child development and computer technology. From the former, she brings the widely accepted tradition of Jean Piaget, which posits that children learn best by interacting with their world. From her mentor at MIT, Seymour Papert, comes the theory known as constructionism, that if children create their own technology they will learn more than if they simply swallow information technology spits out. The software she created is called Zora. Children's Hospital Boston is using it in a pilot project where 22 transplant patients, ages 11 to 16, log on daily from around the country to build a virtual community (Interestingly, she limits her three children ages 3, 7 and 4 to less than an hour a week in front of the computer).

You can learn more about Club Zora here. And, if you haven't, check out Zoey's Room, another great non-profit site emphasizing technology, math and science for girls.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, you should check out this panel discussion I am participating in organized by Common Sense Media and The MacArthur Foundation about kids and virtual worlds. It's free, but you have to register beforehand.

Posted by anastasia at 7:19 PM | Permalink

I've been in Nashville since Friday where I spoke yesterday and today as part of the Totally Wired Parent/Educator Tour. For any of you who have read the book, you know this is where I grew up and spent my tumultuous teen years. So in a way it's like coming home, except that none of my close friends from high school or my family or anyone I've kept in touch with lives here anymore. Still, the highways, streets and neighborhoods are completely familiar to me. I was driving down 40 West today listening to Def Leppard on the radio really loud and felt like my 16-year-old self was sitting next to me rocking out with the window down, warm humid air blowing through her hair.

Yesterday I gave two presentations at my old high school (University School of Nashville). Speaking to the faculty, many who were my high school teachers, was surreal. We reminisced. One of my favorite English teachers asked me if I remembered her. How could I forget? English was my favorite subject. I remembered her assigning us Calvino's The Baron in the Trees and then having us write our own constitution for living in the treetops. To them it was Stacy Goodstein from the class of 1989 coming back all grown up. They laughed a little too knowingly when I told them that working for myself was a good thing given my past issues with authority. My college counselor (who is still there) gave me the letter of recommendation she wrote to help me get accepted to college. I was impressed -- she somehow managed to turn my B- average into a selling point!

I was informed that the teens at USN (an independent K-12 school) today have all migrated from MySpace to Facebook. This has definitely been the pattern at most of the independent schools I've spoken at -- is it class stratification or the impression that Facebook is somehow more private and less spammy. Probably a little bit of both. I also sensed a feeling of powerlessness from a couple of the parents about really being able to limit their teenagers' use of technology. I heard the "They're just going to do it anyway" defeated response. Maybe they will. But it seems like if parents take that approach on all things teens will "just do anyway" they're missing out on an opportunity to try to engage with them about the choices they are making. I also sensed some parents feeling like everything is changing too fast and that all of this can't be a good thing. Nothing in excess ever turns out to be a good thing, but I think parents have to accept that technology has become fully integrated into this generation's lives in a way that's hard for us to comprehend...and that the skills they've developed intuitively growing up with the internet will ultimately serve them well when they enter the work world. It's that whole digital native/immigrant issue again.

Today I went to the National School Board Association's Technology + Leadership conference where I joined Doug Levin from Cable In The Classroom to lead a roundtable discussion about MySpace and schools. The conference was at Opryland, which used to be an amusement park (the photo in this post is of the Wabash Cannonball coaster), but was torn down and made into a giant mall. If that wasn't depressing enough, most of the people who attended our discussion were in public school districts that pretty much block all social media at school. We have created such a climate of fear and panic around these issues, that schools just don't want to risk it, widening the gap even more between teachers and the teens they are teaching. I loved it when one of the teachers passionately talked about someone posting party details on MySpace causing hundreds of gate crashers to show up and trash the house. He said even though he isn't supposed to be talking about that stuff (teaching teens what's appropriate to post), he is anyway.

I was also inspired by Dave Master, who attended our session and is the director of the ACME Network, an online mentoring program where professional animators mentor students online. The network sounds like a model learning community where teens interact with teachers and industry professionals learning skills that will help them enter the field of animation. With all the hoopla around stranger danger and fear of teens interacting with adults, I think we forget that in the right context, adult interaction is both necessary and meaningful. You can watch a cool video about ACME here.

Finally, Doug showed me the new initiative Cable In The Classroom launched online (and on air) to help raise awareness not only around internet safety issues but ethics and information literacy as well. It's a snazzy Flash site called Point Smart. Click Safe. I might not have designed a site for parents struggling with technology completely in Flash, but that's just me.

The Totally Wired Parent/Educator Tour is being sponsored by Beinggirl.com.

Posted by anastasia at 2:11 AM | Permalink

When I was speaking to librarians in Marlborough, MA, last week, one of the librarians asked if I knew of any existing curriculum for teaching "cyber ethics." I wasn't able to point her anywhere in the moment, but I went back to my hotel and began searching online. I found one pretty cool link that aggregates quite a few resources (I'm sure there are more) that I thought was worth sharing. Most of what I found seems to focus on copyright, safety and security. What appears to be missing from the links I visited is more meat around actual ethical issues related to the public nature of the internet (i.e. should I post camera phone pics without my friends' permission?) as well as curriculum emphasizing information literacy. Francis Jacobson Harris, the librarian I interviewed for Totally Wired, has her computer literacy curriculum online as well (which DOES emphasize information literacy).

I think it would be cool if in order to use the computer at the library (or school), teens had to participate in an hour long seminar covering this type of stuff. Same with Computer Clubhouses or other after school programs where teens go online. Ideally the seminar would be fun and engaging with real world examples that inspire lively discussion and debate (less lecture, more interactivity). I know there's more than an hour to cover, but I think that's all you can ask teens to sit through (especially at a library or after school program, maybe even a little shorter). Sounds like a great project for someone in the educational technology space. If this sort of thing exists already, let me know and send a link!

The Totally Wired Parent/Educator Tour is being sponsored by Beinggirl.com.

Posted by anastasia at 8:03 PM | Permalink

When I was speaking last night at the Fanueil Branch library in Brighton, MA, my friend Melina, who used to work at Teen Voices (that's how we met), raised a really important point about youth media organizations and other after school programs. In my talk, I was saying that "the digital divide" still exists for many low-income families that don't have internet access or high speed access at home. For these teens, schools and libraries are the primary places they go online. This is why it's so important for libraries to keep social networking sites unblocked -- otherwise a whole segment of the youth population is missing out on what most of their more privileged peers are doing at home.

Melina reminded me that after school programs like Boys & Girls Clubs are also places where low-income teens are able to go online, and that the staff at these programs are really on the front lines of teaching them ethical and appropriate use (especially in homes without internet access or where English is a second language).

The challenge for librarians and youth workers is to not be reactive when incidents happen (and they will) where a teen either goes to an inappropriate site or posts something they shouldn't have. Sometimes it's the parents who will apply pressure to "do something about it." The impulse may be to block or ban to appease parents or prevent stuff from happening again. Hopefully, these incidents can become opportunities to develop curriculum or even an hour-long orientation teaching teens appropriate use before they log on at your site.

The Totally Wired Parent/Educator Tour is sponsored by Beinggirl.com.

Posted by anastasia at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This past week I wrote about how employers are looking for young people with social networking expertise and how teens are including their MySpace or Facebook profiles on their business cards on Ypulse. If you have a business or a library or organization and are hoping to attract younger customers, members or patrons, hire a teen to build your social media strategy! The best way to reach teens is where they're hanging out...online. And the only way to do this is with an authentic voice they can relate to (think: their peers!).

Hiring a teen to create your MySpace or Facebook profile, maintain a blog about what you're doing, record and post video, etc. is not only excellent work experience for them (and very empowering), it will help you, too! Of course you need to supervise them, approve and edit what they write or produce, but it's really a win-win for everyone. With less teens joining the workforce and taking summer jobs, and more employers looking to capitalize on young people's experience using social media, this seems like an obvious solution to me. Oh...and there are lots of teens who are amazing web designers as well. One of them just turned her passion for design into a $1 million plus business called Whateverlife...

Posted by anastasia at 5:42 PM | Permalink

In talking with folks in the education space, it has become clear to me that where K-12 schools are hampered by fear of technology and how teens might abuse it, lack of resources/staffing and the mandate of teaching to the test, colleges and universities are embracing technology and beginning to see the positive impact on learning. According to a faculty survey conducted by Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning:

Most faculty members surveyed (more than 96 percent) use technology to assist in their teaching.

More than 93 percent of respondents said their institutions encourage the use of technology in the classroom to enhance the curriculum.

More than 81 percent of faculty members surveyed believe technology has improved student learning in the classroom.

Two thirds of respondents believe students are more engaged in coursework when technology is used.

The percentage of instructors who use blogs to engage students increased 74 percent from the 2006 survey.

E-mail and Presentation Tools (i.e. PowerPoint) are the most prevalent technology resources used higher education teaching.

Technology tools used now by more instructors include: Blogs, Custom Textbooks, e-Books, Instant Messaging, Online Libraries, and Podcasts.

I was at a Microsoft Symposium recently focusing on social media and was talking about technology in K-12 schools with another attendee -- we were wondering what would be the tipping point for schools? She posed this question to a colleague who said, it will be lots and lots of little tipping points. I wrote about "the trailblazers" in Totally Wired. These are the teachers who are innovating with technology in the classroom. They often are doing their projects outside the system (or they'd never be able to do them). I guess we just have to wait until there are enough trailblazers to bring everyone else along instead of waiting for a systemic solution from government or the private sector.

Posted by anastasia at 6:48 AM | Permalink

Last week I spoke on a panel called "Classroom 2.0" at a conference called Office 2.0 (there is video here, you just have to scroll through the "on demand" videos and look for Classroom 2.0). Near the end, someone asked something along the lines of whether the classroom experience would become obsolete and be replaced by technology. I thought about this question again after seeing this story about the success of virtual schools (K-12) in Florida. I mention virtual schools in "Totally Wired" as one way the education system is becoming more "wired" by meeting the needs of home schoolers and advanced placement (AP) students in rural areas without access to those classes. The Associated Press article also mentions the success of virtual school with students with learning disabilities.

While distance learning or online education has been proliferating at the college level for years (and has even made it to YouTube), it is just beginning to happen in K-12 education. And just because it has become a convenient solution for adult learners, I don't think it can or should completely replace the classroom setting for kids and teens (even if that setting is a small group of home schooled kids or at an alternative school).

One of my fellow panelists, Rushton Hurley, founder of Next Vista Learning and a classroom teacher who teaches Japanese to high school students, explained why the classroom is still important. It pushes teens to want to do better. I think the "it" he was talking about was feedback from your peers. He talked about the process of his language students creating a skit in Japanese, recording and editing it and posting it online (and how each time he did this project over the years, he would add new technology and the students continued to do better and better). But more than the technology itself, the feedback students received from each other was a key motivator in how engaged they were in the project (and how much they learned). If anything, the internet gave these students an even larger audience to "perform" for (including students in Japan).

You could argue that you can still work collaboratively with your peers online through discussion threads, video and other technology. But for kids and teens who are still learning face-to-face social norms, that in-person group dynamic is invaluable. The virtual learning experience should be integrated with the classroom experience, just as teens' offline worlds have become seamlessly integrated with their online worlds. It's just another way to learn, just as it's simply another way for teens to stay connected and communicate.

Update: Here is the video from the Office 2.0 panel:

Posted by anastasia at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ask any teen if they're familiar with Wikipedia and they will enthusiastically nod "yes." It's their homework lifeline to the chagrin of many educators who lament that it's often used as an original source in many-a-term paper. There has been lots of debate over the accuracy of Wikipedia compared to other encyclopedias (see danah boyd's "knowledge Access as a Public Good"), but most people would agree that it's not the best source to cite.

Virgil Griffith [pictured in photo], who according to Slate, is "a self-described 'disruptive technologist' and future CalTech graduate student," created a site called WikiScanner where he took "the 34,417,493 anonymous edits added between February 2004 and August 2007 and correlate them with the IP addresses of hedge funds, law firms, media companies, the CIA, and the rest of us."

The Slate story rounded up what WikiScanner uncovered:

A Scientology IP added a link to the Kurt Cobain page that suggests the singer's childhood Ritalin prescription led him to suicide. An Exxon IP cleaned up the section on the effects of the Valdez oil spill, cheerfully noting "six of the largest salmon harvests in history were recorded in the decade immediately following the spill." A Philip Morris IP deleted this sentence from a history paragraph of the "Marlboro (cigarette)" page: "It emerged as the number one youth-initiation brand."

Just because an IP address can be traced to a particular company, doesn't mean it definitely came from someone who works for the company. It could have come from someone with access to their network -- still if it was made between the hours of 9 to 5, chances are...

Caveats aside, for educators who want ammunition to explain why they are not allowing students to cite Wikipedia as a source (they can certainly use the site and cite valid sources they discover via a Wikipedia entry), WikiScanner is the perfect way to illustrate the potential for bias, inaccuracy and vandalism that occurs on Wikipedia. It's also important to talk about how Wikipedia's army of volunteer editors are constantly on the look out for this type of misinformation and regularly make edits of their own to clean it up.

Posted by anastasia at 1:26 AM | Permalink

My friend Derek sent me this article in IT Week announcing:

"The US National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has called on state leaders to work with schools and colleges to ensure that cyber-security, online safety and ethics lessons are integrated into every classroom."

In theory, this is a very good development...as long as it won't be taught in the same spirit as many of the seminars led by law enforcement, which tend to rely heavily on scaring parents and teens into being "safe" online. Here's what they are planning to cover:

Cyber Ethics Lessons which teach that hacking into someone's computer and taking information is just as wrong as breaking into someone else's home

Cyber Bullying which is just as wrong as bullying someone on the playground

Cyber Safety Lessons which incorporate social behaviour tips to protect children from online dangers, such as cyber-predators, harassment, unwanted communications and cyber-bullies

Cyber Security Lessons which provide information on how to secure computers, identities and financial information

My hope is that they create a curriculum that breathes life into the above bullet points by using real world examples, asking kids to share their own experiences and opening up the discussion around how the internet is different from the playground (hint: it's viral, permanent, public and easier to be even more cruel to someone you can't see). I would also add the following bullets to this new curriculum:

Information, media and marketing literacy how to evaluate the sites they visit and determine whether or not they are credible sources (give them a cheat sheet of sources YOU have approved) as well as understand when products or brands are marketing to them on social networking sites, in virtual worlds, and of course through spam. You can also have a great discussion on the pros and cons of Wikipedia.

Managing your public identity when to use privacy settings and how easy it is for people to find their public profiles (and even get into private profiles). Discussion of who gets to see which profile and different contexts for different profiles. All students should be required to build a public resume site and add their accomplishments.

Technology and interpersonal skills lead a discussion around impulse control and when it's appropriate to text and when you should pick up the phone or walk over and talk to the person (a skill that will be invaluable in the workplace).

Intellectual property and user generated content while this is definitely in flux and nobody has really figured it out yet, it's an interesting discussion to have with students and at least raises their awareness of these new legal questions. It's also worth discussing illegal downloading and file sharing in this context.

Plagiarism, cheating and the internet overview of how to use the internet as a resource for schoolwork without abusing it, i.e. copying and pasting. Teaches kids how to cite online sources and covers guidelines for using resource sites like SparkNotes or Scriptovia.

Using the internet to become a better citizen how to find out what's happening in our government, what laws are being passed, how representatives have voted and other information that helps us be more informed and involved citizens.

Posted by anastasia at 12:42 AM | Permalink

I blogged about the first release of the Grunwald research (on Ypulse), which focused on how brands can using social networks to reach youth back in June. The National School Boards Association has released another slice of the study designed to focus on the educational potential of social networking technology. I now realize that part of the reason "96 percent of youth use social networking" sounded so high last time was because they define social networking as "chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz." It's basically using the internet to connect with others in some way.

What continues to be most striking to me about all of this research is the gap between what teens and tweens are really doing online and the level of fear adults have around the perceived dangers (predators and cyberbullying). Granted the methodology in this research was to ask students if they had met a stranger in person or had been cyberbullied (without defining cyberbullying for them) in the last three months (vs. ever), which probably explains why the percentages are lower than other research - .08 percent said they met a stranger and 7 percent said they experienced cyberbullying.

The challenge for schools is how to leverage social networking technologies at school in ways that are educational, or how to create an educational context for students that is completely separate from the social context they have on sites like MySpace or Facebook, which are primarily about hanging out and socializing with friends. Right now, according to the report, most schools are filtering, blocking and/or banning:

- Nearly all (98 percent) districts use software to block access to inappropriate sites

- More than eight in 10 districts have rules against online chatting (84 percent) and instant messaging (81 percent) in school

- More than six in 10 districts (62 percent) have rules against participating in bulletin boards or blogs; six in 10 (60 percent) also prohibit sending and receiving e-mail in school

- More than half of all districts (52 percent) specifically prohibit any use of social networking sites in school

While students are actually using this technology for educational purposes outside of school.

- 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education

- Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers and 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork

In "Totally Wired," I report on the challenges of the filter/block/ban approach. You end up filtering sites you actually need, teens can hack through blocks, and schools and libraries end up blocking or banning access to technologies low-income students may not be able to experience at home. Most importantly, you miss out on the opportunity to teach kids how to use the internet safely and responsibly as well as how to be media literate and information literate. I understand that it's easier just to remove the temptation for teens to misuse this technology at school, and that educators are already swamped just trying to teach a core curriculum, meet standards and raise test scores. The reality is that by not engaging with students around these technologies, we are abandoning them to navigate the internet on their own with their peers instead of being trusted guides and mentors.

Posted by anastasia at 5:16 PM | Permalink

I love the title of this new book by James F. Broderick and Darren W. Miller. For those of you who read Totally Wired, you know that I am a huge proponent of "information literacy," or the need to help young people be more critical of the websites they surf and especially the sites they use for schoolwork. So when Darren contacted me about his book, "Consider The Source: A Critical Guide to 100 Prominent News and Information Sites on the Web," I thought this would be a great resource for teachers and librarians working with teens. The following is an email interview I did with James and Darren about the book and how it can be used to help make teens more critical consumers of the news and information online.

Anastasia Goodstein: This generation is known for "news grazing" and finding news and information while surfing -- a link catches their eye, they click and read, vs. going to traditional sources. How can a young person quickly evaluate whether or not the source is credible? What should they look for?

James F. Broderick and Darren W. Miller: Clicking on to a news site and making a snap judgment about its credibility is, increasingly, a dicey game. It is often difficult to tell at a glance whether a site is credible. However, there are certain things everyone should look for in a news site. The first thing to notice is the byline. Is the writer associated with an established news source (i.e., Associated Press, BBC, NPR)? Not being affiliated with an established news agency doesn't mean the story isn't credible -- however, if it's simply a name you've never heard, you should at the very least do a quick search for who or what this person is affiliated with. As you read the story, pay close attention to basic mechanical considerations, like spelling, grammar, typos, etc. Misspelled or missing words in a sentence or glaring grammatical errors ought to be a red flag. Throughout the story there should be multiple links, which when clicked will provide additional context (in journalism these stories are called sidebars and provide additional and even essential information). Finally look for a link to contact the writer. Credible publications regularly solicit reader feedback -- positive or negative. If you have the time, try to visit several sites to see how their coverage of the same event or issue differs, if at all.

AG: I have heard of some teachers assigning only "one internet source" for students researching online. I say, don't throw the baby out with the bath water." What do you think are the most credible sources young people can and should use when researching for school?

JB & DM: It, of course, depends on the age of the student. Most major news organizations on the Web (such as Time and Newsweek) have special sites dedicated to "Kids" news. These are generally quite good. Other sites, such as National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and PBS also have extensive kid-friendly sections on their sites. Most high schoolers have the capability and sophistication to use "mainstream" sites, such as CNN.com, MSNBC.com, or the BBC. (A host of suitable sites for all information seekers on the Web, whatever their age, can be found, of course, in Consider the Source.) High school and college students seem increasingly fond of Wikipedia.

AG: And so...how do you feel about Wikipedia as a source?

JB & DM: While we understand that Wikipedia is not without its flaws (it is not always edited professionally, for example, and is subject to personal agendas), its encyclopedic nature makes the site a good starting point for a search of the Web. Wikipedia provides a comprehensive but manageable overview of the given topic. In most cases, the entries are footnoted, with the ability to click the links to original source material. It also provides portals to external sites for further discovery. Again, Wikipedia is a good on-ramp, but it is certainly not the only recommended stop on the information superhighway.

AG: Is there a source or sources you discovered that surprised you in terms of how good it actually is?

JB & DM: Several, actually: AlJazeera.net, which provides a necessary corrective to the often one-sided reporting of the Middle East by mainstream, Western news agencies; NASA.gov, which covers scientific matters with clarity and creativity; AllAfrica.com, an important and comprehensive look at a continent of increasing geopolitical significance; FBI.gov -- a window into a sometimes shadowy but increasingly important government agency; Guardian Unlimited -- if it is happening in the world, the Guardian covers it, extensively and contextually; USA Today, a surprising antidote to the brevity and cuteness of its print edition. There are plenty more sites -- good, bad, and unusual -- revealed, reviewed, and rated in Consider the Source that will surprise even regular, die-hard users of the Internet.

AG: Even with reliable sources like newspaper websites, there are still issues of bias. How would you advise teens when it comes to detecting bias?

JB & DM: Be aware that many, even most, sites do have a bias. That doesn't necessarily make the information incorrect, but it should serve as a reminder that all information is subject to personal interpretation. So, the first thing teens -- or anyone, really -- should do is to become aware of our own biases or prejudices. We all have them, and that's OK. Some Web sites are more candid about their biases. Others embed a highly subjective perspective within their stories and even in their layout. The best defense against bias is breadth of inquiry. Check in with lots of sites -- left, right, and center -- and you'll soon discover that the best way to detect bias is to rely on your own instincts as a reader/viewer and assess the information you've read/watched through the prism of the many sources you consulted. There's no getting past bias, but responsible sites acknowledge it honestly, allowing the reader/viewer to make up his or her mind.

AG: Anything else you think is relevant to helping parents and educators be better "guides" for teens online?

JB & DM: At the risk of sounding hubristic, Consider the Source is really the only guide for teens, parents, teachers, researchers, news junkies, and casual Internet users to the wealth of useful and appropriate news and information on the Web. And as the Internet evolves and new sites become popular with teens and others, the companion Web site, TheReportersWell.com, for buyers of Consider the Source provides updates of sites reviewed in the book and new information on the emergent information landscape. It's as essential to today's Internet users as the Atlas once was at the dawn of interstate travel in the United States.

Posted by anastasia at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I did a lengthy interview with Steve Hargadon for his podcast EdTech Live. Due to my crappy headset combined with Skype, I still sound like I'm talking inside of a tin can. Have a listen anyway!

P.S. Check out the Ypulse interview I did with Renee Hobbs from Temple University about MyPopStudio.com and media literacy.

Posted by anastasia at 2:03 AM | Permalink

There will be a formal press release about this in the coming weeks, but I'm so excited that I wanted to share the news. We have selected the first Totally Wired Teacher to be recognized at the 2007 Mashup in July. Drumroll please...It's Ben Wilkoff, a 7th and 8th grade language arts teacher at Cresthill Middle School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

We received several amazing nominations of totally wired teachers from across the country and the globe. It was inspiring to read about how they are all using social media like blogs, wikis, photo/video sharing sites and social networking in educational ways at school. I worked with Jim Daly, the editor-in-chief of Edutopia, and the amazing team from Yahoo! for Teachers to narrow it down to two finalists. We interviewed both finalists. It was a tough choice, but in the end, we felt like Ben was trailblazing the use of social media and skillfully navigating the challenges of the public school bureaucracy, convincing other teachers, administrators and parents that what he's doing is showing real results.

We are flying Ben to San Francisco, where our founding sponsor, Yahoo! will present him with the award. I want to thank everyone who submitted nominations this year. I look forward to discovering even more innovators next year. You can learn more about Ben through his links:

The Academy of Discovery
Discourse About Discourse (Ben's podcast)

In Ben's own words:

My Twitter account says, "I teach. And learn. A lot." This is no small understatement. My passion for teaching and learning increases with every blog post I read or write, every podcast I create or listen to. Just one meaningful comment from student to student on a blog or a great revision on one of our wiki projects is something special, something authentic, something worth striving for.

Yesterday, I was at Yahoo! giving a presentation to their marketing department. Afterwards I had the privilege of meeting the Yahoo! for Teachers team who gave me a demo of what they are building in collaboration with teachers around the country. I was impressed. The tool they have created allows teachers to build their handouts and other teaching materials online through a version of Yahoo! search limited to content teachers can actually use and that ensures they are complying with state standards. The site also enables teachers to share their teaching materials with other educators throughout the world. It's very exciting. Yahoo! has done their homework and gets that they can't just give teachers another cool tech tool without offering training and support. They are building up a small army of trailblazing teachers, like Ben, that they hope will train other teachers at their schools. In addition, they are offering workshops for teachers on how to use their tool across the country. Here are the upcoming free workshop dates and locations:

Chicago, IL July 2nd, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
New York, NY July 11th, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
New York, NY July 12th, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Austin, TX July 19th, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
San Diego, CA July 28th, 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.

If you know a teacher in these areas, tell them to apply here.

Register today for the Mashup.

Posted by anastasia at 7:53 PM | Permalink

I wanted to let Ypulse readers know about just one of the many cool things we're doing at the Mashup in July. We're going to recognize a "Totally Wired Teacher." The "we" being Yahoo! Teachers (Yahoo! is the founding sponsor of the event) and The George Lucas Educational Foundation/Edutopia.

You may ask, why are you giving an award to a teacher at a "marketing conference"? To which I say (and regular readers know), the Ypulse brand is about much more than just marketing. It's about understanding teens today and all of the forces shaping their lives. With this Mashup, it's technology (social media, mobile), with a future Mashup it will be gaming (just dropped a hint about one of our next events). Since young people spend most of their days in school where more often than not, teachers are struggling just to teach to the test, I wanted to honor a teacher who is pushing the envelope and is actually using social media in the classroom as an educational tool. Derek Baird from Yahoo! Teachers posted an eloquent blog about what we're doing, so I'm going to repost it here:

This July at the 2007 Ypulse Mashup in San Francisco, Yahoo! Teachers and the George Lucas Educational Foundation will honor a teacher who has successfully used social media (blogs, wikis, social networking, photo/video sharing or audio groups) in the classroom.

The winner of the Totally Wired Teacher Award will have successfully navigated their school ecosystem and overcome challenges from parents and administrators in order to use technology, but because they understand how students use social media outside of school, they have persevered and worked collaboratively with students, ultimately sharing their insight and knowledge with the larger teaching community.

If you, or a teacher you know is Totally Wired, you can nominate them by sending and email along with why you feel they are deserving to: Jim Daley at Edutopia.

Posted by anastasia at 7:34 PM | Permalink

I talk about "texting the answers" or cheating with cell phones in Totally Wired, and have also blogged here about the copy and paste syndrome that is happening with teens who literally enter their key word into Google and then copy and paste what they find into their papers (sometimes from Wikipedia!). Now it seems that teens have figured out how to load their iPods or other MP3 players with answers as well. And so of course schools are responding by banning the devices.

The bigger underlying issues here are why students feel that it's somehow ok to cheat and, maybe more importantly, why students feel the need to cheat (poor study habits? too much homework? learning issues?).

CNN wrote this article about the bans in which a 17-year-old makes a very salient point:

Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests -- something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.

"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said. "I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them."

Right. It's not the technology that's making students cheat, post inappropriate photos or any of the negative things teens tend to do, so banning and blocking doesn't really address the core issues...And it eliminates the possibility of using technology in more positive educational ways. Another great quote from the article:

Conversely, Duke University in North Carolina began providing iPods to its students three years ago as part of an experiment to see how the devices could be used to enhance learning.

The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.

"Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle," Dodd said. "I think there's kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they're also thinking about ways it can be used productively."

Posted by anastasia at 12:56 AM | Permalink

When I was in New York, I went into a fancy recording studio to record some audio to help promote the book. The first two clips are now online:

Tips for becoming a Totally Wired parent
Tips for becoming a Totally Wired educator

Have a listen and forward these links to anyone you think would be interested.

Posted by anastasia at 11:36 PM | Permalink

One of the issues I asked teachers I interviewed for Totally Wired about was plagiarism. Plagiarism has always been a problem (and not just with teens), but the internet has made plagiarism a lot easier -- it's basically as simple as copy and paste. And with Wikipedia showing up in the top 10 search results of almost any query, teens will often "plagiarize" a source written and edited by several people. [the Wikipedia folks are working on a more controlled version of Wikipedia with the hope of making it a more credible source]. Part of the problem is that students don't understand what plagiarism actually is -- even if they have some sort of unconscious hunch that they're taking a big short cut. It's up to teachers to really explain how it works, how to paraphrase and most importantly how to cite the source, and which sources are valid.

The other day I spotted this editorial written by a teen about the use of a plagiarism spotting program called Turnitin, which is being used by lots of schools right now. A lot of teachers also just copy passages in question right into Google and find their answer to whether or not a student plagiarized, pretty quickly. The author rightly points out that Turnitin isn't full proof and makes mistakes. She writes:

Recently, I wrote a fifteen-page science term paper and submitted it to Turnitin. According to the site, my work was 32% plagiarized, which I knew was preposterous. After discounting the "plagiarized" works cited information and direct quotes, my paper was still deemed 14% plagiarized.

When I looked at the specific parts of my "plagiarized" paper, I soon realized the ridiculousness of Turnitin. Phrases like "the effects of coronary heart disease" and "dangerous to one's health" were considered plagiarized! These groups of words are fairly common, and hundreds of people would write them. It was even more frustrating when I realized that the site indicated I copied from a website that I did not even access!

Just as technology can't replace good parenting, it can't replace good teaching either. It's not just programs like Turnitin that are far from perfect solutions to real problems, filtering software used by many schools and libraries often "accidentally" blocks educational sites that teachers and students actually need to access. Take plagiarism off the table by teaching your students what it is, telling them it's completely unethical and showing them how to properly cite their sources.

P.S. Teens are also creating their own educational experiences online like this fun quiz site.

Posted by anastasia at 3:41 PM | Permalink

Senator Ted Stevens (R) from Alaska, who may be best known in tech circles for his speech calling the Internet a "series of tubes" has resurrected the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) under the new name -- Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. Andy Carvin nicely summarizes the legislation's three sections:

Title I would force video service providers, online or otherwise, to prevent the distribution of child pornography over their services. It then goes on to require that any site that includes adult materials to not include such materials on their homepage, and embed a mark within their site's pages that identifies their content as adult-oriented. This requirement would be incumbent upon the site's owners, and not the Internet service provider that hosts the site. Failure to do so could land a site owner in jail for up to five years.

Title II, Deleting Online Predators, is essentially the original DOPA legislation, but with some new twists. If enacted into law, it would enforce "a policy of Internet safety for minors that prevents cyberbullying and includes monitoring the online activities of minors and the operation of a technology protection measure with respect to any of its computers with Internet access." The bill would only apply to schools that receive federal Internet subsidies via the E-Rate program. School policy would also be required to protect "against access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room, and informs parents that sexual predators can use these websites and chat rooms to prey on children."

Title II wraps up with a mandate to the Federal Trade Commission to send out a "consumer alert" warning of the dangers of online social networks and other interactive websites. The FTC would also be required to set up a website outlining these dangers.

Title III focuses on protecting children's privacy. This part of the bill would make it illegal for anyone to sell or purchase private data about someone they know to be a child. The title includes an exception for any data that is exchanged with parental consent, such as during an e-commerce transaction.

Title II, or what Carvin is calling DOPA Jr., is a misguided lawmaker's attempt to use legislation to fix some of the messy issues that have arisen from totally wired teenagers' widespread use of the Net. I've been catching up on HBO's "The Wire" on DVD, and in some ways, I feel like forcing schools and libraries to block these sites is like going out to the streets of Baltimore, arresting drug dealers on one corner, only to have the trade move to another corner. Forcing teachers and librarians to block most of the Internet isn't going to eliminate cyberbullying or prevent teens from encountering the occasional predator. And while proponents argue that this legislation does allow an exception "during use by an adult or by minors with adult supervision to enable access for educational purposes, " Carvin points out that "many school districts do not give individual educators the ability to de-activate filters as needed, either preventing them outright or setting up so much red tape that teachers just don't bother."

The real problem is that there are too many senators, parents and teachers who may also view the internet as a "series of tubes." They are not fully internet literate, they don't understand how teens use the web and other technologies in ways that are different from adults, and/or they are too busy working to support their families or teaching to tests to learn themselves. Connecting schools to the internet and buying lots of hardware doesn't do much without lots of teacher training and support. The sad truth is that for most educators, this legislation, if enacted, just takes learning about the educational benefits of this technology and using it in the classroom off the table. And while it may eliminate some of the drama and bullying that can happen on these sites from happening on school computers, it still happens on phones or at home and is talked about at school. It also might be the final blow to a trailblazing teacher who really understands the potential educational value of social media or "Web 2.0" and is using it in innovative and creative ways in the classroom. It also undermines these trailblazers in their efforts to teach teens how to use the internet safely and ethically in a collaborative learning environment.

I really believe the answer to the real issues being raised by these technologies at home and at school will not be found in legislation but in education. Once school administrators, teachers and parents become truly internet literate, they can begin to teach teens how to use it safely and ethically and create policies that work at home and at school. Legislation and filters can't do that for you.

Posted by anastasia at 5:27 PM | Permalink

Since I'm not yet a parent myself, I can only imagine the feeling of fierce protectiveness that emerges around keeping your children safe and guarding against whatever you consider to be negative influences -- whether its people, violent video games or television commercials. Unfortunately, I think that these natural urges can lead to an unrealistic desire to completely unplug or ban the use of technology because it can be a gateway to those negative influences. It's one thing when a parent makes this choice for their own child at home, but another when parents join together to limit or protest technology in schools.

In Totally Wired, I mentioned the Henrico County school district in Richmond, Virginia, which attempted to narrow the digital divide by outfitting every middle and high school student with a laptop computer. After purchasing the laptops and several different educational software packages, the district still spent less than the state average per student. One of the people who received an early copy of the book is Josh Morgan, who managed education PR for Apple from 2001-2004 and said, "this project was one of my babies." He wrote to me after reading the book to tell me what happened in Henrico County from his perspective:

"The painful piece about it was that not everyone was completely on board and several vocal members of the minority who were against the program used it as an excuse to put a new school board in place in 2004, and oust the superintendent, Dr. Mark Edwards, who was the driver of the program. One of the issues was the students' ability to circumvent safeguards put in place and use the iBooks for things such as gaming and downloading inappropriate content. The vocal minority preferred to focus on the technology as opposed to the student behavior behind these issues. Just one more thing to work on, the education of parents and students about what is right and wrong as opposed to focusing on the technology."

One of the education experts I interviewed for the book was John Baily, who was the director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 to 2004 and the director of educational technology for the Pennsylvania Department of Education from 1995 to 2001. He said:

"You can usually trace a lot back to the school or district leadership. I would say that the new digital divide is really a leadership divide. One commonality in any school or district using technology well is an administrator who really gets how technology can enhance what's taking place at school."

Dr. Edwards appeared to be this type of leader. During his tenure:

- Ten of Henrico's 66 public schools have earned recognition as Blue Ribbon schools from the US Department of Education under Edwards' watch.

- HCPS also has earned the Governor's Gold Technology Award twice for its Teaching and Learning Initiative during Edwards' tenure, among a number of other awards.

One of my goals with Totally Wired is to emphasize that when bad things happen with technology at home or at school, that these are teachable moments. The technology didn't download inappropriate content or play video games itself. Students need to be taught how to use technology in ways that are appropriate at school and at home according to thoughtful school policies and parents' values.

Update: From Jim Forde at edtechnot.blogspot.com via email:

You're right Anastasia...things do change when you have kids of your own. Parents don't want their kids exposed to certain content or people if they can avoid it. They can't simply waive it off as a "teachable moment" if something truly terrible could happen and they know they could have avoided it. This is a tough one. (of course the definition of "truly terrible" is the crux of the problem I guess).

Personally, my 14 year old son is on Facebook and is having a blast with it, but we have the computer in a public spot and he allows me to peek over his shoulder and interact with him about some of the content. My 9 year old is currently testing the waters in Club Penguin with the rest of her 4th grade friends. (if you don't know about this you should check it out, it's a tween phenomenon!) This is allowing me to interact with her a lot about social networking within a relatively safe interface.

Posted by anastasia at 4:57 PM | Permalink

I'll never forget being in the seventh grade and hanging out at my friend's house with her older sister and a bunch of her guy friends. They thought it would be fun to "rate" me and my friend. I can't remember what they rated my friend, but the "7" I received will forever be emblazoned in my memory. Some people would say "7" is good, you know, above average. But for me at 12-years-old, it hurt.

The Internet has allowed ratings to flourish. Sometimes they're helpful, like stars on Amazon or NetFlix or sellers on eBay. People, and especially teens, love to rate things and give feedback. It has become a must-have feature for any youth oriented website. But what happens when you start rating people...Take for example the site Hot or Not, which is hugely popular with teens (even though it's supposed to be a dating site for 18 and ups). A friend might post your photo just for fun or a peer might post an unflattering photo out of spite or cruelty -- either way, once the "Not" ratings begin to pile up, you can imagine how that teen might feel once he or she discovers their page.

A similar trend is happening on sites like RateMyTeacher or RateMyProfessor. On the one hand, these sites or using a web site to give public feedback to an instructor seems like it could actually be useful. On the other hand, when students who receive poor grades or who have a beef with their teacher use them, the results can be devastating to both the teacher's ego and reputation. According to this BBC report:

"Kathy Wallis, a senior teacher from Cornwall, says she recently had to talk a young colleague out of resigning over comments posted by her pupils on Rate My Teachers, a US-run site which allows kids anonymously to 'grade,' as well as criticize, their teachers.

'The teacher in question burst into tears and said 'Well if that's what they think of me I might as well give up teaching now',' she recalls.

'[Her students] had said that her preparation was dreadful, she had no classroom control and they made other unfounded malicious comments. Basically they just pulled her apart. It took two days for me to talk her out of resigning.'"

My husband half-jokingly asked me if he should start RatemyTherapist before someone else does (just so he can control his own rating!).

The key here is to teach teens online etiquette, commonly called netiquette or what I call Internet ethics. Remind them that anonymous ratings or nasty comments can hurt just as much as when you know who posted them. And if someone did post their photo on a ratings site without their knowledge or permission, contact the site administrators and get them to remove it. Then be sure to tell your teen they are definitely a "10," over and over.

Are you a teacher who has been "rated"? Do you know a teen who has been a victim of "bad ratings"? If so, post your story in the comments!

Posted by anastasia at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jason Wheeler is one of the teachers I interviewed for the education chapter in Totally Wired. When I interviewed him, he was teaching Texas history and a multimedia class to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at Dan F. Long Middle School in Dallas, Texas. Long is a Title I School, which means that more than 40 percent of the school is on free or reduced lunch, and that white students are in the minority. Long also received a $300 million dollar technology bond two years ago, which means they are decked out when it comes to the latest and greatest tech. What was interesting was what Jason said about the challenges of getting teachers to actually leverage all of this technology at school.

"For the younger teachers who have been around computers their whole life, they can handle the training, but the older teachers have trouble just turning the computers on. So when they get in the classroom, they are scared or nervous to use it."

Not to generalize, because I don't believe all older teachers struggle with this issue and that some younger teachers do struggle with it as well, but just having the latest, greatest equipment isn't enough. Training teachers on how to use it in innovative ways should be part of those big bonds.

Jason also talked about the challenge of becoming too dependent on technology to keep at-risk students engaged when many of his students "still can't use complete sentences or spell."

On a positive note, Jason is now teaching at a high school in the same district and sent me the following photographs showing me how some students in his district are using technology to learn about media. He wrote:

"I wanted to show you the set-up we have in my high school classrooms. The program is called the Academy of Media Arts and Technology. It is a program that was developed in our district to expose our students to media technology which includes video production, radio production, and other types of multimedia. Anyone in the district can apply and be accepted into the program. There are criteria we follow to admit students.

We have a fully functional TV studio with control room and a radio station. We also have both PC and Mac editing rooms to create films and other video productions. The PC editing labs have Adobe Premeire and the Apple Labs have Final Cut Pro 5.1 working on Intel mac pros."

The TV studio

The radio station

Using Final Cut Pro

Update: The MacArthur Foundation posted three forums as part of its focus on digital media and learning where they asked educators the following questions:

1. If you were free to use digital media to teach in any way you wanted, how would you use it?
2. What currently limits your use of digital media in the classroom?
3. What has surprised you about you students' digital media use?

The answers they received (the forums are now closed) are worth checking out.

Posted by anastasia at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wrote about this before in Think Before You Post. This time the incident involved Canadian students provoking a teacher and then recording him losing his temper. They posted the video on YouTube (it was removed later at the request of the school board). From the New York Times article:

"Two students who attend the equivalent of Grade 9 at a school in Gatineau, Quebec, a city across the river from Ottawa, were sent home last week after officials learned that they had posted a videotape of a teacher losing his temper on YouTube. The episode was not spontaneous. A girl, who has not been identified, provoked the teacher while a boy secretly taped the encounter with a compact video camera.

YouTube removed the video at the request of the Portages-de-l'Outaouais school board a week ago, the board president Jocelyn Blondin said. But that has left the question of determining what to do with the students and how to prevent similar episodes in the future.

While Mr. Blondin declined to name the teacher, he said that the man is a 33-year veteran who specialized in teaching students with learning disabilities. The teacher is now on voluntary sick leave, and officials at his union say that he is so embarrassed that he may never return to class."

We're going to continue to see incidents like this happening at school as long as teachers and administrators are not proactive about understanding how students are using (and sometimes abusing) technology. But understanding is only the first step, next comes developing a curriculum that emphasizes online ethics and information literacy. And finally, there needs to be policies put in place to address these incidents when they happen in ways that are fair and consistent.

If any teachers reading work at schools who have developed such a curriculum or a policy, I encourage you to post a comment about your experience or email me and I'll post it online.

Posted by anastasia at 7:37 PM | Permalink

For a lot of teens (and some adults like me who blog regularly), blogging is a way to improve your writing, and in the process, find or stengthen your writing voice. I'm not talking about the majority of blog posts teens write, which are more about communicating, checking in or staying connected to their friends. I'm talking about teens who are using blogs to explore their thoughts and feelings or to express themselves creatively.

As I wrote the education chapter of Totally Wired, I quickly learned that while there are indeed pockets of very innovative teachers and librarians who have embraced social media like blogs, wikis or social networking sites and attempted to integrate them into the classroom, they are in the minority. And even teachers who are open to these technologies have reservations about the fairness of giving blogging assignments when some of their students still don't have Internet access at home. Some of them are also nervous about being able to moderate student posts (and deal with parents' complaints) or feel nervous about either having their own profiles on MySpace that are accessible to students or seeing what's on their students' profiles (especially seeing stuff they're not supposed to see). Still, the teachers I interviewed who had experimented with blogs said they were great for encouraging quieter students to participate. This makes sense given that technology or communicating via technology is much easier for teens who may be very shy offline.

USA Today ran a story this week about some teachers who are using blogs in the classroom and discovering how blogging can be a tool for strenghtening writing skills and encouraging participation. The article rightly points out that one of the biggest obstacles in teachers adopting blogging and similar technologies is the lack of teacher training and support around using technology. Check out the technology resources on the right hand side for teachers to begin exploring and experimenting with social media at school. There are also companies like Gaggle, that are creating social media specifically to be used by schools that automatically filter content and scan for offensive email or blog posts.

Posted by anastasia at 2:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

MyDeathSpace (where MySpace profiles live on as shrines to the deceased...) (via an article in The New York Sun)

- YALSA podcasts (not only are young adult librarians setting up shop in the virtual world of Teen Second Life, they're also recording podcasts with teens and librarians)

- Cyberbullying on the rise (in South Korean - where the social networking site CyWorld is huge)

- 'Own Your Own Space' (Computer company Symantec puts out a book for parents and teens on Internet safety)

- Teen 'text speak' allowed... (on exams in New Zealand) (Textually)

- Behind Bebo (check out this Ypulse interview with an executive from Bebo.com, one of the fastest growing social networks that teens are hanging out on)

- Crossing the Digital Divide (a new blog by Internet safety expert Ken Leebow)

Posted by anastasia at 9:29 PM | Permalink

The latest numbers have revealed that Wikipedia, the user-edited Web encyclopedia, gets more unique monthly visitors than the hugely popular video site YouTube. According to ComScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia sites had about 155 million unique visitors last month while YouTube's unique visitors were around 81 million. When I spoke to teen girls at the Texas Conference for Women, I asked how many of the teens in the room use Wikipedia for their homework. Every hand in the room shot up.

Teens love Wikipedia. Here's why: It almost always comes up in the top 5-10 search results in Google (which is where most teens begin their homework searches), and appears to have all of the information they are looking for. There has been a lot of debate over the accuracy of Wikipedia and where bias creeps in. Since anyone can edit the entries, people with a vested interest in how their company or their own profile shows up can and often do go in and edit.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article where one professor was suprised at how quickly errors he intentionally introduced to the site were corrected by its most active editors. There was also a recent article about the site in the New Yorker that's worth a read. The crux of the debate is really over who determines what's credible -- the gatekeepers in academia or anyone who just happens to be knowledgable. Whether or not you think Wikipedia is a credible source, you have to admit that it has evolved into a huge user-generated body of knowledge that's well, pretty awsome.

Frances Jacobson Harris, a high school librarian I interviewed for the book, told me when she is was teaching students about Wikipedia, she would point to someone in the room at a computer and say they could be editing an entry right now, she had her class look at the "history" of an article, which shows the IP addresses or nicknames of those who have edited it, and realized that the most recent edits were coming from her very own classroom. (see her comment below) What I tell teens is that Wikipedia is an amazing place to begin their research and get an overview, but that it's probably not the best reference material to source in a research paper. If there is a fact or assertion in a Wikipedia entry they want to use, try cross referencing it to find another credible source to back it up. The biggest challenge for teachers and librarians with Wikipedia is pushing students to go beyond what's easy, fast and almost always in their top 10 search results.

Posted by anastasia at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

KAOL and Red now free (AOL's kids and teen services are now free for anyone to use as are their parental controls)

- Where do you not want your kids to go today? (Microsoft's new Vista operating system, set to launch next year, will have a big emphasis on parental controls) (San Diego Union-Tribune)

- Cellphones give UK parents peace of mind (a new study says parents reassured, like to call teens. Teens, of course, prefer to text their parents) (BBC)

- This might destroy that peace of mind ("Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety surveyed teens on their biggest distractions while driving and found cellphone texting at the top of the list.") (COX News Service)

- Reading a bedtime story (from your laptop...The International Children's Digital Library is working to create a digital library of children's books that will surpass 10,000 volumes by 2008.) (via Cool Hunting)

- Using the Web to create social change (teens are connecting with other teens around issues they care about online, and now there are sites devoted to helping them do just that) (USA Today)

Posted by anastasia at 1:18 AM | Permalink

Bits & Bytes will be a regular feature that rounds up interesting Totally Wired tidbits in one post.

ABC is easy as 123 (a new study says poor children may see increases in literacy rates through the frequent use of cell phones) (Media Life Magazine, second item)

- Wired journalist and former hacker creates MySpace pedophile-hunter bot (Kevin Poulsen wrote and released code that matches up registered sex offenders to their MySpace profiles [the ones who use their actual names] and finds hundreds of matches. But just like with any technology solution, each case requires human investigation to determine who these people actually are. Update: You can read about how Kevin's code actually caught a predator here.) (Boing Boing) (Wired)

- Unrated (one professor wonders if she's actually missing valuable, honest feedback from students by not showing up on increasingly popular websites where students rate their teachers) (Washington Post, reg. required)

- Gaming may make kids smarter (a new study shows that the way video games are built "in surprisingly pedagogical ways") (Newsweek)

- Decorating their space (the latest Nielsen Netratings show that the most popular sites with teens right now are those that feature ways for them to customize and personalize their MySpace profiles. This is a shift from three years ago, when it used to be all about choosing istant messenger buddy icons) (.pdf download)

- Peering through a vritual microscope (The New York Times, reg. required, on how science educators and the College Board are questioning whether virtual education, at least for science classes that require lab work, measures up to the real thing)

And over on Ypulse.com, I posted two interviews recently worth checking out. The first is with Lauren Bigelow, General Manager of WeeWorld North America. WeeWorld is a community based around "cheeky" avatars teens can customize and then use when they instant message each other. It's big in Europe and is headed our way. The second is with Michael Wilson, CEO of There.com, the virtual reality game that has become increasingly popular with teens. They are also the company that helped MTV create "Virtual Laguna Beach."

Posted by anastasia at 9:59 PM | Permalink

I'm just going to reprint this press release straight up. It's a must-attend press conference in Second Life (which means most of us will probably wait and watch the Webcast....)

MacArthur Foundation Press Conference and Panel Discussion on Digital Media and Learning

Thursday, October 19, 2006
10:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. ET
Second Life Venue: NMC Campus Amphitheater (113/97/26)
(NOTE: Please join "NMC Guests" group for access to Amphitheater)

Webcast Link: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=35992 (beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET)

Topic: Are kids different today because of their exposure to technology? What role do video games, cell phones and social networking websites play in the development of today's children?

On Thursday, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will make a major announcement that will generate a greater understanding of the impact technology and digital media has on today's youth.

You are invited to join the press briefing LIVE via Second Life or via a special Webcast. You can participate in this panel discussion with some of the greatest minds and most influential voices in the fields of technology, digital media, education and learning.

Panelists and influential audience members will include:

* Dr. Mizuko Ito, Research Scientist, Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California , studying new media

* Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

* Howard Gardner, the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

* Dr. Nichole Pinkard, Director of Technology and Research Associate, Center for School Improvement, University of Chicago, working to expand after-school media literacy programs

* Eric Zimmerman, CEO and founder, gameLab, working to develop new games to support media literacy and design skills in young people

Posted by anastasia at 8:25 PM | Permalink

There is this myth out there that all of the communicating teens are doing with technology, whether it's instant messaging or texting, is making them less literate by writing in shorthand. The reality is that while teens do use shorthand to communicate, it's not as often as you might think and it is actually fairly inspired. They are being creative with the language in a medium that is inherently short form.

Sali Tagliamonte, a professor at the University of Toronto, studied the IM chats of 71 teenagers for two years. She charted how frequently the following acronyms were used per 100,000 words by teens:

IM term and frequency of use per 100,000 words
lol (laughing out loud) - 195
omg (oh my god!) - 107
brb (be right back) - 31
ttyl (talk to you later) - 30
btw (by the way) - 22
nvm (nevermind) - 7
gtg (gotta go) - 5
np (no problem) - 4
nm (not much) - 3
lmao (laughing my ass off) - 2

One of the teachers I interviewed for the book tipped me off to this NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) article published in 2003 about what teachers can do when these types of acronyms accidentally creep into student papers. They can teach! From the article:

"Valorie Carmer, who teaches at Grain Valley High School in Missouri, says students give her 'a perfect introduction into writing for an audience' when they use an e-mail form of abbreviation in final copies of assignments.

After fielding questions such as 'Why would you be writing to this audience?' and "What type of vocabulary would be appropriate for this audience?' she says students generally find their way to talking about how the abbreviations aren't really acceptable beyond conversations with friends.

Carmer says the effort is worth it. 'I find my students begin to think more about whom they are writing to after we have had this discussion.'

So instead of seeing teen texting or IMing away as the death knell of the English language, try viewing it as a positive and an opportunity to teach about when it's appropriate to use acronyms...and when it's not. TTYL.

P.S. Google launched Google for educators today. The site offers "a teacher's guide to 12 Google products, including basic information about each tool, examples of how educators are using them, and lesson ideas." Looks like a great classroom resource...

Posted by anastasia at 2:54 PM | Permalink

Hurray for young adult librarians! Many of them are doing the heavy lifting of teaching teens how to navigate the Web for research as well as how to use it ethically for everything else. I received this email yesterday from Alexandra, a reference/young adult librarian in Illinois sharing about what teens in her library have been up to:

"I'm reference / young adult librarian at the Homer Township Public Library in Homer Glen, IL. I read YPulse everyday and often recommend it to other librarians interested in teen services. I saw your Totally Wired Blog and am very excited about the Totally Wired Book!

We have a Teen Webbies group (whose name will be changing to Teen Techies soon) that works on our teen website. The group started as part of our Teen Summer Intern program. They loved working on the webpage and evaluating sites for our del.icio.us account so much that we decided to make them a permanent group at our library. This summer we also started our teen reviews blog. We also participate in an online book discussion with 5 other libraries in various US locations. I'm excited for the release of your book and hope that it will provide me with info that I can pass on to our group!"

Keep these emails and examples of the great work you are all doing coming....

Posted by anastasia at 7:52 PM | Permalink