This presentation looks at Africa not as a place, but as a brand and calls on African youth to make a change. With 60% of the population under 25, the role of young people in the
developing a new Africa is immense.
Thanks to Three Billion for the heads up on this excellent presentation!
This is a really good report by CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick on how teachers are embracing mobile phones and using them as a learning tool in the classroom.
So many educators spend so much energy fighting against technology and trying to limit its use in the classroom. There is a digital disconnect between how students use technology in the classroom and how they use it out in the real world.
Instead of pushing forward with the "the internet (along with social networking and mobile phones) are bad" mantra that is all too prevalent in American schools, why not focus on the positive benefits of emerging technologies and find ways that they can be integrated into the classroom curriculum?
Explaining the Hype Around Augmented Reality:
Tech circles are abuzz about augmented reality and the future of mobile utility and marketing.
AR, as it's called, marries real-time video and digital information. On
phones, it uses GPS coordinates and the mobile camera to activate
additional text, photos or hyperlinks relevant to a location. [Ad Age]
Gossip Girl Makes NYU Look Like a State School: All in all, NYU officially owns Gossip Girl, and the show will
now only drive up the rate of bratty midwestern teens lusting after an
NYU degree because they think it means glitz and glamour instead of
$200,000 of debt. [NYU Local]
How age impacts social-gaming monetization: New data released by Gambit, a
micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both
customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The
major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you
dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot. [CNET]
Social Sites & Video Games Can Raise IQ: After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students
aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ,
literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their
class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to
The Telegraph. [NetFamilyNews]
A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges: Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering.
Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing
information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained
private U.S. colleges cannot survive. [Washington Post]
Tweet O' The Week: "Zombie community leader angrily denies Twitter reports of zombie attacks during the #SydneyDustStorm". via @darrylmason
Americans Serious About Casual Game Play: Solitaire may be as sticky as World of Warcraft. While users
of casual electronic games (card games, puzzles, etc.) spend less time
per session playing them than those playing non-casual games (role
playing games, shooter games, etc.) they are just as likely to return
to them months later. Read the Executive Summary. [Nielsen Wire]
Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum:
With a new school year in full swing, Ars takes a look at the RIAA’s
newly updated copyright curriculum. Your kids could be learning from
it—so what does it say? (This is a total #FAIL) [ArsTechnia]
E-Reader Wars Heating Up: We believe that Apple will be in an excellent position to capture
these younger customers due to its overwhelming success in capturing
this market with their IPod and other products. Not only is Apple a
Generation Y (and to some extent Gen. X) brand of choice, but many of
these younger potential e-readers will be disdainful of Amazon’s
proprietary, or “closed,” format (thanks Ypulse!). Also related: A Kindle in Every Backpack. [Seeking Alpha][Barking Robot]
MySpace Beats Facebook with Twitter Sync: MySpace began rolling out new functionality today that allows users to sync their MySpace status updates with a Twitter feed. [HypeBot]
A concept paper published in July by former members of the Obama-Biden
transition team, titled A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for
eTextbooks in American Schools, suggests we consider an innovative plan to spread
eTextbooks around the country, rapidly scaling up employment of the
technology so that we can learn, adapt, and perfect its use quickly. It
describes the case for an eTextbook system in three parts.
In Part One, the report discusses the multiple reasons why eTextbooks like Amazon's Kindle are a much better approach for our nation’s students.
The reasons they are superior include the ability to update eBooks
relatively cheaply and easily, environmental and health benefits (such
as reducing loads on young backs and shoulders), and the enormous
opportunity to make texts more exciting and interactive—like the other
tools children use today and that compete for their attention.
In Part Two, this paper discusses the economics of this approach.
Cost estimates in the education world are notoriously sketchy and often
self-serving, but it seems clear that over time an investment in these
tools would produce big savings.
Also of interest is an article in the September/October 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine titled, "Will the Kindle Change Education?" The article does a really good job of weighing in on both the pros and cons of using the Kindle in the classroom.
A lot of education folks have focused on using the mobile phone as the primary device to usher in the age of mlearning (mobile learning).
But perhaps we should be paying more attention to e-book devices like the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook or the (rumoured) Apple tablet as the more viable mlearning option to delivering media rich and digital content to kids at school.
A lot the currentresearchshows that when kids go to school they are disconnected from how they live outside the classroom. Either way, what's important is that we take a look at and try using any resource or tool--including e-books--that gets kids' more engaged and invested in their education.
The Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) in the UK has launched an innovative and free e-learning course for adults and those who work with children to help them beef-up their digital web skills.
The easy to navigate site has a self-directed "interactive guidance course and quiz to help families manage
the risks while enjoying the benefits of the web."
The primary goals of the myGuide initiative is to address many of the top parental concerns about the web, including phishing and spam, as well as chat rooms, music
file-sharing, and safety filters.
The site
stresses the importance of open family discussions and where to go for
additional information and help. At the public launch of the new resource, Children’s Minister Delyth Morgan said:
“Today’s generation of children and young people are often much more computer savvy than their parents, something that can be of great concern as
mums, dads and carers look to keep their children safe online without
restricting their enthusiasm for and exploration of the Internet.
The
free myguide service is designed specifically for people in this
situation. The new Family Internet Safety guide will help people become
more knowledgeable about the risks and how to manage them.
Thanks to DK, over at MediaSnackers, for the heads-up on the myGuide program.
Girl Scouts & Microsoft Launch Online Safety Site: LMK (text speak for 'Let Me Know') was created with help from teens and from industry experts, to provide teens with the know-how to safely navigate their digital life and help parents to understand what their teens are doing online. Which is a good thing, since a research conducted by Common Sense Media found that most parents are pretty clueless what their kids are doing on social sites. [Girl Scouts of America] [Common Sense Media]
University of California 11th Campus Online? : The University of California's 10 campuses, facing severe budget cuts,
may no longer be able to educate as many students as before. One surprising solution in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece: Open an 11th campus, online. Which, according to a new study reports that online education actually beats face-to-face classroom learning, might not be such a bad idea.[Chronicle of Higher Education] [Ypulse]
Kia "Soul Collective': In an effort to deepen their ties with youth, Kia has also launched a nationwide, youth-oriented program, titled "Kia Presents The Soul Collective." As part of the campaign, Kia is partnering with young
and modern thought leaders, brought together to form The Soul
Collective, from different disciplines including music, film, design,
and gaming to show exactly "how they roll" through their respective
mediums. [Barking Robot] [Kia Motors America]
Coca-Cola & BuzzNet 'Sounds of Buzz': Coke, BuzzNet & Stereogum are partnering together on a site that provides live concert & music festival updates, music videos, news & ticketing information. So, are you ready for American Idiot the musical? Also, PacSun, the premier surf clothing wear company, has a newly updated music site. Check it out, it's pretty sweet! [BuzzNet] [PacSun]
Tweet O' The Week: "I swear one day I'll be able to convince some members of my family that new technology isn't just a fad." (via @plasticbagUK) [Twitter]
Texting may rewire young brains: Texting is not only a nuisance for teachers struggling to keep their
students' attention - it's a brain-altering habit, according to a new
study.
Researchers say text messaging trains young people to be speedy yet sloppy. [The Globe & Mail, via @sydneyeve]
Troubled Teens Learn Culinary Lessons: Founded in 1982, the Teen
Home serves girls who are pregnant or new moms. The facility can house
up to 12 girls and their babies, many of whom have been ordered into
state custody or are homeless. A juvenile-court judge has recruited a world renowned chef to teach them the culinary basics.[Salt Lake Tribune]
Yodeling Mamas: Yahoo! has launched 'Yodeling Mamas' a new parenting blog written by Yahoos who are moms, including--Jeanne Moeschler--one of my favorite Yahoos! She was a great advocate of the Yahoo! For Teachers & Ypulse Totally Wired Teacher Award. [Yahoo!]
Disney XD Targets Boys & Scores Big Ratings: While Disney Channel targets tween girls with female-centric shows like "Hannah Montana" and "Sonny with a Chance" and movies like "Princess Protection Program," Disney XD is giving the boys what they want. According to the latest ratings figures, the boys are tuning in. [All Headline News] [Ypulse]
Online Petition Stalls German Video Game Ban: German government plans to ban violent video games will have to be put on hold, after a successful internet petition by German gamers. [Guardian]
Tweet O' the Week: "IBM is afraid of Microsoft who is afraid of Google who is afraid of Facebook who is afraid of Twitter who is afraid of whales." (via @jowyang)
The iPod is Dead. Long Live the iPod: The iPod as many of us have known it is on the wane and giving way to a
more feature-rich family of devices that in time will bear little
resemblance to the trailblazing digital music players that helped Apple
capture 70% of the North American market. [Yahoo! Finance]
How Social Networks Will Transform Marketing: Consumers will still use Facebook, LinkedIn
and such, as they do today. What's different is that OpenID and similar
capabilities will enable consumers to traverse the web, and have their
networks flow with them. [MediaPost]
Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook: This site
gives teens a chance to get back at their parents for taking away their
"public privacy". They understand that Facebook is a public place, they
just don't want their parents on it. Sort of like teens not wanting
their parents to hang out at the mall at night. [Examiner.com/LA]
"The
essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads
to action while reason leads to conclusions." - Donald Calne
Last week, for those of us who work in the youth digital media space, a big chunk of everyone's attention was focused on the 'Youth Media Consumption' memo written by an intern at Morgan Stanley.
While many folks were debating its merits and findings, a much less publicized event took place that asked teens not "how" they use the web, but instead focused on the emotion behind "why" they use the web.
The Web Makes Me Feel (TWMMF) is a project headed up by MediaSnackers,
a leading UK youth media consultancy, that explored the emotional
responses to the social web among 13-19 year olds living in the UK.
Why focus on emotion?
Emotion is a very persuasive hook that, sometimes even more than logic and reason, influences the choices we make, what we buy, or where we go on the web.
Emotion can also drive user adoption and/or motivate people to use (or not) certain types of technology (think iPhone or Kindle) or social networking sites (think Twitter and Facebook!) and in an e-learning environment, emotional resonance is the glue that holds students' attention and fosters student retention.
As part of the TWMMF project, the MediaSnackers team distributed 500 postcards to 13-19 year olds and asked them to describe in one word how the web makes them feel. Respondent's were then given one additional line to explain the reasoning behind their choice. In all, MediaSnackers collected over 143 different emotions.
The TWMMF website contains an aggregation of all the emotions collected (over 431 cards) and, here's the really slick part, allows users to explore all the responses and dig deeper by drilling down to look at the results for each word by age and/or gender.
Some of the key findings:
Top 10 Emotions: Happy, Connected, Good, Excited, Free, Entertained, Bored, Interested, Socialble and Independent.
Gender: Compared to males, the web makes females feel just as positive, negative and neutral as men.
Age: The web makes youth feel more positive about the web at 13 years old than they do at 19 years old.
Positive/Negative: Overall, the web makes youth feel more positive than negative, with over 56% of feelings expressed classified as positive.
Blurred Lines: Our emotions, combined with the social web, are having an impact on our 'real' lives. The line is quickly being blurred.
The TWMMF project and website were rolled out on July 15th at an event held at NESTA and attended by both participants, researchers and other members of the social media community.
At the launch event, the MediaSnackers team asked several of the attendee's 'How Does the Web Make You Feel and Why?' The responses from the video interviews mostly seemed to dovetail with the results of the postcards.
One response, in particular, caught my attention.
When asked the question, this gentleman responded that the web makes him feel guilty. At first I thought this was an odd response. He went on to explain that the web made him feel guilty because at times he felt an internal conflict between his offline and online life.
Ahhh, there it is--the perfect summation of what this project is all about! He felt conflicted because he had made the same emotional connections in his online relationships as he had in his offline life.
Beyond metrics, demographic research, user-experience design, usability studies and other measurable (rational) aspects--in many cases what actually drives our use of the web is emotional resonance.
Many times parents, educators, media and government types draw
conclusions about Millennials, social networking and their 'always-on'
lifestyles using a methodology based on rational facts and data
crunching, failing to give the social
and emotional dynamics of teens and technology any consideration.
This project also confirms what the Millennials having been trying to say about the social web all along: it's not about technology, it's about relationships.
Declaration of Independence from Social Media (For One Day): "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to
dissolve the digital bands which have connected them with all of their
friends they haven’t seen since preschool, and to assume a life away
from the computer for one day, a respect for other Internet users
requires that the person should declare the causes which cause them to
separate from social media for that day." (Very clever and worth reading!) [Examiner]
Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter & CNN: According to Compete.com,
Bing was able to amass 49.57 million unique visitors in its first month
as Microsoft’s official search engine. Bing’s traffic trumps that of Digg38.96 million) Twitter (23 million), and CNN (28.54 million). We want to note that this focuses on U.S. visitors, since Compete does not track international visits. [Mashable]
Tweet of the Week: "If Google bought
Twitter, it wouldn't get a new feature for 3 years. If Apple bought it,
tweets would be .99 but you'd get a 10 character preview."[@DanielFlorien]
Raising a Healthy Gamer: Parenting is always a tough job, and video games are a tricky subject
in today's families. Ars offers a
no-BS guide to dealing with gaming and your children, and their advice is
simple: you know your children better than anyone else.
Also be sure to check out video game parenting tips from the folks over at Microsoft & XBox 360 along with safety tips from Yahoo!, Disney and AOL. Just keep in mind that your kid is probably smart enough to hack your parental controls. [ARS Technica] [Yahoo! Safely] [AOL Parental Controls]
One Last Thing: Check out this mashup of the Michael Jackson classic 'Billie Jean' by Soulwax (great, great stuff!), Julia Fallon offers advice for educators Lost in Web 2.0 Cyberspace (pdf), a must-read article with fantastic ideas for teaching kids about media literacy & body image (thanks @tandrusiak!), as grandpa & grandma join Facebook--teens begin to bail, according to new research from BabyCenter 39% of moms report that they make 'net time' their quiet time, Crain's New York Business wonders if Bruno can save MySpace, and finally...don't tell Al Gore, but the environment is not the number one social cause among college students (pdf). [YouTube][Princial Leadership] [MyHighPlains.com] [Read Write Web] [Crain's New York Business] [SurveyU]
The Real Life of Teens: The media portrays teens as being 'sexting', binge-drinking louts - but
it's just a variation on a centuries-old stereotype. Why are we so
afraid of young people? (This is such a great column, well worth reading and a refreshing portrayal of Gen Y.) [Irish Times]
Gen Y Still Love Mum & Dad: They might be young adults making their own way in life, but a new research published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that the wired wonders of Gen Y still value the advice of their parents. [Courier News]
Google Generation is a Myth: Research conducted University College London claims that, although young
people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on
the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and
analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web. [JISC]
Tweet of the Week: "For the record, I
keep my billions of virtual dollars tucked safely under my virtual
mattress with a virtual rottweiler protecting (via @elusivefish)." Speaking of virtual currency... [Twitter][Virtual World News]
Hot for Teacher?: A teacher accidentally put pornography into a DVD that was meant
to be filled with school memories from the past year, and nobody caught
the error until after it was sent home, shocking parents and students
alike. Hey DJ--cue the music!. [CBS News][MTV]
Calling Bullshit on Social Media: "For starters: social media is a stupid term. Is there any anti-social media out there? Of course not." I love this blog post. So. Spot. On. And long overdue [scottberkun.com]
Storytelling 2.0: Penguin Books have launched a great new site that allows kids to play
in an unlimited online space where they can create their own virtual
stories, books and games for just $10. Once created they can send them
to friends to watch, read or play and save them to their own virtual
bookshelf. [Digital Buzz via @liamom]
Best Buy® Mobile Survey: Of all Americans with mobile phones, 62% say they use text messaging,
mostly because it's a convenient and quick way to communicate. More than
one-third (37%) say they use texting to avoid long or tough
conversations, and over one-quarter (27%) say they use it because they
dislike talking on the phone. One-quarter feel it's a great way to
flirt, particularly among the 18-24-year-old set (39%).
[Business Wire]
The Ypulse 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award (sponsored by Dell) will honor a
trailblazing teacher who has successfully pioneered the innovative and
educational use of technology, mobile technology, social media (blogs, wikis, social networking,
photo/video sharing) in the classroom.
The award is inspired by Ypulse founder Anastasia Goodstein’s book, Totally Wired: What Teens & Tweens Are Really Doing Online,
and the challenges she observed around integrating technology into
public school classrooms. We will recognize a teacher who has overcome
these challenges and is inspiring both students and other educators.
The award-winner likely had to
overcome challenges from parents and administrators in order to use the
technology, but because they understand how students use social media
outside of school, they persevered with their initiative and worked
collaboratively with students, ultimately sharing their insight and
knowledge with the larger teaching community.
Representatives from Ypulse and Dell will choose three finalists to
interview by phone. The selected teacher will be honored in person at
the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup June 1-2 in San Francisco.
All three
finalists will receive a IT solution from Dell to use in their
respective schools. Teachers can nominate themselves. You can get all of the details about how to nominate a teacher (or if you're a teacher, how to nominate yourself!) over on Ypulse.
"Cole W. Camplese, director of education-technology services at
Pennsylvania State University at University Park, prefers to teach in
classrooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and another to
project a Twitter stream of notes from students.
He knows he is inviting distraction — after all, he’s essentially
asking students to pass notes during class. But he argues that the
additional layer of communication will make for richer class
discussions.”
What’s the point of Twitter? Should educators incorporate Twitter into their curriculum? What difference does using Twitter and other types of social media make in the learning process?
High School students at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis are using social media tools and unblocked access to the Internet and as a result are engaged in the learning process in a whole new way.
In this video, put together by the University of Minnesota, a teacher explains how having discussions about their English class online has increased their level of attention and engagement in their studies.
Like most of you, in the course of a week I run across a lot of really interesting stuff. But blogging about it all has become increasingly difficult.
I thought I'd do a quick link post each Friday to share the best stuff I've found during the week. So here we go, the very first edition of the Weekly Wrap:
Teen Brains Clear Out Childhood Thoughts: Anyone who works with teens should read this article about the inner workings of the teen brain, along with new cognitive research and synaptic pruning.
Online Video Network Helps Teens Prepare for College: Recognizing that today's teens spend more and more of their time
online, however, a new video-based network aims to offer extra learning
and college preparation in a format that's more natural for digitally
savvy high-school students.
Teen Uses Web for Tuition Help: No money? No problem. Teen creates website to raise enough money to attend the University of Notre Dame.
Disney Buys Kaboose: Disney Interactive Media adds to it's growing suite of family and kid friendly sites. Also included in the deal is Fun School....does this mean that Disney is (finally) going to be more active in the educational digital media space? Fun School along with Disney-owned Kerpoof would provide a great suite of educational technology for teachers, parents and families.