Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The Parent App: a book for all Educators !







Time to time I like to present you some books that can help us as teachers or care givers, even as parents to raise the new generations.

I did it on Ah! Les JeunesJoy Sorman & François Bégaudeau (French, 2010), Generation Internet, John Palfrey (English, 2009) Le BavardageFlorence Ehnuel (French, 2012) and other.

Today, I would like to present The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age by Dr. Lynn Schofield, a researcher at the University of Denver, in the field of the 'dramatic' changes (I really prefer to talk about the changes) in digital and mobile media era in Education



Photo: Alamy | The Guardian

Raising children in a "dotcom world" (I like this definition), points us how young people and their parents and teachers (why not?) are navigating a decade where digital and mobile media are changing our relationships and our societies. 

Digital and mobile media offer new opportunities for connection as well as new causes for concern. 

How should parents, teachers, caregivers, and other concerned adults respond to the new dilemmas that these media bring into our lives? 

Based on more than 10 years of research with young people and those who care about them, this book draws and expands upon how teens and pre-teens are using digital media to tell stories about themselves and connect with peers. She also examines how parents are attempting to make sense of media-generated challenges - everything from eyebrow-raising content to cyber-harassment on social networking sites.




"Ninety-five percent of American kids have Internet access by age 11; the average number of texts a teenager sends each month is well over 3,000. More families report that technology makes life with children more challenging, not less, as parents today struggle with questions previous generations never faced: Is my thirteen-year-old responsible enough for a Facebook page? What will happen if I give my nine year-old a cell phone? " 

Not only the American kids. All kids in developed countries have Internet access or use a cell phone or have a page on Facebook.

More than that, young students use the Internet in the classroom and use their smartphones or tablets to study at school or at home.

“Technology,” Clark points out, “is enabling people to live very individualistic lives within the family.”

Clark also asked students to conduct and record Skype interviews with their parents. In these, students quizzed their parents about their intentions and policies related to digital and mobile media. The resulting discussions helped Clark think critically about her arguments. Read more here


Some thoughts:

As a tech speacialist in Education researching in the field of ICT & Curricula and Safety, of course, I am connected all the time.  

I spend my day on the Internet reading articles, writing as blogger or as an academic (sicentific articles) but that is my job.  

I do wonder about how that is affecting my family, so I do explain to them that I am not playing video games (as they do when they are on their 'phone'), I am working.  And working is what allows us to have resources to do all the fun things they like to do.  

My two cents in the conversation today is that technology will change completely by the time young people have cell phones and friends to text with. 

All I can do is to teach my students restraint, self control, politeness and other character qualities I deem important while watching my own behavior and choices with technology and social media to include them in school curricula.

Using a wonderful mix of narrative and analysis, Clark invites parents and teachers    to understand what is unfolding so that they don’t feel so trapped.

The Parent App is more than an advice manual. Technology changes too rapidly for that. Rather, Clark puts parenting in context, exploring the meaning of media challenges and the consequences of our responses for our lives as family members, scholars and as members of society.

G-Souto

18.06.2013
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The Parent App: a book for all Educators ! by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


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