Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Global Youth: Africa is the Future

The youth and branding Africa

View more presentations from G. Kofi Annan. (@G. Kofi Annan)

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!

Weekly Wrap: Facebook Social Plugins, How to Create Foursquare Events, Apple Shutters Lala, What is Facebook Saying About You, Social Metrics Tools & More!

Facebook’s New Social Plugins: 50,000+ Websites in One Week: Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative. [Mashable]

Apple To Shut Down Lala: In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud? [TechCrunch] 

What is Facebook Saying About You?: Yee’s tool shows you exactly what data a developer would get when it asks Facebook for info via the API, such as your name, birth date, location, etc. and also any public information such as your “likes”, your photos and so on. [GigaOm]

Summer Music Watch: Jennifer Lopez Does a Cover of Donna Summer's "On The Radio" [Ryan Seacrest]

The Future Of The Web is HTML 5: Did we mention that 2010 would be a big year for HTML5? Apple and Google are pushing it big time, and now so is Microsoft. When Internet Explorer 9 comes out, it will support HTML5 and help make it more common across the Web. [TechCrunch]

Millennials: This generation is diverse, educated and plugged-in: Gio Acosta says that on any given day there are only two hours in which he is not texting, doing something on his cell phone, or on Facebook, or playing games on his laptop or PS3. Acosta is exactly what Kaiser Family Foundation recently found in a study: That to say today's young people are wired is an understatement. It’s an integral part of their daily lives. [PennLive.com] [Barking Robot]

Edelman Digital Social Metrics Tools: Last week Suzanne shared a few tools to help you find new folks to follow on Twitter to kick-off a new focus on tools and resources for online engagement. I wanted to continue this trend by introducing you to a few blog analytics tools! [Edelman Digital]

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Teen Driver Program: NHTSA has developed a multi-tiered strategy to prevent motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries among teen drivers: increasing seat belt use, implementing graduated driver licensing, reducing teens' access to alcohol, and parental responsibility. Related: Get the 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan [NSTSA] [Barking Robot]

Guide to Creating Foursquare Events: There are some reasonable and relatively simple ways to incorporate Foursquare and encourage audience participation at your next event. [Tradeshow Insight]

Texting Poetry Inspires Kids: Once considered a disturbance in the classroom, cell phones, texting devices and other wireless technology are being embraced by some of the very same people who used to malign them: teachers. [Record Online]

End Bullying Now: Here's the link to the Josh Shipp & Brooks Gibbs 'End Bullying Now' Teleseminar! [Barking Robot]

2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community, we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher Award provided by Dell. Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in contact with. [Ypulse]

Teachers vs. Texting: School Embraces Mobile Phones [Video]

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?

Related: Joan Ganz Cooney Center Study on Mobile Learning

One iPad Per Child: Seton Hill to Give All Students iPads

Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.

Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that “Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.”

Can you imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn.

via www.crunchgear.com

Related: Announcing The 2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award Sponsored By Dell

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Conventional wisdom about young people’s use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today’s teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth’s social and recreational use of digital media.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces.

This project was one of many funded by the MacArthur Foundation to explore digital media and learning. New projects in this area are being aggregated through the Digital Media and Learning Hub.

Global Youth: What Youth Think | 2010 Youth Trends Report

Partnering with youth marketers, culture and trend experts from around the world, Graham Brown (the force behind mobileYouth) have crowd-sourced an impressive amount of research on global youth trends and shared his findings in a series of three presentations.

What Youth Think: 2010 Youth Trends Report presentations are a must see for youth marketers, media planners, educators, youth pastors and anyone else who works in the youth space.

So sit back, take notes and enjoy. Then let's all meet up at the Carrot Mob!

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 1

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 2

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 3

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

Weekly Wrap: Augmented Reality 101, Social Gaming Monetization, Gossip Girl vs. NYU, Facebook Bullies, Media Literacy Resources, DARE the Movie & More!

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]

Speed Round: The DARE movie trailer debuts on Access Hollywood, BullyingUK offers tips for teens being bullied on Facebook, stats on mobile phone coupon usage in Japan, there's a new version of the Journalists Guide to to Multimedia Proficiency, media literacy tips for parents from Knowledge Essentials, parents & school leaders who are uneasy about youth and online spaces really need to listen to danah boyd (mp3) and finally....which augmented reality start-ups are most ready for market?

A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools

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.

Finally, in Part Three, this paper outlines how we could implement such a plan, and why there could be broad-based support for it.

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 current research shows 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.

Related: Amazon's Jeff Bezos Gives Away Kindles To His Alma Mater, Asks For Feedback

Weekly Wrap: Coca-Cola's Teen Mobile Marketing Strategy, Social Media Statute of Limitations, Facebook Privacy, Youth in Revolt & More!!

Coca-Cola Targeting Teens with Mobile Marketing Strategy: Millennial's are using their handsets to communicate, consume media and befriend brands more than at any point in the past and as a result Coca-Cola is increasingly turning towards mobile marketing to reach the teenage and young-adult generations. [mViews]

At-Risk Students Make Multimedia: A team of college professors and K-12 teachers discovers how building video games can elevate student performance. [Edutopia]

Games lessons: Since the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games. [Economist]

Blog, poke, twitter and be damned: We need a 'statute of limitations on stupidity' for our youthful online indiscretions – otherwise only the drones will thrive. (AMEN!) [Guardian]

(List) What the Internet is Killing: The article is hardly surprising given the massive shifts the Internet brings to society, but it does raise a debate about what will be missed from a bygone era and what will be rightly forgotten. [PSFK]

U.S. Universities Plan Course to Navigate the Mobile Learning Curve: It is imperative that colleges and universities around the country include mobile as part of their marketing communications strategy if they want to continue to attract, retain and satisfy students and school supporters.

Platogo: user-generated content comes to browser gaming: It's a fascinating endeavour, and there seems to be a real emphasis on quality rather than quantity - the UGC stuff is also nicely implemented in the games I've played. [Guardian]

Tweet O' the Week: "I really have become addicted to Klondike bars for breakfast... they're like square frozen bowls of cereal --- they're practically vitamins." (via @DougCoupland)

Youth in Revolt: The plot of this teen film feels episodic, but not in a bad way, with Arteta squeezing an impressive number of set pieces into 90 minutes. Well-placed animated sequences -- a mix of stop-motion and CGI -- keep things moving along at a perky clip. [Variety]

10 Tips to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook: Facebook statistics show that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends. More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over 70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy. [MakeUseOf.com]

Speed Round: Ypulse posted this hillarious list of 'Random Thoughts of People Our Age', TechFlash wonders if New Google is the Old Microsoft, Mike Schmid--one of the talented musician's who backs up  Miley Cyrus on her tour has a List of Rules for all you tweens and finally....in the UK Boy Scouts have been forbidden to Carry Pen Knives! [BangItOut.com] [TechFlash] [It's All True] [Free Range Kids]

Weekly Wrap: Fox Twitter #FAIL, MySpace is Dead, UK TV Revolution, Ad Literacy 101, Too Much College Debt, RIP Zune & More!

A Revolution in TV as Content Moves Online: There's a revolution going on in television but you may not necessarily be watching it on the set in your living room. Online viewing of programmes in the UK will more than triple in the next few years, according to the latest forecasts, boosted by new video on demand websites offering the best British and US shows to users for free. [The Guardian UK]

A Textbook Discount: The Bigwords free iPhone App works to take some of the sting out of the experience through a complex calculation to find the best textbook deals, whether than means buying new, used or digital, or just renting. [NYT]

Fox's 'Twitter on TV' Experiment Irks Fans: Fox’s idea of “tweet-peats” would combine reruns of popular new shows Fringe and Glee, with producers and members of the cast tweeting their show commentary as the episodes rolled. [Mashable]

Ad Literacy 101: Ads are often enjoyable for kids. They're also pretty ubiquitous. So it might be counterproductive to act as though all advertising is dumb or boring or evil, or to make your kid feel guilty for partaking of it. The goal here is rigorous critical thinking, and good/bad dichotomies generally fall into the "simplistic thinking" category. Life is much more complex. [Brett Berk in Babble]

Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats: Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. [San Francisco Chronicle] 

A Sneak Peek at Obama's Speech to Schoolchildren: On September 8th, President Obama will speak to American schoolchildren. I got a look at an early draft... [Huffington Post]

Is A College Education Worth The Debt?: A college degree has long been considered a golden ticket to success in this country. But with the current economic recession, some question whether obtaining a college degree is worth going into debt. [NPR]

New College Majors for Changing Times: The Chronicle of Higher Education says colleges are now offering new disciplines for students, including a major in the science behind customer service. [American Public Media]

Speed Round: UK considering 'No Fee' degrees, teachers are using Twitter to connect with students, teachers discover how building video games can help at risk students do better in school, an Ofcom study finds young people want advice about online privacy (thanks Tania!), according to HitWise MySpace is Dead..long Live Twitter, Zune doesn't pass Microsoft's 'death panel' and finally....new data from comScore shows that teens now LOVE the Twitter! (At least until next week when another study will show that they don't love the Twitter!) [BBC] [SA Blog] [Edutopia] [eGov] [Josh Dhaliwal] [GadgetLab] [Mashable]

Weekly Wrap: Sears to Sell Toys (Again), MTV Mobile Marketing, Riley Project for Charity Water, Virtual Goods & Britney Spears, Cheskin on Chinese Youth & Facebook for Grandma

Return to Toyland: Sears, famous for its Christmas Wish Book, has announced that it's returning to the toy business in time for the holiday season. Also, Costco has pulled a controversial doll from its shelves after customers complained it was racist. [LA Times] [KTLA]

MTV Youth Marketing Uses Mobile to Promote Setting Goals: MTV launched a new multi-platform advertising initiative inviting youth to publicly share something they feel strongly about. [MobileMarketer]

The Riley Project: After learning that 5,000 kids die a day because they do not have clean water, 7-yr-old Riley Goodfellow wanted to see what 5000 kids dying a day looked like. She drew 5,000 lines to help people understand how many kids die a day. It took her about 4 days to make the lines. Riley is now collecting donations to fund new wells in Africa through one of my favorite organizations--Charity Water. [Riley Project] [Charity:Water]

NAEP on Technical Literacy: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has released a draft framework for the national assessment of technological literacy, the first to gauge students’ understanding of and skill in using a range of tools, has been presented to the board that oversees the testing program. [Education Week]

Virtual Goods, Real Money: Virtual goods represent one of the strongest ways that marketers and retailers can get involved with virtual worlds, and their popularity in social networks has increased with the opening up of the Facebook platform. This potential gold mine has inspired Britney Spears to launch her own line of virtual gifts on Facebook. [eMarketer] [Britney Spears.com]

Less than 1/20 Social Networkers Pay Attention to Ads: Research out today by LinkShare (via the Internet Advertising Bureau) shows that only 4% of users have ever clicked on an advert on a social network. [Social Media Today]

Miley's Choice: Over on Ypulse, Anastasia Goodstein has an excellent essay about Miley Cyrus' and her risque "pole dance" performance on the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. [Ypulse.com]

Tweet O' the Week: "One of the few holy traditions that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all hold sacred in common? S'mores." (via @sacca)

Cheskin on Chinese Youth Culture: China’s New Culture of Cool provides answers to these questions and more. LiAnne Yu, Cynthia Chan and Christopher Ireland take a fresh, easy-to-read look at the emerging, affluent and influential middle class of China. [Cheskin]

Speed Round: A 11-year old interviews President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is bullish on mobile phones in the classroom, research conducted by Common Sense Media found that parents aren't hip to what their teens are doing online (shock! awe!), Ars Technia has compiled an excellent privacy guide for Facebook (thanks Anastasia!) and Rookie Moms has a Facebook guide for grandma, Glyndŵr University is hosting a conference on how youth and community work practice can respond to the digital transformation of society, and finally........CNN asks if the Twitterati can sell your soda pop! [ABC News] [Tech Disruptions] [Common Sense Media] [Ars Technia] [Rookie Moms] [Glyndŵr University] [CNN]

Weekly Wrap: Gen Y Love Mom & Dad, Google Generation, Best Buy Mobile Survey, MySpace as 'Digital Ghetto', Millennial Stereotypes & Calling BS on Social Media

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]

One Last Thing: Corporate types pledge to be more open about tracking consumers online, according to some experts MySpace is now a 'digital ghetto', a new study by FUSE Marketing shows that teens love events, Steve Wheeler on e-learning 3.0 (think mobile!), the abstinence movement gets rebranded, two college kids get a book deal for 'Twitterature', and Nickelodeon launches video games with a pro social message (also related). [AP] [TransComic] [BrandFlakes] [Steve Wheeler] [Alpha Mommy] [Galley Cat] [MediaPost] [Press Any Key]

Weekly Wrap: Twitter & Social Media in Education, Television 2.0, Social Gaming, Boomers & Social Media, Virtual Worlds Growth Spurt, BackTweets & TwitterCal

Higher Education is Stuck in the Middle Ages: In this article Don Tapscott, youth guru and author of Growing Up Digital, outlines the clash between the model of learning offered by big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital learn. The entire U.S. education system is woefully behind when it comes to using social media (and mobile devices) in the classroom. [AlterNet]

The Hidden Problem with Twitter: Speaking of the Middle Ages, this article stirs the pot by asking if the texting and Twitter habits are "hurting" the English language. Perhaps we need to take a cue from our Aussie friends and look for a way to use social and mobile media to help educate the Net Generation.  [HigherEdMorning.com] [University of Melbourne]

More on Television 2.0: Is the TV business dying or does it have a second act? Television networks are actively looking for ways to hold onto Gen Y by interjecting more social media and even 3D television features into their programming.

In an attempt to hold on to younger viewers, MTV is launching It's On with Alexa Chung, while the BBC is placing its bets on a new interactive TV studio. Or will 'traditional' TV networks be replaced by young upstarts like Halogen TV which is featuring both webisodes and traditional distribution outlets for its content?

Virtual Worlds Booming: Market research firm Strategy Analytics released its forecast for growth within the virtual worlds sector and said it sees the global population of virtual world users growing from 186 million today to almost 640 million by 2015 -- that's almost one hundred million new players a year, a nearly 25 percent compounded annual growth rate. [Virtual Worlds News]

Boomers Crashing the Social Media Party: According to iStrategy Labs, Facebook's seen its 35-54 demo membership blow up by 276.4 percent between June 2008 and January 2009. The 55-and over contingent grew 194.3 percent in the same amount of time. In comparison, that ever-so-sought 18-24 group bounced just 20.6 percent.

The total number of Facebook users aged 35-plus in October 2007 totaled just fewer than 845,000, while as of this past January, their combined might totals just less than 8 million - 18.9 percent of the total Facebook pie. [MediaPost]

Young Obama Official Helped Keep Twitter on in Iran: According to The New York Times, there's a steady flow of information on Twitter largely thanks to the efforts of a 27-year-old State Department official named Jared Cohen, whose job is to advise the department on how to use social media to promote U.S. interests in the Middle East. [MTV News]

One More Thing: According to experts social gaming is the next big thing, use Backtweets to see which tweets link to your site, mobileYouth has a list of youth marketing & trend Twits on Twitter (thanks Graham!), get a sneak peak of Josh Shipp's new tv show--"Jump Shipp", tweet to add appointments to your Google Calendar, more on Millennials and Twitter and an Iranian Gen Y writes about Revolution 2.0!

Also, thanks to all of you who took part in Operation 55 Zebra! Go David Go!

Global Youth: International Study on Children's Use of Mobile Phones

The Mobile Society Research Institute, based in Japan, has compiled an international study looking at how kids in Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Mexico use mobile technology in their daily lives. Over 6,000 youth between the ages of 9 and 18 and their parents were surveyed on a range of questions regarding their use, attitudes and feelings toward mobile phones.

Key findings of the MSRI Survey

• Mobile phone technology has become ubiquitous among youth. Key drivers of mobile adoption are age, desire to remain connected with their friends via mobile messaging and network externality.

• Network externality is the process whereby as the number of people who use a certain product increases around its user, the benefit of owning the product for the user also increases. When network externality takes effect, the adoption of the product increases.

• The network effect of friends starting to use mobile phones was also found to be a key trigger for take up of phones by children across all the countries surveyed. The survey found that 24% of children bought their mobile phone when one of their three closest friends bought a mobile phone. The network effect was strongest in Japan and China, and weakest in Mexico.

• Children who use mobile phones show a higher level of trust in new media and a slight increase of distrust of "old media" formats such as newspapers, tv news or radio.

• The survey found that 4% more girls owned a mobile phone than boys, and 9% more girls who did not own a mobile phone wanted to.

• Contrary to theories that mobile phones can be an unwelcome distraction for children, the study found no effective correlation between children’s ownership and usage of mobile phones and the time they spent on other activities.

• Children tend to view their mobile phone as an "information gadget" for communication, especially via mobile email or SMS/text.

• Among those surveyed who send/receive mobile SMS/texting and/or mobile email tend to view their mobile phone as an "essential device" in their life. Moreover, mobile email/SMS technology is used more than "traditional" voice communications. The network effect seems to play an important role in the acquisition of these behaviors.

• Ownership of mobile phones by children has a direct correlation with age, being female, parental income, parental emphasis on education, use of video games and computers.

Use of Mobile Phones Varies by Country

• Among Japanese youth mobile phone use accelerates at Jr. High and High School. In addition, Japanese youth tend to focus more on the functions of their mobile phone than the design.

• The study found that Korean youth are among the youngest to begin using mobile phones. The more the parents emphasize education, the earlier they are to get their first mobile phone. Moreover, Korean youth are more likely to trust in new media than they would in traditional media sources.

• Unlike other countries, the survey found that Chinese boys were more likely to own a mobile phone  before Chinese girls. In addition, the "network effect" appears to play a stronger role in the adoption of mobile technology among Chinese youth.

• In India, children are more likely to share a mobile phone with their entire family (parents included) rather than own their own mobile device. Moreover, unlike China and Japan, the "network effect" plays almost no role in when or what age Indian children begin using mobile technology.

• Mexican children, according to the survey, were more likely to choose a mobile phone based on the design features and the network externality and mobile messaging are in full play.

Parental Concerns: Mobile Phones & Kids

• Among the children surveyed, 60% of parents expressed some concerns about their children using mobile technology.

• Out of the five countries included in the survey, Korean parents were the least likely to voice concerns about their children's ability to access information via the mobile web.

• In Korea, information on mobile phone safety is primarily distributed by parents, teachers and friends, mobile operators/vendors and finally the government.

You can download the entire report by clicking here.

Related Resources

• mobileYouth
• Fisher & Baird: Making mLearning Work
• Joan Ganz Cooney Center > Study on Mobile Learning
• Governments Move to Restrict Mobile Phones for Kids
• New Stats on American Youth & Mobile Phones
  

Weekly Wrap: Education Embracing Twitter, Student Wikipedia Hoax, Advice for Tweens, Social Media Squatters, Social Music & Youth Marketing Tips

Economic Slump Slows Down Summer School: "The economic downturn has prompted many school districts to reduce funds for summer school. That's bad news for students who need remedial work and for those who are taking summer classes to advance a grade." [NPR]

Embracing the Twitter Classroom: Huffington Post blogger Jessica Gross takes a look at the battle over the use of social media going on in our schools between kids, parents and teachers. Jessica has a brilliant observation: "This argument is akin to that for abstinence-only education. Kids with access to the Internet are going to use it whether or not their parents decide they're "ready."" Amen. Also, check out my previous posts on using Twitter in education. [Huffington Post]

Student Uses Wikipedia to Punk World Media: Looks like the mainstream media (MSM) need to take a course on digital literacy and basic research techniques. I think this also points out that youth have a better understanding of web credibility that adults give them credit.  [Irish Times]

Stars Dish out Advice for Tweens: A new tween survival guide, 113 Things to Do By 13 written by 14-year-old blogger Brittany MacLeod features advice and tips from young Hollywood stars. Wonder if Brittany will be at the 2009 National Tween Summit in DC?  [Yahoo! OMG]

Noika to Launch 3G Phone for Emerging Markets: Nokia has announced the Nokia 2730 classic, a phone that includes 3G data connectivity and tools for emerging phone markets. This should be a boon to educators to deliver content and instruction via mobile learning platforms. [MobileBurn]

How to Handle Social Networking Name Squatting: Julia Angwin lays out some steps that may, or may not work when someone is social squatting on your name. [WSJ]

5 Messaging Tips When Talking to Youth: Great youth marketing tips from the folks over at Campus Media Group. [Campus Media Group]

The Rise of Social Music: Mashable has a great post tracing the history of audio on the web and the rise of social music services like Last.fm, Blip.fm and MySpace. It also takes a peek into the future and looks at the rise of mobile music. [Mashable]

The Latino Initiative: Between 2005 and 2006 the teen birth rate increased 3% - the first increase in 15 years. This increase occurred among most ethnic groups - among Hispanic teens, the increase was 2%. The National Campaign’s Latino Initiative focus on helping the Latino community in its efforts to reduce continued high rates of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing. Plus, Bristol Palin talks to People Magazine about teen sex and life as a teen mother. [People Magazine]