Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

6.11.10 | Risks of Parenting While Plugged In: As part of its series examining how a deluge of data can affect the way people think and behave, The New York Times looks at what happens within families when parents are distracted by their technological devices and children compete for time with smart phones and laptops.

As to the possible long-term effects, Sherry Turkle, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiative on Technology and Self, makes a succinct point in a related (and very useful) Times discussion forum: “The problem is not whether children are intolerant of any moments when they have their parents’ full attention. This is, of course, something that children have to learn. What is a problem is a child has “learned” that parents are systematically taken to “another place” by their connectivity devices. What you don’t want is a child who from the beginning sees technology not as a tool but as the “competition.”

Turkle has spent the past five years studying how parental use of technology affects children and young adults. Findings from 300 interviews will be published in 2011 in the book “Alone Together” (Basic Books).

The Smithsonian’s Got an App for That: The Smithosonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced the release of a mobile application for the exhibit “Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers,” making it the first Smithsonian institution to do so.

Available at the iTunes App Store for $1.99, the app provides an overview of the exhibition, highlights of selected artworks, and video and quotes from the artist himself. The creation of the app represents “a commitment to technology that enriches the experience of visitors on- and off-site,” according to this press release.

Plus: Check out the Smithsonian’s “Digitization Strategic Plan (PDF), via ResourceShelf.com.

Encouraging Collaboration & Conversation: Writing at DMLCentral.net, Liz Losh profiles Trebor Scholz, a media activist and educator who teaches in the New School’s Department of Culture and Media. For a final exam, Scholz’s students had to submit “print-on-demand publications that consist of at least 10,000 words and display real production values.”

There’s lots of good stuff in the piece about 21st-century classrooms and dismantling hierarchies. Here, Scholz critiques the cliché that young people are naturally “digital natives”:

In his view, the concept initially encouraged much-needed attention to informal digital learning but was eventually too often misunderstood.

“The idea of the ‘digital native’ was useful to examine youth growing up with the Internet.  But it is now clear that not all learners born between 1980 and 2000 grew up using the Internet in a way that makes them automatically skilled users. Digital immersion should not be mistaken for media literacy.”

Underage Social Networkers: Anne Collier of NetFamilyNews.org points to a UK study that found a quarter of British 8-to-12-year-olds who use the Net at home have profiles on social-network sites. The minimum age is usually 13.

“Given similarly high levels of Internet use on both sides of the Pond,” writes Collier, “I doubt U.S. figures for underage social networkers would be much different (I’m aware of no parallel study done in the U.S.). Ofcom also found that 37% of 5-to-7-year-old home Net users had visited Facebook (but didn’t necessarily have a profile). The good news is that 83% of 8-to-12-year-olds with profiles have them set so that only social-site friends can see them, and 4% have profiles that can’t be seen at all.”

Google Adds Security, Loses Schools: “Last month, Google launched an encrypted version of its Web search, allowing users to enable a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection to encrypt their information. Like several other Google products that feature SSL encryption, including email and Docs, Google touted this move as a step towards enhancing users’ privacy and security,” writes Audrey Watters at ReadWriteWeb.

But there was a downside: “As the encrypted searches mean that data cannot be logged, filtered, or blocked, Google’s new secure search runs afoul of CIPA, the Children’s Internet Protection Act. And with the service’s beta release, many schools are now facing some difficult decisions in how to respond.”

Google has responded to the story, noting that the search for a solution is underway. In the meantime, “an imperfect and temporary fix is to enable our SafeSearch lock feature.”