4 Teens Sued for Obscene Fake Facebook Profile http://bit.ly/tQYe0
Monday, September 28, 2009
4 Teens Sued for Obscene Fake Facebook Profile
Cyberbullying Research Center
Downloadable and Distributable Materials
http://www.cyberbullying.us/resources.php
The Challenge: A publication of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools
The School Bully in Cyberspace
Teens live highly digital and media-rich lives with more communications choices than ever before. The media explosion is influencing our youths in ways never imagined.
According to the 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project report Teens and Social Media, by Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill and Aaron Smith, most teens spend time online, and about 50 percent of those who use the Internet have at least one profile on at least one social networking Web site. Youths use such sites to stay in touch with friends and make new ones. The Pew findings note that 28 percent of teens using the Internet maintain a blog to write about their lives, ideas, goals and dreams; to post photos; and to create and share videos. In addition, the report states that 80 percent of teens own at least one form of what is defined as “new” media technology—a cell phone, personal data assistant, or computer with Internet access.
Read more:
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Cyberbullying | MVParents
Cyberbullying
Older children or teenagers may bully via text messaging, social networking sites, chat rooms, and other forms of digital or online communication. For the most part, cyberbullying is defined by the same characteristics as other bullying. There are some significant differences, though, that deserve mention.
Read more:
http://www.mvparents.com/high-risk-behaviors/bullying/cyberbullying
Saturday, September 26, 2009
RU kidding? Research finds that chatspeak has no impact on children's spelling ability
Public release date: 21-Sep-2009
Contact: Jamie Hanlon
jamie.hanlon@ualberta.ca
780-492-9214
University of Alberta
RU kidding? Research finds that chatspeak has no impact on children's spelling ability
Parents, get ready to say OMG and watch your teens roflol.
This will prolly comes as a bit of a shock to UR system, but findings from a group of University of Alberta researchers show that language commonly used in instant messaging has no effect on your child's spelling abilities. If anything, says study author Connie Varnhagen, using language variations commonly used in instant messaging and texting is actually a good sign.
Varnhagen's findings come from a class-based study that was recently published in Reading and Writing. A group of third-year psychology students proposed and designed a study to test whether new Simple Messaging Service, or SMS, language—also known as chatspeak—which refers to the abbreviations and slang commonly used when texting, emailing or chatting online, had an influence on students' spelling habits. The group surveyed roughly 40 students from ages 12 to 17. The participants were asked to save their instant messages for a week. At the end of the study, the participants completed a standardized spelling test.
Students' use of chatspeak is only one shared concern between parents and educators about children's spelling abilities. But, with a growing usage of connected resources such as Skype, Facebook and Twitter, understanding the relationship between this virtual dialect and use of the Queen's English is of significant importance.
While the researchers expected there to be some correlation between poor spelling and chatspeak, Varnhagen said they were pleasantly surprised by the results.
"Kids who are good spellers [academically] are good spellers in instant messaging," she said. "And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging."
What was surprising, though, was how chatspeak use and spelling played in the battle of the sexes. Girls used more chatspeak than boys, who preferred to express themselves through repeated use of punctuation. However, the study found that boys who used chatspeak and abbreviations more frequently were poorer spellers. Conversely, girls who used more abbreviations were better spellers than girls who did not use many abbreviations in their messages.
Nicole Pugh, a student researcher and one of the study's co-authors, was amazed at the complexity and volume of chatspeak that the students were using.
"Going through the participant conversations, it was interesting to note how many new words that children are using online," said Pugh. "We would have to decipher the meaning of the language with online dictionaries or by asking younger siblings."
Varnhagen and Pugh both agree that the results of their study should ease some concerns and even open up discussion on how this language can be perhaps be embraced within an educational or academic context.
"If you want students to think very precisely and concisely and be able to express themselves, it might be interesting to have them create instant messages with ideas, maybe allow them opportunities to use more of this new dialect in brief reports or fun activities," said Varnhagen. "Using a new type of language does require concentration and translating it to standard English does require concentration and attention. It's a little brain workout."
###
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uoa-rkr092109.php
Study finds intervention program increases kids' healthy eating, reduces screen time
Public release date: 25-Sep-2009
Contact: Mike Ferlazzo
ferlazzo@iastate.edu
515-294-8986
Iowa State University
Study finds intervention program increases kids' healthy eating, reduces screen time
AMES, Iowa -- A new Iowa State University study found that a family, school and community intervention program helps children live healthier lives and could be a new tool in the fight against the nation's childhood obesity epidemic.
In the study, children who participated in The Switch® program -- a program developed by the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) -- watched an average of two fewer hours of television and also consumed two more servings of fruits and vegetables per week than those who weren't in the program. Program participants also walked 300 more steps per day.
"The successes in this study were modest, which is what one would expect," said Iowa State Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, the lead researcher and director of research for NIMF. "People usually make incremental changes, but those add up over time."
In addition to Gentile, the 10-member research team included ISU researchers Greg Welk, an associate professor of kinesiology; and Dan Russell, a professor of human development and family studies; as well as former Iowa State kinesiology professor Joey Eisenmann. The research team authored a paper on their results, which has been posted online in BMC Medicine Evaluation, a professional journal in the United Kingdom.
The researchers evaluated the eight-month intervention program in a group of 1,323 students (third, fourth and fifth graders) and their parents from 10 schools -- split between Lakeville, Minn., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Measures of the key behaviors were collected three times from the children -- prior to administering the program, immediately after it was completed, and six months following its completion.
The Switch® program encourages children to "Switch what they Do, View and Chew™" and features three components: community, school and family. The community component promotes awareness of the importance of healthy lifestyles using paid advertising, such as billboards; and unpaid media, including editorials. The school component reinforces the Switch messages by providing teachers with materials and methods to integrate key health concepts into the school day. And in the family component, participating families receive monthly packets containing behavioral tools to assist them in altering their health behaviors.
"The program is designed to be a more comprehensive approach to childhood obesity prevention," Gentile said. "It results from several lessons we learned, while creating interventions over the past 15 years. One is that focusing on kids can work, but unless the family's on board, you're not going to get much movement. So the ideal program would be to work at multiple ecological levels all at once so that people are getting repeated, parallel, overlapping messages at the individual, family and community levels."
Gentile reports that the positive effects on children remained significant at the six-month follow-up evaluation, indicating maintenance of these differences over time. In fact, they increased slightly following the intervention, which may contribute to reduced weight risks in the future.
"To me, the strongest finding is that we found stronger results in the six-month follow-up than at the end of the intervention -- and that's unique," said ISU's Welk, who studies exercise and health. "That would imply that the lessons took hold after the intervention and families have had time to apply them to their lives."
The ISU researchers are planning further analysis of the data gathered in this research for future studies, including one that will explore a "booster" component of The Switch® program.
###
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/isu-sfi092509.php
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Top 50 Acronyms Every Parent Needs to Know
http://www.netlingo.com/top50/acronyms-for-parents.php
Top 50 Internet Acronyms Parents Need to Know:
1. 8 - Oral sex
2. 1337 - Elite -or- leet -or- L337
3. 143 - I love you
4. 182 - I hate you
5. 1174 - Nude club
6. 420 - Marijuana
7. 459 - I love you
8. ADR - Address
9. AEAP - As Early As Possible
10. ALAP - As Late As Possible
11. ASL - Age/Sex/Location
12. CD9 - Code 9 - it means parents are around
13. C-P - Sleepy
14. F2F - Face-to-Face
15. GNOC - Get Naked On Cam
16. GYPO - Get Your Pants Off
17. HAK - Hugs And Kisses
18. ILU - I Love You
19. IWSN - I Want Sex Now
20. J/O - Jerking Off
21. KOTL - Kiss On The Lips
22. KFY -or- K4Y - Kiss For You
23. KPC - Keeping Parents Clueless
24. LMIRL - Let's Meet In Real Life
25. MOOS - Member Of The Opposite Sex
26. MOSS - Member(s) Of The Same Sex
27. MorF - Male or Female
28. MOS - Mom Over Shoulder
29. MPFB - My Personal F*** Buddy
30. NALOPKT - Not A Lot Of People Know That
31. NIFOC - Nude In Front Of The Computer
32. NMU - Not Much, You?
33. P911 - Parent Alert
34. PAL - Parents Are Listening
35. PAW - Parents Are Watching
36. PIR - Parent In Room
37. POS - Parent Over Shoulder -or- Piece Of Sh**
38. pron - porn
39. Q2C - Quick To Cum
40. RU/18 - Are You Over 18?
41. RUMORF - Are You Male OR Female?
42. RUH - Are You Horny?
43. S2R - Send To Receive
44. SorG - Straight or Gay
45. TDTM - Talk Dirty To Me
46. WTF - What The F***
47. WUF - Where You From
48. WYCM - Will You Call Me?
49. WYRN - What's Your Real Name?
50. zerg - To gang up on someone
Friday, September 18, 2009
Coach sued for requesting Facebook logins
Coach sued for requesting Facebook logins At issue: Do school leaders have a right to snoop into students' private online accounts?
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=59969
Prediction from one of my lawyer friends: school will lose.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Internet as a Diversion | Pew Internet & American Life Project
Three-quarters of online economic users--those Americans who use the internet to keep up with news about the economic recession or their own personal finances--go online to relax and take their minds off of the recession, according to an April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
Listening to music and watching online videos are among the most common of the activities we evaluated; roughly half of all online economic users have done each of these activities to relax. Approximately one-third of online economic users have played online games or chatted with friends (on a social networking site, listserv or other online group), while an additional 22% have taken their minds off of their economic or financial circumstances by creating or posting content online.
Young Americans in particular go online in great numbers to relax by watching videos, listening to music, playing games or chatting with friends.
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/16--The-Internet-As-A-Diversion.aspx
iKeepSafe - C3 Matrix
The iKeepSafe Digital Citizenship C3 Matrix is provided here to assist educators in integrating the essentials of cyber-safety, cyber-security, and cyber-ethics (C3 concepts) into existing technology and literacy standards and curricula. Based on the C3 Framework created by education and technology expert Davina Pruitt-Mentle, the iKeepSafe Digital Citizenship C3 Matrix takes a holistic and comprehensive approach to preparing students for 21st century digital communication. The Matrix outlines competency levels for C3 concepts divided into three levels: basic, intermediate, and proficient.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Vista's Parental Control Tools - CBS News Video
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2598243n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
Vista's Parental Control Tools
September 19, 2007 5:46 PM
Only On The Web: Larry Magid gives the lowdown on Microsoft's Vista parental control tools. They allow parents to control how long kids can use the computer and Web sites they can visit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)