Category: Social Media
2017 Law Promotes Media Literacy for students in WA Schools
On Thursday, April 20, our bill became a law! Governor Jay Inslee signed it with AME representatives Barbara Johnson, Nick Pernisco and Marilyn Cohen present. The law will go into effect on July 23.
This bill, ESSB 5449, is a follow up to SSB 6273. That bill made us the first state in the country to pass media literacy legislation, making Washington the model state. Read more about our success passing SSB 6273 here.
Now media literacy legislation has moved still another step forward in Washington with the passage of a second bill ESSB 5449 in 2017.
In speaking with the group, Governor Inslee noted how this bill was addressing an important subject.
Multiple news articles have come out to coverage the passing of this bill:
- King 5: New law promotes digital citizenship for students
- U.S. News: New Law Promotes Media Literacy, Internet Safety in Schools
- KEPR TV: New law promotes media literacy, internet safety in school curriculum
View images from the bill signing below.
Navigating The New Abnormal: Tips for Parents
As part of our launch of Media Literacy Week, we are excited to promote the work of Dr. Don Shifrin, Emeritus Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at University of Washington – School of Medicine as he helps us to understand important concepts around screen time and digital citizenship while we are all participating in remote learning. Watch AMEs interview with Dr. Don by viewing the links below:
Dr. Don Shifrin has been a beloved pediatrician to his patients for 40 years as well as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington. His knowledge and active interest in the field of Media Literacy have earned him an often self-proclaimed role of a “Mediatrician.”Dr. Shifrin has been a very active member of the American Academy of Pediatrics throughout his long career. He has testified before Congress, represented the Academy on national task forces, chaired an Academy committee, led media training for Academy leadership, and was the co-editor for the Academy’s first parent newsmagazine, Healthy Children. You may recognize him from the AAP’s “A Minute for Kids” radio program and from other radio and television spots where he often expertly speaks about media issues as they relate to our nation’s children. His views on navigating the media literacy issues of today offer invaluable advice to parents, teachers and children of all ages.
Michael Danielson is AME’s Chairperson. He has been a teacher at Seattle Prep for 26 years. He has been teaching Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship for decades, but most recently in a semester course for 9th graders. He is also the EdTech director helping to train teachers and students in the best use of technology. Michael has been a writer for the Center for Media Literacy.
Action for Media Education Announces a New Initiative: The Corona Multimedia Showcase
Action for Media Education Announces a New Initiative: The Corona Multimedia Showcase
For Immediate Release
Date: 6/3/2020
If we could ask kids around the world what they’re thinking and feeling right now, what would they say? Action for Media Education (AME) https://action4mediaeducation.org is inviting young people from ages 3-19 and their families to participate in an international online exhibit of creative work that reflects their lives in this time of COVID-19.
More than 40 countries are participating in the Corona Multimedia Showcase initiative. Now AME seeks entries from young people across the United States.
The Showcase provides a platform for children, youth and their families to create and display media projects in a variety of formats. These projects will be digitally published on our Showcase website.
The Showcase is intended to provide young people around the world with the opportunity to:
- Express their thoughts, feelings and ideas
- Engage them in reflecting critically on their work and support their best efforts
- Help them share their experiences with other young people and their families around the world
- Provide a place for them to display their creative work and express their own unique voices
- Inspire hope and demonstrate that we will persevere, with our courage and creativity, during this crisis and into a new future
Please help us spread the word to your family, your community and those with whom you work.
- Submissions and participation are free.
- This is NOT a competition but a festival celebrating the creativity of children and youth throughout the world.
- The deadline for submissions is October 9, 2020. All projects (reviewed by a large group of experts) will be posted on the Showcase website by the end of October.
To submit an entry, find ideas and resources, and join the conversation:
Corona Multimedia Showcase https://coronashowcase.org/
Twitter @coronashowcase
Instagram #coronashowcase
Facebook Corona Multimedia Showcase
For more information, please contact: Marilyn Cohen, macohen@uw.edu
Media Literacy Grants Awarded!
Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction made history when it recently announced the first group of recipients for our state’s new media literacy grant program. This is the first grant program focused on media literacy offered anywhere in the nation!
Funds were awarded through a competitive process to 12 school-based teams.
Grant Awardees for 2019-20:
- Ballard High School (Seattle SD)
- Bryant Elementary School (Seattle SD)
- Castle Rock SD
- Central Valley High School
- Columbia River High School (Vancouver SD)
- La Conner SD
- North Central ESD 171
- Port Townsend SD
- Selah SD
- Soos Creek Elementary School (Kent SD)
- Tacoma SD
- Whatcom Intergenerational High School
Teams could apply for curriculum grants of up to $25,000 or planning grants of up to $5000. The five teams receiving curriculum grants were Ballard, Central Valley High School, North Central ESD 171, Soos Creek Elementary, Kent SD and LaConner SD in collaboration with high schools in Burlington, Mt. Vernon, and Anacortes. The remaining six teams received planning grants.
All grant recipients will focus on developing media literacy-based curriculum units that can be integrated into social studies, English language arts or health classes. All units will be shared on the OER Commons Washington Hub so that they can be easily accessed by teachers across the state.
The new media literacy grant program was established with a $300,000 allocation from the 2019 Legislature. $150,000 was available for this grant round. The next grant cycle will be announced in Spring, 2020 when another $150,000 in funding will be available for distribution.
Action for Media Education (AME) continues to promote and advocate for media literacy education. Please follow us on Facebook. We encourage you to stay tuned to AME for more media literacy-related happenings in our state in 2020!
Joanne Lisosky Interview: Media Literacy Week challenges students to be critical media consumers. Adults, too.
Media Literacy Week asks people to think hard about the information they’re consuming, and asks teachers to talk about it in their classrooms. PAULA WISSEL / KNKX
Educators in Washington state — and around the world — are spending time this week talking about media literacy. It’s part of a special week designed to boost students’ understanding of how different forms of media function.
“When it comes to media literacy, we mean everything,” said Joanne Lisosky, who taught media studies at Pacific Lutheran University prior to her recent retirement. Social media, visual media, aural media — any outside stimulus counts.
“Media literacy education didn’t start in the U.S.,” she said. “It started in Europe and Australia and Canada. You can’t graduate from high school without having a class in media literacy.”
“When it comes to media literacy, we mean everything,” said Joanne Lisosky, who taught media studies at Pacific Lutheran University prior to her recent retirement. Social media, visual media, aural media — any outside stimulus counts.
“Media literacy education didn’t start in the U.S.,” she said. “It started in Europe and Australia and Canada. You can’t graduate from high school without having a class in media literacy.”
That’s not the case in the United States, and Lisosky worries that makes Americans more susceptible to being tricked by fake news.
Washington state officially recognized Media Literacy Week when Gov. Jay Inslee signed a proclamation in 2016. It encourages teachers across the state to talk about media literacy in their classrooms.
But media literacy is important for adults, too, and Lisosky says she regularly hears from people who want help deconstructing journalism – figuring out why a story was done a certain way, and why certain outlets favor one type of story over another.
Lisosky says there are five questions any of us can ask ourselves to start critically analyzing what we’re receiving from any kind of media, from TV programs to news to highway billboards:
- Who made this up? Think about who wrote the story, or paid for the ad, or made the film.
- What strategies were used to get my attention? “If you can figure that out,” Lisosky said, “then you’ll have an idea of why you were watching this.”
- How might someone else view this differently than I am viewing this?
- What is the point of view of the sender?
- Why are they motivated to send this message to me?
Hear Joanne Lisosky’s full conversation. And check out resources for both teachers and parents on our website.
MEDIA LITERACY WEEK 2019
Media literacy is the focus of activities around the world this week.
In the U.S.: The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) is hosting the 5th Annual U.S. Media Literacy Week from October 21-25, 2019. The mission of Media Literacy Week is to raise awareness about the need for media literacy education and its essential role in education today. Organizations, schools, educators and Media Literacy Week partners from all over the country will work with NAMLE to participate in events including #MediaLitWk classroom lessons, virtual events, online chats, screenings, PSA’s, panel discussions and more.
International: The yearly Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week, initiated in 2012, is led by UNESCO in cooperation with GAPMIL, UNAOC and the MIL and Intercultural Dialogue (MILID) University Network. It unites diverse actors committed to promoting MIL as a way to foster social inclusion and intercultural dialogue.
The eighth annual global celebration of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week will be celebrated from 24 to 31 October 2019. Global MIL Week 2019 highlights will include the Ninth MILID Conference and the Youth Agenda Forum, to be held in Gothenburg (Sweden), from 24 to 26 September 2019.
Read more about NAMLE and Media Literacy Week here.
Read more about Global Media and Information Literacy Week here.
Media Literacy Is Literacy
Here’s How Educators and Lawmakers Are Working to Set Students Up for Success Online
Michael Danielson gives students in his ninth-grade media literacy class a simple piece of homework each night: Pay attention.
The assignment is meant to prod them into thinking critically about the countless messages that bombard them every day. They report back to their teacher and classmates at the start of each class with “media literacy moments,” explaining how they discovered hidden motives and attempts to manipulate them or sell them products.
Seeing his students apply five core concepts about media to what they see on Netflix, at the movies and online is Danielson’s favorite part of his job. It’s how he knows he has altered the way they consume media.
“I’ve changed them for life,” he said.
Danielson teaches at Seattle Preparatory School, a private Catholic high school. In addition to the required one-semester media literacy class, he teaches yearbook and theology classes and advocates for media literacy as chair of Action 4 Media Education, a Washington state-based group.
Media literacy is a broad term that encompasses a wide set of skills ranging from thinking critically about news and opinion articles to dealing with cyberbullying to creating and sharing content online. The idea of media literacy is not new, but experts say it gained new momentum following the 2016 presidential election.
Across the country, lawmakers, educators and advocates are working to elevate the issue of media literacy in legislatures and schools. Washington state has been at the forefront of the movement.
In 2016, lawmakers in Washington state passed a bill with bipartisan support that created an advisory council to study media literacy and make recommendations to the legislature based on its research. The following year, legislators passed a law — based on the council’s recommendations — requiring the state superintendent’s office to survey educators and district officials about the state of media literacy in schools across Washington.
Now, lawmakers are considering a bill that would provide grants for educators to create curriculum for media literacy and to allocate money for the state Department of Education to hold two conferences on the subject.
The initial Washington measure to create the advisory council is now the basis of a model bill used by Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit organization that advocates for media literacy, to help lawmakers get the topic on the agenda in their states.
Other states have taken their own approaches to making media literacy a priority, some more forcefully than others. For example, Californialawmakers passed a law that requires the state Department of Education to provide a list of media literacy resources on its website by July 1. In a stronger move, Minnesota in 2017 added “digital and information literacy” to its required K-12 education standards.
For the rest of the article and a Media Literacy Legislation map tracking 15 bills in 12 states: The 74
written by Laura Fay, staff producer at The 74
April 8, 2019
Interview with Marilyn Cohen, 2018 Jessie McCanse Award recipient
A highlight of Media Literacy Week here at AME is the presentation of the Jessie McCanse Award, deemed the “Nobel Prize” of media literacy, to Marilyn Cohen, Saturday, Nov. 10. The National Telemedia Council (NTC) is recognizing Marilyn’s longtime contributions to media literacy, high principles and dedication. Four recipients this year include Henry Jenkins of Los Angeles, CA, Bill Siemering of Philadelphia, PA, and Carolyn Wilson of Ontario, Canada.
Marilyn was recently interviewed by the Consortium for Media Literacy newsletter, Connections. Here is part of that interview:
For the whole interview: Global Connections Newsletter
Download our handout “You already teach media literacy if…”
Teachers and parents can be at a loss on the topic of media literacy. We know it’s important—our young people are bombarded with messages constantly. How can we help them understand what they’re seeing, reading, and hearing? Let alone creating and sharing themselves! How can we help them evaluate the messenger as well as the message?
Click the image below to open it in a new window.
This guide for teachers and parents has been created as part of Media Literacy Week by two AME board members, Ethan Delavan (high school IT director) and Janith Pewitt (high school classroom teacher). Michael Danielson, board chair (teacher and EdTech director) designed the publication.
Click here for a printer-friendly version of all 14 ideas.
Guess what, you’re already teaching media literacy!
WA Governor Jay Inslee proclaims Media Literacy Week, Nov. 5-9
For the first time, the State of Washington has issued a proclamation to raise awareness of Media Literacy Education and commemorate the 4th Annual Media Literacy Week, which is observed locally, nationally, and internationally.
Educators, students, parents, and adult advocates invite you to participate in a week of student activities, discussions, idea sharing, and celebration of work that promotes media literacy in communities around the world as an essential life skill for the 21st century.
Media Literacy Week is hosted by The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), with hundreds of organizations, schools, educators, partners, and supporters in the U.S. alone. See how you can participate!
Thank you to Governor Inslee and the Washington State Legislature for your continued support of media literacy education for students of all ages.
To download or view the proclamation, click on the image below or click here.
How does news work on social media?
Media Literacy Week, 2018
How do social media algorithms determine what you see? How do people try to game the system? Cory Zanoni discusses.
from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, published October 18, 2018
Lies, lies and more lies. Out of an old Tacoma house, fact-checking site Snopes uncovers them
Snopes CEO David Mikkelson says the fact-checking website really took off after Sept. 11. “Conspiracy theories were running rampant.” (Greg Gilbert / The Seattle Times)
Snopes, the country’s most popular hoax-debunking site, is run by its founder out of a 97-year-old house in Tacoma. And is it ever busy, with 47 of its “Hot 50” posts having something to do with politics.
Here, in a 97-year-old frame house in the city’s North End, is the headquarters of America’s most popular hoax-debunking website.
The command center for Snopes.com is an upstairs bedroom with shelving and a laptop placed atop some books and a cardboard box.
These are busy times.
Is This a Photograph of Christine Blasey Ford with Bill Clinton? False.
Did Protesters Vandalize Brett Kavanaugh’s House? False.
Is This a Photograph of a Wasted Brett Kavanaugh? False.
Is This a Photograph of Christine Blasey Ford Partying? False.
All those viral hoaxes, spread by social media, have created a market for fact-checking sites, with Snopes, started in 1994, being the champ.
It gets 32 million visits a month on desktop and mobile, according to Similar.Web.com, an industry site that measures web traffic. Its closest competitors are The Straight Dope (4 million monthly visits) and FactCheck (3 million).
From his bedroom office, David Mikkelson, Snopes publisher and CEO, runs a site employing 16 people across the country, half of them fact-checkers and the rest on the business and web side.
Read more at The Seattle Times
By Eric Lacitis, Seattle Times staff reporter Oct. 10, 2018
UW Lecture Series on Media Literacy
The University of Washington public lecture series, BUNK: The Information Series, brings an impressive lineup of speakers to Seattle.
- Author and political scientist Cornell Clayton will speak October 9, “Off the Rails: Populism and Paranoia in American Politics.”
- Renee Hobbs, a leader in the field of media literacy education, will speak November 28, “Mind Over Media: Teaching About Propaganda.”
The lectures are free and open to the public, but reservations are required and you must act quickly to reserve a seat.
See the full schedule of speakers.
Media Literacy Week, November 5-9, 2018 — It’s less than a month away!
Media Literacy Week activities and events raise awareness about the importance of media literacy education for today’s students, and showcase the amazing work of educators, students, and organizations across the US. Now in its fourth year, Media Literacy Week is sponsored by the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).
NAMLE has named Ethan Delavan, Action for Media Education (AME) board member, as Washington’s Media Literacy Week chair. AME is a NAMLE partner in this annual event.
For updates on Media Literacy Week in Washington, check the AME blog, Facebook, or Twitter.
Media Literacy Project: Why should we trust journalists?
Professional journalists face more scrutiny in today’s crowded information marketplace because readers confuse them with bloggers and a cadre of online opinion scribes.
Journalism’s essence is a “discipline of verification,” according to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute. This means that journalists pursue verification of facts as the first order of business. If the journalists do not follow these standards, their careers and reputations are on the line.
Readers should understand there are important differences between professional journalists and everyday bloggers. Journalists are held to higher standards. They are required to get specific training through journalism degrees and are held to employment standards that ensure they serve their audiences by providing relevant and reliable stories that matter to their communities.
Read more at The Free Press
By Kevin Krohn and Austin Moorhouse July 14, 2017
New WordPress policy allows it to shut down blogs of Sandy Hook deniers
The crackdown on hate speech continues:
WordPress has taken down a handful alt-right blogs, according to several complaints from affected blog owners and readers who claim the sites were removed from WordPress.com, despite not being in violation of the company’s Terms of Service. Some site owners also said they were not notified of the shutdown in advance and have lost their work. The removals, we’ve learned, are in part due to a new policy WordPress has rolled out that now prohibits blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors.”
Yes, that’s right: the company has created a new rule to specifically handle the Sandy Hook conspiracists, and boot them from WordPress.com.
While some of the affected sites had already been flagged for other violations, many were hosting Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and other “false flag” content.
Read more at TechCrunch
By Sarah Perez August 16, 2018
FCC’s net neutrality DDoS claims debunked. Here’s what you need to know.
We finally have some answers on the alleged DDoS attack on the FCC’s commenting system
Net neutrality may be dead, but questions remain about how seriously the Federal Communications Commission considered comments from the public. The FCC’s system for submitting those comments was a hot mess.
Two million of the 22 million comments submitted used stolen identities, some for people who were dead, including actress Patty Duke, who died in 2016. Nearly 8 million comments used email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com. About half a million were sent from Russian email addresses. And of the emails that came from legitimate email addresses, the vast majority were form letters originating from the same pro- and anti-net neutrality groups.
Then there was the controversy over a supposed cyberattack on the comment system that temporarily shut down the platform on exactly the same day thousands of net neutrality supporters responded to comedian John Oliver’s call to flood the agency with comments.
That supposed cyberattack, after more than a year of speculation, has been confirmed to be false, as a statement from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai revealed on Monday.…
FCC officials declined to comment for this story.
So what does it mean for the controversial repeal of net neutrality? Could the tainted public record on net neutrality help in efforts to restore the rules? To help you understand what really happened and what it all means, CNET has put together this FAQ.
By Marguerite Reardon First published June 29, 2018 Update, Aug. 6, 2018
Teens are debating the news on Instagram
More teenagers are getting their information from so-called flop accounts.
…Luna, a 15-year-old admin on @Flops.R.us, said that she and other teens use flop accounts as a space, away from parents, teachers, or people who don’t take them seriously, to discuss issues and formulate ideas. “Flop accounts are your place where you can get your or other people’s opinions out,” she said.
“Teenagers want an outlet to express their opinions with the same kind of conviction that they generally might not be able to express at home or other parts of their life,” said Hal, a 17-year-old admin on @toomanyflops_.
“Liberal flop accounts point out problematic behavior or spread liberal opinions,” said Bea, a 16-year-old in Maryland who founded the account @hackflops. “Conservative accounts post about feminism and whether the movement is good or bad, whether you can be conservative and LGBT, or Black Lives Matter and whether it’s better or worse than All Lives Matter … I’ve formed my opinions largely based upon what I see in the flop community…
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media-studies professor at the University of Virginia, said he thinks flop accounts are a good thing. “You have people engaging directly with claims about the world and arguing about truthfulness and relevance in the comments. It’s good that that’s happening,” he said. “If young people are getting more politically engaged because of it, all the better.”
By Taylor Lorenz, July 26, 2018 Read more at The Atlantic
Image courtesy of INSTAGRAM / THANH DO / THE ATLANTIC
If you’re not ready to delete Facebook, here’s how to limit the data you give it
According to reports by the New York Times and the Observer, a research firm called Cambridge Analytica collected millions of Facebook users’ personal information without their consent — and people are mad. Many don’t trust Facebook with their data anymore, and they’re threatening to delete their accounts.
But Facebook and its network of apps, including Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are important communication lines for a lot of people, so deleting your account might not be a realistic option. You can, however, dial back your use and reduce the amount of information you give the site. Here’s how.
Break your habit and limit your use of the platform.
Just by signing up for the service, you’ve agreed to let Facebook track your activity and constantly collect data about you. By reducing the time you spend on the site, interaction with posts, and content you upload, you are also reducing the amount of data Facebook is gathering from you. And remember, this data collection applies to Facebook — and everywhere you’ve signed in with Facebook, including Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as, to a lesser extent, third-party websites like Spotify.
Log out of Facebook before browsing the web.
Non-Facebook websites use what’s called the Facebook Pixel, a small piece of JavaScript code that tracks your browsing activity across the web and tells Facebook what you’re looking at when you’re not on Facebook’s site and apps.
Any page that has a Facebook Like button installed most likely uses a Facebook pixel. Even pages that don’t have a Like button can have a pixel. This means it’s possible that Facebook knows most of your web browsing history.
You can prevent this tracking by logging out of Facebook and using Facebook only in “incognito” or “private” browsing mode in your web browser. Once you’ve logged out, be sure to clear your cookies. In Chrome, select Chrome from menu bar > Clear browsing data > Time range: All time (Note: This will sign you out of most websites).
By Nicole Nguyen, March 20, 2018 Read more at BuzzFeed News
Image courtesy of Chesnot / Getty Images
‘The dam is breaking,’ declare net neutrality defenders after first House Republican backs CRA
“The tide is turning. The pressure is mounting. The floodgates are open.”—Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
“The dam is breaking, as it should.” That’s how Faiz Shakir, the ACLU’s national political director, responded on Tuesday after Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado became the first House Republican to sign a petition to force a vote on a measure that would reinstate net neutrality protections that the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rolled back in December.
“Rep. Coffman’s support to undo FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s repeal of net neutrality shows that public pressure is continuing to build on this issue and cannot be ignored this November,” Shakir added. “Other House members should take heed of Coffman’s direction and stand by the overwhelming majority of their constituents, not corporate interests.”
Read more at Common Dreams Image courtesy of @IndivisibleLNK/Twitter
The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump
Media literacy education teaches us how to evaluate sources and understand how information can be manipulated. This excellent article from The Guardian is well worth reading.
For decades now, objectivity – or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth – has been falling out of favour. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known observation that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts” is more timely than ever: polarisation has grown so extreme that voters have a hard time even agreeing on the same facts. This has been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects users with like-minded members and supplies them with customised news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower silos.
Facebook gave data about 57bn friendships
Before Facebook suspended Aleksandr Kogan from its platform for the data harvesting “scam” at the centre of the unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media company enjoyed a close enough relationship with the researcher that it provided him with an anonymised, aggregate dataset of 57bn Facebook friendships.
Facebook provided the dataset of “every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level” to Kogan’s University of Cambridge laboratory for a study on international friendships published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2015. Two Facebook employees were named as co-authors of the study, alongside researchers from Cambridge, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Kogan was publishing under the name Aleksandr Spectre at the time.
Read more from The Guardian. Image courtesy of The Guardian.
Seattle Town Hall event: How to fix the future, with Andrew Keen and Alex Stonehill
The Internet has morphed from a tool providing efficiencies for consumers and businesses to an elemental force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world.
Former Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the potential dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. Now he takes our stage with his new book How to Fix the Future, looking to the past to learn how we might change our future. Keen discusses how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which—like its digital counterpart—demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments, and altered the business world beyond recognition. Keen is joined onstage by Alex Stonehill, Head of Creative Strategy at University of Washington’s Communication and Leadership Program.
This event will be held Thursday, February 8 at 7:30 p.m. at University Lutheran Church.
Address is1604 NE 50th St, Seattle, WA 98105 in the Ravenna neighborhood.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $5.
For more information and to buy tickets visit the Town Hall website.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs raised their kids tech-free — and it should’ve been a red flag
Psychologists are quickly learning how dangerous smartphones can be for teenage brains.
Research has found that an eighth-grader’s risk for depression jumps 27% when he or she frequently uses social media. Kids who use their phones for at least three hours a day are much more likely to be suicidal. And recent research has found the teen suicide rate in the US now eclipses the homicide rate, with smartphones as the driving force.
But the writing about smartphone risk may have been on the wall for roughly a decade, according to educators Joe Clement and Matt Miles, coauthors of the recent book “Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse is Making Our Kids Dumber.”
It should be telling, Clement and Miles argue, that the two biggest tech figures in recent history — Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — seldom let their kids play with the very products they helped create.
“What is it these wealthy tech executives know about their own products that their consumers don’t?” the authors wrote. The answer, according to a growing body of evidence, is the addictive power of digital technology.
How Silicon Valley plans to conquer the classroom
They call it the “Church Lane Hug.”
That is how educators at Church Lane Elementary Technology, a public school here, describe the protective two-armed way they teach students to carry their school-issued laptops.
Administrators at Baltimore County Public Schools, the 25th-largest public school system in the United States, have embraced the laptops as well, as part of one of the nation’s most ambitious classroom technology makeovers. In 2014, the district committed more than $200 million for HP laptops, and it is spending millions of dollars on math, science and language software. Its vendors visit classrooms. Some schoolchildren have been featured in tech-company promotional videos.
And Silicon Valley has embraced the school district right back.
HP has promoted the district as a model to follow in places as diverse as New York City and Rwanda. Daly Computers, which supplied the HP laptops, donated $30,000 this year to the district’s education foundation. Baltimore County schools’ top officials have traveled widely to industry-funded education events, with travel sometimes paid for by industry-sponsored groups.
Read more at The New York Times.
Image courtesy of The New York Times.
Action 4 Media Education 