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Workshop 2_ Understanding the New Learning Landscape Presentation.pdf

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According to the most recent cave drawings, children nowadays are using fire more than ever before. And it's no wonder: fire has many wonderful applications, such as cooking meat, warming the home, and warding off wild animals in the night. We adult Homo erectus, with our enlarged brains and experience of pre-fire days, can moderate our use, but our children-some of whom never lived during a time when you couldn't simply strike two rocks together for an hour over a pile of dried grass to eventually produce a spark that, with gentle coaxing, might grow into a roaring flame-can have difficulty self-monitoring their interactions with fire.

You don't want to be the bad guy, but you also want to make sure that your child engages in other activities, like mammoth hunting and the gathering of rocks and bones with which to make tools. So, how do you set appropriate boundaries for your child on fire usage without jeopardizing the family unit so crucial to the survival of the species? Here are some tips:

Establish clear but firm limits: Fire is nice, but there's a time and a place for it. So institute specific fire-watching times, and stick to them. After dinner, when the fire is lit, anyway, is one good option, as well as early in the morning, when a fire is just the thing to warm a chilly cave. Those living in glacial areas may have a harder time curtailing the use of fire, but just remind your children that when you were their age several layers of animal pelts were enough to keep you perfectly warm. Remember, you're the patriarch (or matriarch, depending on your community's customs surrounding familial power structures), and you make the rules!

Have a designated "fire room" in your dwelling: Those with smaller caves or huts might find this suggestion difficult, but even establishing a "fire corner" can help to create separate "fire" and "non-fire" spaces in your living area. In the non-fire spaces, encourage traditional activities, such as conversation (as much as your current vocabulary will allow), arrowhead-shaving, or stick-drawing in mud or soft stones. Reminding your children of the pleasures provided by these traditional activities can help reduce the seductive lure of the fire's dancing flame.

Watch for changes and communicate concerns: For many children, fire is a harmless, pleasant addition to their lives. But for some it can become an all-consuming passion. If your child seems to be growing unhealthily attached to the fire, don't wait to talk to him about it. A few common fire-obsessed behaviors to look out for include:

* Distraction: ignoring people when they are in the same room as fire

* Preoccupation: talking or thinking about fire, even when there is no fire present

* Deception: going off to secretly find/make fires; lying about fire usage when confronted

* Anthropomorphization: talking to/interacting with the fire as if it were a sentient being, which the elders we consulted say is highly unlikely, though they have yet to entirely rule out the presence of powerful magical beings within the inferno

Commit to non-fire family time: This last tip is the most important, because, if all you're doing is restricting your child's behavior and environment, he's bound to resent you. So introduce non-fire activities that the whole family can enjoy together, and commit to them on a regular basis. These activities will depend on your region and climate, of course, but hunting and/or gathering is always a great way to be active and insure your family's survival. If your tribe has already discovered music, carve a bone flute and work on a family song. Believe in a god (or gods)? Carve some rudimentary icons in his/her/their image. There's no end to the fun you can have when you put your significantly-larger-than-a-chimpanzee's mind to it!

In the end, just remember that fire, like most innovations, is both a blessing and a curse. Sure, it's made our lives easier, our survival likelier, and will probably lead to the greatest evolutionary paradigm shift in human history. But it's also dangerous, destructive, and, yes, possibly infested with demonic forces that wish us ill. As with everything in life, balance is key. If you can imagine what it was like a few thousand years ago, when the first humans started walking upright, and how much grief they probably got from their parents, you'll have some empathy for your children's unique place in the evolutionary narrative. At the same time, don't forget that you're the boss, and that, until they mate and produce viable offspring, what you say goes. And, of course, it goes without saying that, in the (again, very unlikely) event that fire is both sentient and vengeful, we humbly beg its forgiveness for our insolence and pray to be spared our fleeting and insignificant lives.

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Limiting Your Child's Fire Time: A Guide for Concerned Paleolithic Parents

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According to the most recent cave drawings, children nowadays are using fire more than ever before. And it's no wonder: fire has many wonderful applications, such as cooking meat, warming the home, and warding off wild animals in the night.

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7 skills your child needs to survive the changing world of work

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As your kids head back to school, can you be sure they're learning the right lessons?

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New Strategies to Get Kids to Create Media, Not Just Consume It

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New Strategies to Get Kids to Create Media, Not Just Consume It

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During a typical day, kids and teens check out YouTube, watch TV, play video games, scroll through social media feeds, and listen to music. Overall, they're passive consumers of the content they love -- which is fine. But with a little nudging -- and the right tools -- they can be using that time to build creative skills while sharing their stories, opinions, and ideas.

Kids actually love to express themselves, but sometimes they feel like they don't have much of a voice. Encouraging your kid to be more of a maker might just be a matter of pointing to someone or something they admire and giving them the technology to make their vision come alive. No matter your kids' ages and interests, there's a method and medium to encourage creativity.

If they have a story to share

As soon as kids start talking, it's great to get them to tell stories. For younger kids, encourage them to narrate their activities as they build, climb, and pretend by asking questions such as, "What are you building? Who will use it? Tell me about your adventure!" There are also apps that let kids record their stories as they play. With older kids, some will naturally put pencil to paper, but others take a bit more prodding. For those kids, digital book creation can make their writing process feel more grown-up and tangible. Having a real audience also shows kids that their writing can matter, so tweens and teens can use sites and apps where they can share creations, and they can even riff off their obsessions in the form of fan fiction. Finally, if your tween or teen has strong opinions about issues or interesting people in their lives, they can use tools to document and share those stories, too.
Storytelling tools
If they have a directorial vision

For kids who love to watch television and movies (spoiler: Most do!), it can be exciting for them to get in on the action. When they're younger, kids love to combine their toys with storytelling, which is not unlike directing a movie. To share those stories, they can play around with animated storytelling apps that let them record a mini-movie with movable characters, props, and settings. As they get older, stop-motion animation might be more their jam, and there are apps for that, too. And if you'd prefer tweens and teens to not have their own YouTube channels but you want to encourage the fun of making videos, there are tools that let kids record, edit, and share in a more limited way.
Video-creation tools
If they have an inner artist

When your kid is naturally artistic, it probably won't take much prompting to get them to draw or paint. But sooner or later, they'll want to expand their horizons. If your little kid loves to color, give them more inspiration with apps that introduce famous artists. Older kids who don't claim to be artists but love superheroes, comics, or manga can create their own cartoons with panels, dialogue balloons, and unique characters. Even emerging fashion designers can find a tool to help them express their inner Versace. Of course, for tweens and teens, there are more advanced digital drawing and painting products to create sophisticated designs.
Artistic tools
If they have an ear for music

Most kids love music right out of the womb, so transferring that love into creation isn't hard when they're little. Banging on pots and pans is a good place to start -- but they can take that experience with them using apps that let them play around with sound. Little kids can start to learn about instruments and how sounds fit together into music. Whether they're budding musicians or just appreciators, older kids can use tools to compose, stay motivated, and practice regularly. And when tweens and teens want to start laying down some tracks, they can record, edit, and share their stuff.
Music tools
If they have the next big game idea

Learning to code may seem intimidating, but there are a ton of fun apps that teach programming basics in a way that doesn't feel like work. Young kids who learn to code get introduced to ideas such as cause and effect, thinking ahead, and how little steps add up to a final product. When they're older, they can make and share simple games using some basic block-coding tools. Tweens and teens can learn actual coding languages so they can create more complex games.
Coding tools
If they don't consider themselves to be creative

Some kids are sure they don't have a creative bone in their bodies -- but they'll play for hours. Others will turn their noses up at art -- but will jump at the chance to design a robot. If this sounds like your kid, rest assured that -- no matter their age -- their bones are actually brimming with creativity. Even if kids aren't painting masterpieces, playing the trombone, or writing the next hit for Netflix, there are lots of ways for them to make things, especially using digital tools. Any app that requires kids to create a world or creature -- especially those that allow them to test their designs -- teaches the creative process. Even silly apps that only focus on the process and not the product can free up kids who might feel stuck.
Covert creative tools

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New Strategies to Get Kids to Create Media, Not Just Consume It

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During a typical day, kids and teens check out YouTube, watch TV, play video games, scroll through social media feeds, and listen to music. Overall, they're passive consumers of the content they love -- which is fine.

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Workshop 1_ Technology Never Sleeps Presentation.pdf

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Ideas to share technology experiences with your child(ren)

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Ideas to share technology experiences with your child(ren)

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David Zalubowski / AP

Styles of Digital Parenting by Child Age Group

Alexandra Samuel / Springboard of America and Angus Reid Forum

Digital limiters, by contrast, focus on minimizing their kids' use of technology. This group was another third of the parents surveyed, though nearly half of parents of preschoolers take the limiting approach. Heeding widespread concerns about the impact of technology use on children's attention spans and interpersonal relationships, limiters take every opportunity to switch off screens.

But there's a third group of parents who recognize that if the "off" switch is the only tool parents use to shape their kids' experience of the Internet, they won't do a very good job of preparing them for a world in which more and more technologies are switched on every year. Digital mentors instead take an active role in guiding their kids onto the Internet. They not only make up a third of parents overall, but a little more than a third of parents in each age range-suggesting that this is an approach to digital-age parenting that can actually sustain a family long-term, from the time baby first lays her hands on a touchscreen all the way until she heads off for college.
Percentage of Parents Who Provide Technology Guidance at Least Once a Week
Mentors, in fact, may be the parents who are most successful in preparing their kids for a world filled with screens, working actively to shape their kids' online skills and experiences. A survey of more than 700 American parents from within my larger dataset found that mentors are more likely than limiters to talk with their kids about how to use technology or the Internet responsibly-something that half of mentors do at least once a week, compared to just 20 percent of limiters. They're also more likely to research specific devices or programs for their kids: 44 percent of mentors do that at least once a week, compared to 31 percent of enablers and 14 percent of limiters. They're also the most likely to connect with their kids through technology, rather than in spite of it: 58 percent of mentors play video games with their kids every week, compared to 42 percent of enablers and 30 percent of limiters.

That effort seems to pay off. In a survey that asked parents about where their kids get into trouble online, I found that among school-aged kids, children of limiters who are most likely to engage in problematic behavior: They're twice as likely as the children of mentors to access porn, or to post rude or hostile comments online; they're also three times as likely to go online and impersonate a classmate, peer, or adult. Shielding kids from the Internet may work for a time, but once they do get online, limiters' kids often lack the skills and habits that make for consistent, safe, and successful online interactions. Just as abstinence-only sex education doesn't prevent teen pregnancy, it seems that keeping kids away from the digital world just makes them more likely to make bad choices once they do get online.
Percentage of Kids Who Have Misbehaved Online

Alexandra Samuel / Springboard of America and Angus Reid Forum

While limiters may succeed in fostering their kids' capacity for face-to-face connection, they neglect the fact that a huge chunk of modern life is not actually lived face-to-face. They also miss an opportunity to teach their children the specific skills they need in order to live meaningful lives online as well as off-skills like compensating for the absence of visual cues in online communications; recognizing and adapting to the specific norms of different social platforms and sub-communities; adopting hashtags, emojis, and other cues to supplement text-based communications; and learning to balance accountability with security in constructing an online identity.

None of these are skills that parents can teach to kids they insist on keeping offline, nor are they likely to be absorbed by a teen who receives his first words of parental online guidance when he is already well on his way to adulthood. We can't prepare our kids for the world they will inhabit as adults by dragging them back to the world we lived in as kids. It's not our job as parents to put away the phones. It's our job to take out the phones, and teach our kids how to use them.

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Styles of Digital Parenting by Child Age Group Digital limiters, by contrast, focus on minimizing their kids' use of technology. This group was another third of the parents surveyed, though nearly half of parents of preschoolers take the limiting approach.

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Almost as soon as they can focus past the end of their noses, babies today are waving at Grandpa on video chat and swiping the screens on all kinds of devices.

It's just plain unsettling to watch a baby in a stroller with an iPad. Especially when his mother is looking at her phone at the same time.

There's a lot of panic and anxiety and guilt and shame out there about kids and screens. I feel it - all of it - as a mother. And as a reporter I've been interested in the intersection of children and technology for many years.

For my new book, The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media And Real Life, I set out to answer the question: What's the best approach to take to tech?

I surveyed over 500 families. I interviewed dozens of experts who study kids and media to find out best practices, based on the latest research.

And I boiled everything down to a slogan, based on Michael Pollan's famous Food Rules (Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.)

My version? Enjoy screens. Not too much. Mostly together.

Parents should help kids balance screen time - yes. But we also play a role in sharing the joy of screens with our kids. We can model the use of technology for creation, discovery and connection. We can help kids interpret the media that they do use, when we experience it with them.

And this help can make all the difference. That's true when it comes to the good stuff: learning to count with the Count, or to say sorry from Daniel Tiger, or the basics of coding. And it's true when it comes to shielding kids from the bad stuff that's been correlated with screen media overuse, like sleep disruption or emotional problems.

"I think parents vastly underestimate their influence," says Erica Austin, director of the Murrow Center for Media & Health Promotion at Washington State University, who's been researching these issues for almost 30 years.

Eric Rasmussen at Texas Tech agrees. "Parents are the biggest influence on kids in how they respond to media. Especially in the first 12 years. People are starting to realize that."

Rasmussen's research takes on the impact of Disney, Daniel Tiger and more. He says setting strict rules is less important than talking and listening.

"I tell people, the best thing you can do generally is talk to your kids about media," he explains. "Kids need to know what you think about the media they're consuming."

This quiz is based on the work of Austin, Rasmussen and other researchers interviewed in The Art of Screen Time. It can help assess your parenting style with regards to technology. Take a few minutes - hopefully while your kids are otherwise occupied - to check it out!

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What Kind of Screen Time Parent Are You? Take This Quiz And Find Out

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Almost as soon as they can focus past the end of their noses, babies today are waving at Grandpa on video chat and swiping the screens on all kinds of devices. It's just plain unsettling to watch a baby in a stroller with an iPad.

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It is a tricky thing to look at one's own biases: it can make us feel somewhat vulnerable. In the case of screen time however, it is essential that we do so.

Professor Andy Przybylski (University of Oxford) opened the one-day event on Screen Time I had the good fortune to attend, by commenting on the very existence of the phrase "screen time". Is there similar examination of "book time" or "food time" for example? There is an unfair rhetoric of analogue time being wholesome, good and entirely helpful, whereas screen time is seen as inherently bad, distracting, unhealthy and leading to nothing of value.

This 'displacement hypothesis' is such that every digital minute is seen as taking away from an analogue minute, with the insinuation that digital minutes are taking you further away from you being your best, most successful self.

Professor Przybylski argued that the evidence simply doesn't back up this theory. Any correlational findings ( remember, correlation does not equal causation) are so statistically insignificant they don't justify focusing on - less than 1% variability in terms of correlational findings around sleep, health, functioning and behaviour.

So what does this mean for parents?

Simply put, there is an over-emphasis on limits and not enough focus on thinking critically about how we use screens, particularly how we use screens with our children.

Alexandra Samuel, using data from surveys of 10,000+ North American Parents*, found three main parenting approaches to technology: Limiters, Enablers and Mentors.

Limiters focus on minimizing access to technology.

Enablers put few restrictions on access to technology.

Mentors actively guide their children in the use of technology.

What is especially interesting about these approaches, is that for school-aged students, the children of Limiters were twice as likely to access porn, or post rude/hostile comments online. They were also three times as likely to impersonate a classmate, peer or adult (see Samuel's article in the Atlantic for more information).

Likening the Limiter approach to abstinence-only sex education, Samuel argues, "Shielding kids from the Internet may work for a time, but once they do get online, limiters' kids often lack the skills and habits that make for consistent, safe, and successful online interactions."

Mentors typically make up a third of parents overall, but Mentors are equally represented in each age range, suggesting that this might be an approach that works effectively throughout your child's life.

What we like best about these findings is that they reinforce the idea that establishing and maintaining positive relationships with your children around technology is beneficial to everyone. We want our child(ren) to come to us if they encounter problems, knowing we won't freak out or overreact. For this to happen, we have to show that we care about and value their digital world in the same way we show that we value their other activities, e.g. reading and sports.

" Devorah Heitner, author of Screenwise, suggests, Take an interest in what your kids do in their digital lives. Learn together with your kids. Play Minecraft with them or share photos on Instagram with them. Show them what you are doing online and ask them for advice about your Facebook posts or LinkedIn Profile. Your goal is not to become an expert in technology but to get a window into how your kids think about, and interact with, technology. "

With an awareness and understanding that no parent is all-Mentor all of the time, how can we engage in more Mentor-like behaviour with our children? How can we move from being Media Police, to being Media Mentors?

My colleague Daniel Johnston and I came up with a few suggestions, which we have organised into a March Media Mentor Month Calendar (see below).

We know as busy parents, it is unlikely you will get to all of these ideas (especially not only in March!), but we hope this provides a resource for you to explore and find ideas of activities to help you develop a positive digital relationship with your family.
Click to access a larger A3 PDF version
Please feel free to share your ideas with us in the comments below, or add the hashtag #mediamentormonth on social media posts.

* "About the data: All the charts in this article are drawn from a series of surveys conducted on Springboard America and the Angus Reid Forum between March 2014 and February 2016. More than 11,000 surveys were completed by parents of children under 18; each individual survey sampled between 500 and 1000 North American parents." Please note this data has not been made publicly available and is not peer reviewed.

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It is a tricky thing to look at one's own biases: it can make us feel somewhat vulnerable. In the case of screen time however, it is essential that we do so. Professor Andy Przybylski (University of Oxford) opened the one-day event on Screen Time I had the good fortune to attend, by commenting on...

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Engineering | News releases | Research | Social science | Technology

Put your phone away when I'm talking to you. Don't text while you're driving - not even at red lights. Stop posting photos of me without my permission.

These are some of the rules for Internet and smartphone use that kids would set for their parents, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and University of Michigan.

The researchers surveyed 249 families with children between the ages of 10 and 17 about their household's most important technology rules and expectations, as well as what made those rules easier or harder to follow.

The paper - which is among the first to explore children's expectations for parents' technology use - was presented March 2 at the Association for Computing Machinery's conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in San Francisco. The surveys revealed kids' feelings about fairness and "oversharing," the most effective types of technology rules and families' most common approaches.

"Managing kids' technology use was once much easier for parents - they switched off the television when a show was over or kept an eye on kids as they used the family computer in the living room," said lead author Alexis Hiniker, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering. "But now that so many family members have phones with them at all times, it's become harder and harder to set those boundaries."

When researchers asked kids what technology rules they wished their parents would follow - a less common line of inquiry - the answers fell into seven general categories:

Be present - Children felt there should be no technology at all in certain situations, such as when a child is trying to talk to a parent

Child autonomy - Parents should allow children to make their own decisions about technology use without interference

Moderate use - Parents should use technology in moderation and in balance with other activities

Supervise children - Parents should establish and enforce technology-related rules for children's own protection

Not while driving - Parents should not text while driving or sitting at a traffic light

No hypocrisy - Parents should practice what they preach, such as staying off the Internet at mealtimes

No oversharing - Parents shouldn't share information online about their children without explicit permission

"Twice as many children as parents expressed concerns about family members oversharing personal information about them on Facebook and other social media without permission," said co-author Sarita Schoenebeck, assistant professor in the University of Michigan's School of Information. "Many children said they found that content embarrassing and felt frustrated when their parents continued to do it."

The study also examined which types of household rules were more or less difficult to enforce. Families reported that rules prohibiting certain technology or social media uses entirely - such as no using Snapchat or banning a particular video game - were easier to follow and enforce than rules that aim to prevent technology use in certain situations - such as no phones at church or no texting with friends after a certain time.

"We were surprised to find that when mom and dad say 'you can't be on Instagram' it's easier for kids to accept and stick to that rule than when they say 'you can be on Instagram but you have to put it away at dinner,'" said Hiniker. "As a teenager, I think I would have been happier in a world where I got to be on Instagram at least some of the time, but that really seemed to be a struggle for families."

The most common expectation cited by children revolved around "being present" in certain social settings, such as when a family member was talking or during meals or when they were involved in certain activities. Parents, on the other hand, tended to prioritize privacy rules to prevent children from putting themselves at risk by disclosing personal information online.

Most of the nearly 500 different technology rules reported by families fell into one of a dozen categories, which included:

No technology at certain times

No technology until certain obligations are fulfilled, like homework or chores

Fixed time limits on how long kids can engage with technology

Cost restrictions

Expectations to balance technology use with other activities, like playing outside

Parent audits that grant them the ability to check kids' phones at any time and access social media accounts

Banning a particular site, game, activity or device

Rules about online behavior, such as no bullying or bad language or sharing sexual content

While parents tended not to be concerned about different rules for parents and children, many kids saw that as hypocritical. Children also found it easier to follow household technology rules when families had developed them collectively and when parents lived by them as well.

The fact that both children and parents reported so much difficulty with rules that require family members to simply put their phones down in certain circumstances points to missed opportunities for app and device designers to recognize those consumer needs, the researchers said.

Technical fixes to help users find more balance might include everything from a "family time" button that disables notifications for 30 minutes to news feeds that provide opportunities to digest content in smaller chunks to video streaming that doesn't automatically start playing a new episode once the last one stops.

The research suggests that if parents find that a particular app or social media site is too difficult for their kids to disengage from, the simpler solution is to make it off-limits.

"If app and device designers were more open to fostering healthy technology habits, they probably would make their current customers happier," said co-author Julie Kientz, UW associate professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. "And they might bring in more families who've decided the rule is not to use it at all."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu, Schoenebeck at yardi@umich.edu or Kientz at jkientz@uw.edu.

Grant Number: NSF: HCC - 1318143

Tag(s): College of Engineering * Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering * Julie Kientz

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Family technology rules: What kids expect of parents

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Engineering | News releases | Research | Social science | Technology Put your phone away when I'm talking to you. Don't text while you're driving - not even at red lights. Stop posting photos of me without my permission.