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Evaluating Websites as Information Sources

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Evaluating Websites as Information Sources

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Newsela | Media Literacy In The 21st Century

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Young Love: Tech tapping the little people

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Young Love: Tech tapping the little people

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SAN DIEGO ( TheStreet) -- Some of the Internet's biggest companies are adopting a hook-them-while-they're-young strategy, producing or curating content and apps dedicated to infants, tots, tweens and all ages in between. Their efforts comprise a family-friendly fight for both attention and dollars.

On Monday, Google ( GOOG) ( GOOGL) launched YouTube Kids, an iOS and Android app consisting of kid-friendly videos and parental controls. A few weeks prior, Twitter's ( TWTR) Vine video app gave us Vine Kids, and Netflix ( NFLX) has been catering to families with a kids' zone for more than four years. Even Amazon ( AMZN) is developing original programming specifically targeted at preschoolers and preteens.

These companies seem to recognize that, for kids, video is the gateway to the rest of the Internet, and rightfully so. The money trail leads back to parents, an audience beloved by marketers -- and parents are themselves the gatekeepers. Parents, of course, foot the bill for subscription services like Amazon and Netflix. A full 37% percent of Netflix users subscribe specifically for family and kids' programming, according to a Cowen survey.

Meanwhile, YouTube Kids offers up a selection of curated safe-for-kids videos, music, channels -- and, yes, ads. Plus, many of those channels are the properties of big-time brands such as Disney ( DIS) , LEGO, and DreamWorks Animation ( DWA) , making them important marketing vehicles for the businesses that run them.

"Kids aren't just kids; they are the gateway to households with kids, so the money trail has a huge pot of gold at the end," said Wynne Tyree, president of kid-centric market research company Smarty Pants.

The "for-kids" trend is all about share of eyeballs and share of ad dollars, which are slowly but surely migrating away from traditional kid networks, Tyree said.

Digital video advertising in the U.S. is expected to increase by 30.4% in 2015 to reach $7.77 billion, according to the latest projections from digital analytics firm eMarketer. YouTube alone will consume 20% of those advertising dollars, or $1.55 billion in net U.S. video ad revenue.

On top of that, a wealth of data confirms what we've all seen in homes, airports and grocery stores -- even young kids are glued to their screens.

More than 70% of American prekindergartners -- children between the ages of two and five -- use tablets, according to a study conducted by advertising consultancy Communicus. One-third own their own tablet. Roughly 50% of U.S. kids ages zero to 11 are Internet users, according to eMarketer. And 67% percent of children watch Netflix, while 66% watch YouTube at least daily, according to the Smarty Pants study "Young Love: Clicks, Taps, & Swipes," an annual report on the digital behaviors of U.S. children ages six to 12.

YouTube is now the favorite video entertainment brand, streaming or traditional, among six- to 12-year-olds, the Smarty Pants study found. If you're a kid, you don't "Google it," you "YouTube it."

YouTube is the portal to all the Internet has to offer, as Tyree describes it.

"It's essentially the short-cut for how to get content in its most easy-to-digest and most entertaining format: video," Tyree said. "Rather than doing a Google search, which links kids, who often don't read well and have trouble differentiating paid versus 'legit' sources, to a series of URLs that they hope has something valuable, YouTube searches immediately direct kids to videos that require virtually no reading and are almost certain to deliver -- whether it's homework help, a music video, a funny fail, or a product demo."

Competition for kids' streaming attention has never been fiercer, as is evident in the YouTube Kids app release. The app, in its design and approach, smacks of a reaction to the Netflix Kids experience on smartphones and tablets, and also echoes Amazon's kids' material.

Netflix Kids, a separate zone accessible from a parent's account, offers a smorgasbord of brand-name shows and movies that will keep most young kids mesmerized until you tear the Apple ( AAPL) iPad from their fingers.

Netflix doesn't break out revenue or spending associated with its content collection for children, but family content is a draw for parents. In addition, 61% of moms think Netflix is a good value, per the Smarty Pants report. In total, Netflix counts more than 57 million subscribers, who brought $1.3 billion in revenue to the service in the last three months of 2014.

Amazon, meanwhile, has "For the Kids" menu options that serve up a smattering of videos and shows, some produced in-house, and all available free to stream to Amazon Prime customers, who pay $99 a year for the service.

Prime membership, which folds Amazon Instant Video in with a two-day shipping service, grew 53% in 2014, CEO Jeff Bezos said following the company's fourth-quarter earnings report. (Amazon does not break out how many Prime members it has.)

Bezos noted that Amazon invested $1.3 billion in Prime Instant Video specifically. Some of that money is going to new original programming for kids, including Buddy: Tech Detective and The Stinky & Dirty Show, which debuted earlier this year as part of the company's annual pilot season.

Rival Netflix is also looking to lock in kid viewers. The company said Wednesday that it's adding five new animated and comedy series to its family entertainment lineup.

"Is Internet video going to be in every home in America in 10 years?" Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asked on Netflix's fourth-quarter earnings call. "That's a pretty clear yes."

The clear path into the American household is through digital kids' content.

Among kids who use the Internet, seven in ten will view digital video at least once a month this year, eMarketer estimates. But, as it stands, traditional television viewing, as in on a physical TV set, still dominates streaming in terms of total viewing time.

In its study of media usage during the fourth quarter of 2013, Nielsen found that kids ages two to 11 watched more than 111 hours of "traditional TV" per month, spent an additional 10 hours and 45 minutes watching time-shifted TV, and used a DVD or Blu-Ray device to view content for 9 hours and 18 minutes more.

If you're Google, Netflix or Amazon, therein lies your opportunity. And if you're Google, priority number one is winning over the parents. For many moms and dads there is an negative association with letting impressionable youngsters pan through the sometimes questionable content hosted on YouTube. The Kids app presents a solution to the problem.

"YouTube will continue to grow in salience in kids' and families' lives," Tyree said, "especially now that YouTube Kids has been revealed, taking away the 'some content isn't appropriate for my kids' factor."

Twitter, meanwhile, is also playing the streaming video game, thanks to the popularity of its quirky, six-second looping video service Vine, which now has its own kids app too.

Vine Kids, aimed at three- to five-year-olds, is much more basic than YouTube Kids. It serves up just one kid-friendly Vine video at a time. There are no logins, no ads, no settings, no likes or shares, no choices. Children simply swipe right to the next video after they've had their fill of a funny cat video or a short animated cartoon.

That's not to say Vine Kids has any less command over kids' attention. My four-year-old nephew, my personal guinea pig for such things, would not stop watching videos in the Vine Kids app until the iPhone was taken away, his mother told me.

"The videos on platforms such as YouTube and Vine have a quality that doesn't exist on network TV -- they are random, raw and more 'real.' Kids can spend long periods of time watching one video after another," the Smarty Pants report observed. "They find inspiration in seeing videos made by and featuring other kids just like them. They also learn from them, picking up how-to tips and life lessons."

The original Vine app is also a favorite with kids who circumvent the app's 13-and-older age restriction to loop videos just like their older siblings and peers. Of the six- to eight-year-olds surveyed by Smarty Pants in the summer of 2014, 41% said they use Vine and another 15% said they wanted to.

For Twitter, money isn't yet a part of Vine's big picture, and it's even less of a factor with the Vine Kids app. Eyeballs are the clear driver here, but eyeballs bring in the creators -- the YouTube stars even -- and brands in search of a captive audience.

Captive audiences are key for advertisers too. Traditional kids' networks aren't delivering the same number of impressions as they used to, which means advertisers must look elsewhere, Tyree said.

"For companies that are trying to reach kids and their families -- given co-viewing and co-entertainment and the interdependence of kids and parents -- digital advertising is growing by the minute," she said.

That certainly bodes well for YouTube, and it makes the company's fight for kids' streaming attention all the more urgent. With Netflix, Amazon and even Vine competing for a finite number of kids' viewing minutes per day, this is a streaming show worth watching.
--Written by Jennifer Van Grove in San Diego

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Why Google, Netflix, Amazon and Twitter Are Jockeying for Kid Viewers

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SAN DIEGO ( TheStreet) -- Some of the Internet's biggest companies are adopting a hook-them-while-they're-young strategy, producing or curating content and apps dedicated to infants, tots, tweens and all ages in between. Their efforts comprise a family-friendly fight for both attention and dollars.

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Survey: Teachers now use twice as much gaming and video in the classroom

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Teachers' use of game-based environments and online apps has doubled in the last six years, according to the annual Speak Up survey released on May 5. The national report, From Print to Pi...

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Looking for ideas for getting photos into your Book Creator books? We've got you covered.

Our last blog post was about understanding copyright and licensing issues when sourcing images, and we're following that up with some research into the best sites on the web to find photos, and in particular for when using an iPad.

So here we go. I've tested all the following sites on an iPad to see how well they work, from an educator's point of view. I've also set some criteria to help rate each service:

Design

This considers not only the aesthetic design but also the way the site works technically, for example - have the designers considered how people will download photos? Do users require an account to download photos?

Ease of navigation

How easy is the site to use - can you find what you are looking for? Is it easy to filter images? Is the search bar in an obvious place? Is it easy to see how to download or save photos?

Search

Does the search return reliable results? More importantly - is the search safe to use by young students in school? Is there a safe search function? What happens if kids try and search for adult keywords like 'sexy', 'porn' or 'guns'?

Quality/quantity of images

It could the best designed site in the world with an excellent navigation and amazing search function, but if there aren't any decent photos at the end of it, the site falls down. We want to see hi-res, well-taken images, with a wide variety to choose from so students aren't all using the same few.

Explanation of licensing

Is it clear how the site has obtained photos, what the licenses are for each photo and how they may be used? Is it obvious once you've done a search that the license is what you hoped it would be?

Website: flickr.com/creativecommons

Flickr is a very, very popular photo sharing site that has been around for ages, and is now owned by Yahoo, meaning that the quantity and quality of photos available is second-to-none.

Starting at the Flickr Creative Commons page, you get an excellent explanation of the various licenses, with a link directly through to a filtered search for any of the licenses.

The filtering options are fantastic, with what seems to be a reliable SafeSearch option (a couple of observations - it would be easy for a student to turn off the SafeSearch, and my search for penguins seemed to return quite a few pictures of dead penguins!).

Having said that, searching for unsafe keywords returns some pretty inappropriate images for younger ones, even with the SafeSearch on. I guess that's the trade-off when there are so many more images available (there are over 1 million images in the Public Domain category alone).

Downloading an image is very simple - you can tap the download icon and actually choose a size you want (a good way of teaching about pixels and file size). When you've chosen, the image will open in Safari ready for you to long tap and save the image to your Camera Roll (or you can Copy it and paste it directly into Book Creator).

Book Creator Support: Working with images

Note, there is also an iPad app for Flickr, but if you install this you will be required to login. If you just intend to search Flickr without uploading photos there's no need to get the app - you don't need an account to search and download photos from Flickr if you access the site with Safari.

The tagline is 'Free High Quality Images' and that certainly seems to be the case (over 520,000 photos and vectors).

It's a great site, and benefits from being curated so all the images do seem to be high quality. The search has some good filtering capabilities and it also scores points for having video as well. The homepage statement about how the photos can be used is excellent.

I guess the biggest problem with this site is that it's not designed with kids in mind, and so the search is definitely not safe if searching for inappropriate keywords. And the site loses points for containing sponsored images from Shutterstock in the first row of results - kids are likely to tap straight onto these.

It's also slightly let down by the fact that you need to sign up for an account to download hi-res versions of the photos. You can get away with long tapping on an image rather than tapping the download button if you're happy with a lower-res photo. You can also enter the Captcha each time instead of logging in.

It's a very well put together site - probably better for use in high school than with younger kids.

What's great about Photos For Class is that it's intentionally set up for schools to use, for free. They automatically cite photos for you, which is a really useful tool for teachers who are unsure about copyright and attribution.

Interestingly, the app doesn't actually have it's own photos - it uses an API to source photos from Flickr. Using Flickr's SafeSearch and their own purpose-built filters, the search is incredibly child-friendly (try any slightly risqué keyword and you get photos of ' adorable dogs '!). This alone might be the best reason to use this app over others.

However, it is quite a basic service - there are no categories of images, and no way to filter images after you've searched. I would say this app works best for use in the classroom with students. If you're a teacher creating your own textbooks, you might find other apps more useful.

The USP of this site is that it searches for free Creative Commons stock photos from all over the internet - over 200 million images! With no curation of images from the search I would expect you'll come across some fairly low quality images, but to be fair most images returned seemed high quality.

I like the categories of images, the way they can be sorted ("interestingness"?!) and the information you're presented with about each photo. If you're a fan of infographics, their blog has a great one about ' How to Attribute Creative Commons Photos '.

This service even has integration with WordPress so you can easily add photos to a WordPress website (or just copy and paste the embed code provided). And if you are happy to login, you can create lightboxes of images which could be useful over time.

There are a couple of concerns though. Providing so many un-curated images means you're putting a lot of trust in their search facility to return photos that actually have the right license. And by default it also means the site is not going to be overly kid-friendly for searching.

Overall, I like the way this site is put together - I could see me using this for the Book Creator blog, for example. So I think this one is better for teachers than students.

School wouldn't be school without copious use of clipart, right? And actually there are definitely times when your creations will benefit more from clipart than a photo, so this site makes the list.

All of the clipart has been uploaded from users and everything on the site is released freely into the public domain, so there are no issues with using these in your books.

OK, so clipart can be very much hit and miss in terms of quality, but there seem to be enough images in their library to find what you need, and the collections and tags make it easy enough to search.

Unfortunately this site does have adverts so be careful using in the classroom. Also look out for the downloading process - if you hit the big red Download button you won't be able to save the image to your iPad Camera Roll (as it downloads as an SVG file). Choose one of the PNG files instead and you'll be ok. [hr]

Other notable mentions

Creative Commons Search - Many teachers use this to search for images. I didn't include it in my main list as it's nothing more than a portal to other sites. It's easy to use as you simply type the search keyword and then click on a service.

Google advanced image search - This is probably a popular search option as everyone uses Google and knows it to be powerful. The filters are great but a bit like Foter, you'd be be wise to click through and verify that the image you're looking at actually has the license that Google says it has.

FreeImages.com - I include this as I've been using it personally for years, back when it was known as sxc.hu. It's since been bought out by Getty Images so expect lots of premium search results too, but it's a great repository of free images.

The Noun Project - I love the iconography on this site, and I've used it many times for other projects. You'll need an account and if you don't want to pay, you'll have to attribute, but it's a great source of alternative images.

Pics4Learning - This site was one of those frequently mentioned by our Book Creator Ambassadors. It benefits from being education-focused, with well organised collections, but it's dated design and use of ads lets it down somewhat, plus it's much harder to use on the iPad than on a laptop.

And the rest...

There are so many sites out there this could be an almost endless list, but here are the other sites I looked at in my research:

Acknowledgements

I want to highlight the following articles which were very useful in my research.

I also acknowledge the input of our Book Creator Ambassadors, who gave recommendations on the tools they use, and Karen Miller, co-founder of DoInk. Apps, who contacted me via Linkedin with her list of photo sources. Oh, and also these wonderful people on Twitter!

What do you think of our list?

Disagree with anything I've said? Have I missed any that you use? Let's share the knowledge and make this article even more useful - post a comment below.

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Dan Kemp is Red Jumper's Community Manager. He spends his time spreading the word about Book Creator and supporting people who use it.

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Our top 5 sites for sourcing great images and photos on your iPad - Book Creator app

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Looking for ideas for getting photos into your Book Creator books? We've got you covered. Our last blog post was about understanding copyright and licensing issues when sourcing images, and we're following that up with some research into the best sites on the web to find photos, and in particular for when using an iPad.

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Grumpy Cat. Doge. Forever alone.

These are memes that entertain us for a few seconds as we scroll through social media feeds.

But could they also be educational?

In a passionate presentation last Thursday called "Know What I Meme?" Steve Dembo (who coordinates social media for Discovery Education, a global company with headquarters in the United States) urged local teachers to use more memes in their classrooms.

It sounds like silly advice. But memes, he argued, are an important digital literacy tool. Recognizing a joke or communicating via images and pop culture are important higher-level skills, he said.

Dembo argued that memes can be used to introduce concepts in the classroom and hook students' attention. If students don't instantly get the joke, they want to be in the know and their curiosity will be piqued.

"Is this stuff crazy? Yeah. Dumb? Yeah. But they're still powerful," he said, moments before "rickrolling" the room of educators gathered at the Catholic school board's St. Anthony District Archive Centre.

To many teachers it was likely old news. Memes are everpresent in Alberta classrooms, and not just as posters on the walls.

Krista Chapman-Li, who started a viral Facebook page of memes about growing up in Canning's Cove, Newfoundland, with her sister, told local paper The Packet that she uses them during her lectures at the University of Alberta.

"It's a slide presentation that takes the tension out of the first class and it lets students know that I can take a good laugh just like them," she said.

Megan Anderson, an English teacher at Delburne Centralized School (near Red Deer), said memes have become a ubiquitous tool among teachers at her school.

Staff share memes with each other and Anderson uses them often to teach grammar.

"It added that level of humour and engagement to something that they usually dismiss as mundane," she said.

Anderson started using memes with her Grade 11 students several years ago. After studying acts of Macbeth, Anderson would post memes summarizing them on her Instagram account, which students are encouraged to follow. (One example features a photo of an actor playing Macbeth with the caption: "I got 99 problems: All Witches.")

Irony can be difficult to teach, but "memes are a great way to show that," she said.

Students now send her memes, create their own, and tag her in memes that touch on topics they've covered in class.

"I think memes work with the reality of how students are becoming literate in the modern world," she said.

"They allow students to communicate visually and quickly."
CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this article stated that Discovery Education is an American company. It is a global company with headquarters in the United States.

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Teens and social media use: What you need to know

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Teens and social media use: What you need to know

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How Teens Use Mobile And Social Media To Communicate

Teens have always been known for having a high level of peer-to-peer communication. It's generally characterized by being hidden from adults, namely parents and teachers.

So what's changed in 2015?

Teens use connected devices, namely smartphones, to communicate via texts and social media. Unlike previous generations, teens can interact with their friends without their exchanges being seen or heard.

This matters for marketers because teens are on the leading edge of technology and social media use. Even if your audience doesn't currently use these devices and social media platforms, they'll gradually adapt them to keep up with their children.

To appreciate how teens use connected devices (mainly smartphones) and social media to communicate, let's examine the 2015 Pew Research Center's Teens, Social Media & Technology Report. Based on a representative sample of 1,060 US teens ages 13 to 17, the survey was taken September 25 to October 9, 2014, and February 10 to March 16, 2015.

2015 Teen connected device use

US teens aged 13 to 17 own or have access to multiple connected devices including a smartphone, basic cellphone, computer (desktop or laptop), tablet and/or gaming console.

4% of US teens have access to only one type of device.

1% of US teens have NO devices.

2015 US teen mobile phone ownership

88% of US teens have access to a mobile phone. Many teens use their smartphone as a substitute for a computer. Check out what a panel of NYC teens had to say.

73% of US teens have a smartphone. Broken out by race, 85% of African-American teens own a smartphone, while 71% of white teens and 71% of Hispanic teens own a smartphone.

15% of US teens have a basic cellphone.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Most US teens use smartphones to communicate and connect to the Internet. It's a substitute computer. Marketers need to be accessible via mobile to reach this demographic or you're invisible!

2015 US teen computer and/tablet ownership

87% of US teens have or have access to a desktop or laptop computer.

58% of US teens have or have access to a tablet. Remember that a tablet is a large smartphone without telephone capability.

Family income has a slightly greater impact on teen access to a tablet than to a computer.

Note: The research didn't check for computer usage or availability at school or at a public library.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Most US teens have access to a computer, even if it's only in school. By contrast tablets are a luxury. Teens can get the same functions via a smartphone or computer.

2015 US teen Internet use

91% of US teens go onto the Internet via a mobile device. This rate is higher for African American teens and girls (no surprise.)
92% of US teens go online daily.

24% are online "almost constantly."

56% go online several times a day.

12% go online once-a-day

6% go online weekly

2% go online less often than once a week.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Most teens are online at least once a day. If you want to reach them, you need to be present when they wish to connect with you.

2015 US teen texting habits

91% of US teen cell owners use text messaging, either via their mobile phone or an app or website.

33% of US teens with cell phones use messaging apps such as Kik or WhatsApp. 47% of AfricanAmerican teens who own cell phones, 46% of Hispanic teens who own cell phones, and 24% of white teens who own cell phones use messaging apps to send texts.

Girls use messaging apps more than boys.

US teens send an average of 30 texts per day.

Teen girls send an average of 40 texts per day and older teen girls send an average of 50 texts per day. This is consistent with girls and women being known for communicating more than their male counterparts.

18% of teens from families earning less than $30,000 annually don't text while less than 7% of teens from higher-earning families don't text. Text cost can be a factor.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Be available via text if you target the teen demographic! It's how they communicate with others.

2015 US teens use video chat

47% of US teens use video chat including Skype, Oovoo, Facetime and Omegle. As with other forms of communication, girls especially the older cohort ranks higher.

What's surprising is that video chat isn't used at a higher rate since when free wifi (such as at Starbucks and NYC parks) is available, both computer and smartphone users aren't charged for voice, data or text units.

2015 US teen social media use

Teens use connected devices, mainly smartphones, to go online and engage with their friends. Their social media use extends their communications and enables them to provide increased information using images and video.Here's a full analysis of US adult social media 2015 usage.

2015 US teen Facebook use

71% of US teens use Facebook. This is consistent with US adult usage. While teens use Facebook due to its broad reach, it's no longer a "special" teen platform.

US teens have an average of 145 friends on Facebook, that's 10 less than their adult counterparts. Like US adults, this number of friends is roughly the Dunbar number, the number of close relationships a person can maintain. (BTW-Here are 5 Key Facebook Trends for 2015.)

34% of US teens don't know how many Facebook friends they have.

15% of US teens have 301+ Facebook friends.

Actionable Marketing Implication: You need more than just a Facebook marketing strategy to reach and engage teens.

2015 US teens on Instagram
52% of US teens use Instagram to share photos and video.

61% of US teen girls use Instagram and 44% of US teen boys use Instagram.

US teens have an average of 150 Instagram followers. This is close to the number of Facebook friends.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Teens are visual too!!! Provide images and videos on Instagram to attract their attention. Make it easy for teens to share photographs involving your product.

2015 US teens on Snapchat

41% of US teens use Snapchat to share images and videos. In theory, these photos and videos are automatically deleted within a predetermined amount of time. Yet many workarounds exist allowing viewers to capture these images.

51% of US teen girls use Snapchat while only 31% of US teen boys use Snapchat.

43% of US teens from homes with household income of $75,000+ use Snapchat.

33% of US teens use Twitter.
2015 US teens on Twitter

49% of US teen girls ages 15 to 17 use Twitter.

US Teen Twitter users have an average of 95 followers. No surprise-girls outpace boys in terms of the number of followers. The typical US teen girl has 116 followers and the typical US teen boy has 61 followers

24% of US teens use the Vine app to record 6 second videos.
2015 US teen Vine use

27% of US teen girls use the Vine app and 20% of US teen boys use the Vine app.
33% of US teens use Google+.
2015 US teen Google+ use

48% of Hispanic teens use Google+, 26% of US white teens use Google+, and 29% of African-American teens use Google+.

Note: Students may have access to Google+ through other Google tools available at school.

2015 US teen Pinterest use

22% of US teens use online pinboards. (Note: This data isn't purely Pinterest.)

33% of US teen girls use online pinboards (including Pinterest and Polyvore) compared with 11% of US teen boys.

2015 US teen Tumblr use

14% of US teens use Tumblr, a social media platform focused on microblogging visual content.

23% of US teen girls use. Tumblr.

Actionable Marketing Implication: Teen girls use a variety of different visual platforms to express themselves. Take the time to understand your specific audience's preferences, especially if you have limited resources.
17% of US teens read or comment on discussion boards such as Reddit or Digg.
Other 2015 US teen social media use

11% of US teens with cell phones use sharing apps or sites that allow users to ask questions or to post confessional text or images anonymously. Examples of this type of app include Whisper, Yik Yak and Ask.FM. This behavior is slightly higher for girls and Hispanics.

2015 US teen social media use varies

Facebook remains the most used social media network. 41% of US teens use Facebook most often and 20% of US teens use Instagram most often.

While teens continue to spend lots of time communicating with their friends, the devices they use and the social media platforms keep evolving.

Smartphones are teens' device of choice. They provide phone, text and Internet connectivity. Smartphones are teens' personal device.

While Facebook remains the largest US teen social media network in 2015, it's no longer the cool place to be. 2015 US teen social media use is more diversified. Other social media platforms and apps continue to gain traction and fragment US teen social media use.

To reach US teens, you need a diversified social media strategy to maximize your potential audience. Further, optimize your social media for mobile consumption and sharing.

What else would you add and why?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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2015 US Teen Social Media Use: What You Need To Know - Heidi Cohen

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Teens have always been known for having a high level of peer-to-peer communication. It's generally characterized by being hidden from adults, namely parents and teachers. So what's changed in 2015? Teens use connected devices, namely smartphones, to communicate via texts and social media.

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With everything from silly skits to makeup tips, YouTube stars appeal to kids and teens with frank talk, off-the-wall scenarios, and even some deep thoughts. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Thousands of copyright free and copyright friendly images and photos for teachers and students.

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How to Make a Video Memorable infographic

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How to Make a Video Memorable infographic

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While common usage of the word, text, often refers to written or printed matter, literary and cultural theory extends the term to refer to any coherent set of symbols that transmit meaning to those who know how to read them. In an age where ideas may take many forms and be expressed across different media, texts and reading take on new implications.

One goal of the Flows of Reading project is to inspire teachers and students to reflect on what can be considered as reading and what kinds of reading they perform in their everyday lives. Flows of Reading introduces an expanded concept of the term, text, and models a new type of reader -one who reads across different media and who understands reading as an activity of sharing, deconstructing, and making meaning.

Through Flows of Reading, we encourage readers to take ownership of their learning as they select and pursue their own modes of engaging with a text. Each stream models pedagogical and critical techniques that can be adapted to a wide range of literary works and offers teachers multiple examples for putting those approaches into practice.

Flows of Reading, a digital book, is a complementary offering to Reading in a Participatory Culture published by Teachers College Press and National Writing Project. You can purchase the printed book here.

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Flows of Reading: About the Online Digital Book, Flows of Reading

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While common usage of the word, text, often refers to written or printed matter, literary and cultural theory extends the term to refer to any coherent set of symbols that transmit meaning to those who know how to read them.

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The melting night
Startled the blinking stars
The stars, the moon and the inky backdrop
Slowly slid from the heavens
Drip drip dripped through the open window
They melted down the wall
The melting night brought those
Illuminating stars, the big fat moon
And that inky backdrop
Sliding across my floor
A slippery, sloppery, glowingly lit

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The melting nightStartled the blinking starsThe stars, the moon and the inky backdropSlowly slid from the heavensDrip drip dripped through the open windowThey melted down the wallThe melting night brought those Illuminating stars, the big fat moon And that inky backdrop Sliding across my floorA slippery, sloppery, glowingly lit

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In a way, it all started with Fred Figglehorn, a chipmunk-voiced, fictional 6-year-old with a dysfunctional family, manic energy and anger issues who proved to be catnip to young viewers on YouTube.

Brian Robbins, a longtime TV and film producer and perhaps the first adult to ever voluntarily watch Figglehorn's videos, started paying closer attention to the ADHD-addled character and the youngsters who religiously followed him. Robbins found that millennials, including his own kids, craved Figglehorn's style of goofball fun and wanted it dished out at a dizzying pace-available 24/7 in bite-size bits, production values be damned, A-list celebrities largely absent. More and more, kids turned to YouTube to find and cultivate their own stars.

That led Robbins to finance and produce the first feature-length movie starring Figglehorn, played by Nebraska actor Lucas Cruikshank. It would become a massive hit for Nickelodeon and spawn a TV and licensing juggernaut. More importantly, it also alerted Robbins to YouTube's tremendous reach and influence. It was there that, in the summer of 2012, he launched AwesomenessTV as an aggregator and curator of teen- and tween-targeted original content. "Kids now do not plop in front of the TV and wait for their favorite shows to come on," Robbins points out. "They have an enormous appetite and the time and technology to consume a lot of content. They snack constantly. And if you serve up the right content, they'll come."

Robbins has built a humongous food court of nearly 86,000 kid-created channels on AwesomenessTV's multichannel network. Among the most popular are girl next door Jennxpenn, the singing Cimorelli sisters, Aussie singers/stunt group the Janoskians, and prankster officialsampepper. The flagship channel, AwesomenessTV, culls talent from this fertile breeding ground and creates its own content, including the chat show IMO, reality series Cheerleaders, Party of Five-meets-Glee drama Side Effects, plus programming centered around gossip, advice, sketches, music and style.

Seemingly overnight, kids discovered AwesomenessTV, which at last count boasted 38 million subscribers, more than 65 million monthly visitors and half a billion views across its channels. And that's not including mobile viewing, hugely popular with the 8-to-18 set. AwesomenessTV has attracted advertisers including Target, PepsiCo's Aquafina, Subway and the movie studios. AwesomenessTV also spawned a hit show on Nickelodeon.

The heat around the brand caught the eye of Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose DreamWorks Animation bought it last summer for $33 million, plus another $117 million if it hits traffic and earnings targets. The acquisition and an infusion of financing for new programming development has provided "amazing rocket fuel for us," says Robbins, whose producer credits include the network series One Tree Hill and Smallville and theatricals Wild Hogs and The Shaggy Dog.

"We want to build this as a media brand, not just a distribution company," he adds. "We have to remain hungry and humble and realize that this audience is fickle and fast moving. We have to react quickly." In that vein, an AwesomenessTV mobile app is being developed, along with ways to watch its content on Xbox, PlayStation and other platforms.

But it is the content and talent that are the beating heart of AwesomenessTV, Robbins says, and both must be fresh and abundant. To that end, executives are constantly scouting for new stars as well as additional projects for their existing marquee names. Awesomeness just wrapped a movie starring Lia Marie Johnson as her wacky YouTube character Terry the Tomboy, while Robbins is working on a documentary of pop sensation Austin Mahone.

In the current tech revolution, the prestige-and financial spoils-will go to those channels that can "truly understand and serve a specific demographic," says Tim Staples, a former Omnicom Group executive who co-founded Contagious, a company specializing in branded viral videos. "AwesomenessTV has been smart about how they've focused their energy and resources. ... They've done an amazing job of cultivating the kid demo, and they have the potential to be the go-to spot in the YouTube world for that really desirable group."

The Fashionista / Tealaxx2
If Teala Dunn wants to watch an actor, she'll turn on the TV or go to a movie. If she wants to get to know someone, she'll fire up YouTube. Dunn, a veteran actor featured in sitcoms like TNT's Are We There Yet, Disney Channel's Dog With a Blog and Fox's Enlisted, had to learn to open up on YouTube. That meant shedding the quirky persona she had adopted in her early videos. "I was trying to make super funny videos on my vlog, and it just didn't feel like me," explains Dunn. "Then one day, after I'd been shopping, I said, 'Let me make a haul video.' And that really clicked." Her AwesomenessTV channel, Tealaxx2, which has nearly 182,000 subscribers, is packed with beauty and style tips, bedroom vanity tours, morning and evening makeup routines, and Sephora purchases. She likes getting instant feedback from fans, something that isn't possible with her TV work-though she doesn't otherwise make much of a distinction between the media channels. She looks up to YouTube stars like Shane Dawson for his commitment ("He uploads every single day," she points out) and Miranda Sings, the singer/dancer/actor/model/magician with 100 million views under her oddball belt. Though Dunn doesn't do comedy specifically on her channel and she's no longer playing a role, she hasn't completely abandoned her silly side. "I'll say during my videos that I'm so weird," she says. "It's OK to be weird."

The Cut-Ups / Zay Zay and Jojo
Kids really do say the darndest things-especially when somebody trains a video camera on them and gives them a YouTube channel. Up-and-coming comedian Kevin Fredericks knew exactly what he was doing when he set up his precocious and adorable son Isaiah (known as Zay Zay) on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Five-years-old at the time, he told his dad he wanted to be the world's youngest comedian. Zay Zay, now 7, and his 5-year-old brother Jojo may be the tiniest stars in the AwesomenessTV galaxy, but their influence and audience are growing. The telegenic pair serves up no-holds-barred performances in their show, Crazy I Say, as well as their individual channels, complaining to the world that their parents make them eat salad (probably true) and lie about their ages for free food (maybe a fib). They bicker like siblings do and point out the shortcomings of their caretakers for the amusement of 38,000 subscribers and other viewers who have watched their videos more than 3 million times. Some have even compared them to Jaden and Willow Smith for their breakout star potential. Indeed, Zay Zay just landed his first film role, playing Buckwheat in The Little Rascals Save the Day, out this fall.

The Girl Next Door / Jennxpenn

Jennxpenn has a million things on her mind-1 million subscribers for her AwesomenessTV channel, that is, on which she hangs out with friends, plays games like "intense musical chairs" and answers fan questions about embarrassing things. Jenn McAllister has amassed 765,000 subscribers, a whopping 347 percent increase since she joined forces with AwesomenessTV about a year ago. She would like more traffic for her videos, which have morphed from skits and play acting into her just being herself. "I talk directly to my viewers," McAllister says. "It's more of a blog style, and I think people have gotten to know me better this way. I feel like we have a personal connection." She saw a noticeable uptick in views as her postings became more consistent, even though she's had to deal with trolls and haters. One of her recent videos, dubbed Insecurities, deals head-on with criticism and gives her fans wise-beyond-her-years advice to embrace their flaws. "I struggled with negative comments at first, especially when I was younger, when people would say things about how I looked," says the 17-year-old. "I just try to focus on the positive." Like many of her AwesomenessTV cohorts, McAllister hopes to use the YouTube platform to launch a broader media career, maybe in acting or TV hosting. "I've always had that goal of 1 million subscribers, and maybe that will open up some other opportunities outside YouTube," she says.

The Crooners / Cimorelli
Imagine a female Jackson 5 or an all-girl Brady Bunch that's as squeaky clean as the sunny Southern California days are long. Add some brand savvy (a recent ad for Subway) and a rock-solid family foundation that includes five brothers and you've got Cimorelli, six singing sisters on the cusp of multimedia fame. The Sacramento-born, Malibu-based group, signed to Universal Records, is readying a debut album after cultivating a following for their a cappella versions of pop songs. The ever-smiling sisters have racked up 2.5 million subscribers and more than 600 million views of their covers of Top 40 hits like Call Me Maybe, Cups and Made in America, though their first album will feature original music they've written themselves. And everything is family-friendly (if their 9-year-old brother wouldn't be allowed to hear it, then it's off limits). And next, the sisters-Christina (23), Katherine (22), Lisa (20), Amy (18), Lauren (15) and Dani (13)-are in talks for movies and TV projects. They may even become animated characters. "People have tried to tell us to be more edgy, but we're not going to do that," says Christina. "We've figured out who we are, and we want the things we do to be inspiring, empowering and positive."

The Go-Getter / Hunter March

The last few years of Hunter March's life have brought a series of fortunate events-as well as some dues paying and hard work. While still seniors in high school, he and his buddies filmed a remake of Lil Wayne's music video for Prom Queen, with March standing in as the sought-after prom king. While it didn't make them YouTube stars, it did land March an internship at AwesomenessTV where he parlayed his grunt work into shooting behind-the-scenes footage of original productions-something that was his own idea. He would graduate to full-time staffer, but when sitting behind a desk proved too limiting, March once again ended up in front of the camera. Almost 23, March hosts three AwesomenessTV series: the celebrity- and gossip-centric shows Awesomeness Hollywood and The Daily Report and the advice program Dear Hunter. Having attracted 33,226 subscribers, March, ever his nose to the grindstone, has even bigger ambitions, hoping to develop a TV-style pilot out of material from his YouTube channel and his AwesomenessTV appearances. Despite the huge audience numbers on the Web, the big production budgets are still in television, he points out. "Not that being on YouTube forever would be a bad thing, but TV is definitely a goal," he says.

Johnson once made a YouTube video that featured her slowly eating a bowl of cereal, staring directly into the camera while her alter ego pestered her off-screen. It logged nearly 1 million views. The 17-year-old blonde, one of the most popular kids on AwesomenessTV, loves the creative freedom of Internet videos, even when that involves shaky old clips of her singing in church recitals or in-character skits of her wolfing down breakfast. Her YouTube experience started inauspiciously, with her mom posting videos for family and friends. Then Johnson met the Fine Brothers and became a mainstay on their Emmy-winning series Kids React and later Teens React. She populates her own channels these days with her musings on life (pet peeves are a hot topic) and sketch comedy, for which she created Terry the Tomboy. The character is so in demand that boss Brian Robbins recently made a feature-length film starring the frizzy-haired, tough-talking kid. The movie, packed with AwesomenessTV stars, could go to traditional TV, a cineplex or an alternative distributor. "Sometimes I feel like I have multiple-personality disorder," Johnson admits. "So my viewers don't know who I am because I play all these characters, but they really do because I make other videos where they see my own personality. YouTube is all about personality." Viewers like what they see, with Johnson racking up more than 705,000 subscribers and 39 million views.

Photos: Karl J. Kaul
Robbins: Amanda Friedman

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Meet 12 of the Biggest Young Stars on YouTube

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In a way, it all started with Fred Figglehorn, a chipmunk-voiced, fictional 6-year-old with a dysfunctional family, manic energy and anger issues who proved to be catnip to young viewers on YouTube. Brian Robbins, a longtime TV and film producer and perhaps the first adult to ever voluntarily watch Figglehorn's videos, started paying closer attention to the ADHD-addled character and the youngsters who religiously followed him.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones.

Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center. More than half (56%) of teens - defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 - go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Just 6% of teens report going online weekly, and 2% go online less often.

Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, while just 12% of teens 13 to 17 say they have no cell phone of any type. African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens. These phones and other mobile devices have become a primary driver of teen internet use: Fully 91% of teens go online from mobile devices at least occasionally. Among these "mobile teens," 94% go online daily or more often. By comparison, teens who don't access the internet via mobile devices tend to go online less frequently. Some 68% go online at least daily.

African-American and Hispanic youth report more frequent internet use than white teens. Among African-American teens, 34% report going online "almost constantly" as do 32% of Hispanic teens, while 19% of white teens go online that often.

Facebook is the most popular and frequently used social media platform among teens; half of teens use Instagram, and nearly as many use Snapchat

Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17 with 71% of all teens using the site, even as half of teens use Instagram and four-in-ten use Snapchat.
71% of teens use more than one social network site
Teens are diversifying their social network site use. A majority of teens - 71% - report using more than one social network site out of the seven platform options they were asked about. Among the 22% of teens who only use one site, 66% use Facebook, 13% use Google+, 13% use Instagram and 3% use Snapchat.

This study uses a somewhat different method than Pew Research Center's previous reports on teens. While both are probability-based, nationally representative samples of American teens, the current survey was administered online, while our previous work involved surveying teens by phone. A great deal of previous research has found that the mode of interview - telephone vs. online self-administration - can affect the results. The magnitude and direction of these effects are difficult to predict, though for most kinds of questions, the fundamental conclusions one would draw from the data will be similar regardless of mode. Accordingly, we will not compare specific percentages from previous research with results from the current survey. But we believe that the broad contours and patterns evident in this web-based survey are comparable to those seen in previous telephone surveys.

Facebook remains a dominant force in teens' social media ecosystems, even as Instagram and Snapchat have risen into a prominent role in teens' online lives. Asked which platforms they used most often, the overall population of teens in this sample (ages 13 to 17) reported that Facebook was the site they used most frequently (41% said that), followed by Instagram (20%) and Snapchat (11%).

Boys are more likely than girls to report that they visit Facebook most often (45% of boys vs. 36% of girls). Girls are more likely than boys to say they use Instagram (23% of girls vs. 17% of boys) and Tumblr (6% of girls compared with less than 1% of boys). Older teens ages 15 to 17 are more likely than younger teens to cite Facebook (44% vs. 35% of younger teens), Snapchat (13% vs. 8%) and Twitter (8% vs. 3%) as a most often used platform, while younger teens ages 13 to 14 are more likely than their older compatriots to list Instagram (25% vs. 17% of older teens) as a platform they visit most often.

Middle and upper income teens lean toward Instagram and Snapchat

The survey data reveals a distinct pattern in social media use by socio-economic status. Teens from less well-off households (those earning less than $50,000) are more likely than others to say they use Facebook the most: 49% of these teens say they use it most often, compared with 37% of teens from somewhat wealthier families (those earning $50,000 or more).

Teens from more affluent households are somewhat more likely than those from the least affluent homes to say they visit Snapchat most often, with 14% of those from families earning more than $75,000 saying Snapchat is their top site, compared with 7% of those whose families earn less than $30,000 annually. Twitter shows a similar pattern by income, with the wealthiest teens using Twitter more than their least well-to-do peers. It should be noted that some of these differences may be artifacts of differences in use of these sites by these different subgroups of teens.

Smartphones facilitate shifts in teens' communication and information landscape

As American teens adopt smartphones, they have a variety of methods for communication and sharing at their disposal. Texting is an especially important mode of communication for many teens. Some 88% of teens have or have access to cell phones or smartphones and 90% of those teens with phones exchange texts. A typical teen sends and receives 30 texts per day

And teens are not simply sending messages through the texting system that telephone companies offer. Some 73% of teens have access to smartphones and among them messaging apps like Kik or WhatsApp have caught on. Fully 33% of teens with phones have such apps. And Hispanic and African-American youth with phones are substantially more likely to use messaging apps, with 46% of Hispanic and 47% of African-American teens using a messaging app compared with 24% of white teens.

Girls dominate social media; boys are more likely to play video games

Teenage girls use social media sites and platforms - particularly visually-oriented ones - for sharing more than their male counterparts do. For their part, boys are more likely than girls to own gaming consoles and play video games.

Data for this report was collected for Pew Research Center. The survey was administered online by the GfK Group using its KnowledgePanel, in English and Spanish, to a nationally representative sample of over 1,060 teens ages 13 to 17 and a parent or guardian from September 25 to October 9, 2014 and February 10 to March 16, 2015. In the fall, 1016 parent-teen pairs were interviewed. The survey was re-opened in the spring and 44 pairs were added to the sample. For more on the methods for this study, please visit the Methods section at the end of this report.

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Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones. Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center.

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Advertisement

"Fortune favors the prepared mind," as Louis Pasteur once said. So as school revs up this month, so do SAT prep classes. Students might be surprised, however, at the amount of time dedicated to visual literacy skills. The increased focus on graphics is designed to prepare an estimated 1.6 million college-bound pupils for the first redesign of the standardized college admissions test in more than a decade. Along with other updates, test takers of the March 2016 exam will encounter graphics not only in the math section as in past years but also in the reading and writing and language portions. Students will be asked to interpret information presented in tables, charts and graphs and to correct text so it accurately describes data found in accompanying figures.

Mounting evidence indicates that such literacy is a key skill for success in college, careers and daily life in general. In an increasingly data-rich world, graphics now pop up routinely in formats ranging from political campaign literature to household bills. "Being a literate consumer of that information is valuable regardless of your career," says Jim Patterson, an executive director at the College Board, the nonprofit corporation that owns and publishes the SAT.

Education experts agree that students in many developed nations, including the U.S., lack experience with visual data. "Apart from basic x- and y- axis graphs, educators [around the world] don't sufficiently teach students how to represent information graphically," says Emmanuel Manalo, a professor of education psychology at Kyoto University in Japan. The SAT's new focus most likely will nudge educators to shift their lesson plans accordingly. Students, in other words, won't be the only ones with bubble charts or scatter plots on the mind this fall-teachers will, too.

Big Data Demands

The intellectual work required to interpret a graph taxes our brain more than the effort involved in reading the same information presented as text, according to a new study by Manalo and two researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The team measured neurological activity in students and found that graphs elicited roughly 60 percent more electrical activity than text or equations and 40 to 50 percent more than pictures and tables. Manalo will next examine whether practice diminishes the amount of tapped brainpower.

This article was originally published with the title "SAT Charts New Territory"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Rachel Nuwer

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. Her first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Illegal Wildlife Trafficking, will be published in 2018.

Credit: Nick Higgins

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2016 SATs Will Put Stronger Emphasis on Graphic Literacy

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"Fortune favors the prepared mind," as Louis Pasteur once said. So as school revs up this month, so do SAT prep classes. Students might be surprised, however, at the amount of time dedicated to visual literacy skills.

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Famous names. Lost interviews. Animated short films. The series from Quoted Studios.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Three in ten adults read an e-book last year; half own a tablet or e-reader

Most American adults read a print book in the past year, even as e-reading continues to grow

The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions.

The percentage of adults who read an e-book in the past year has risen to 28%, up from 23% at the end of 2012. At the same time, about seven in ten Americans reported reading a book in print, up four percentage points after a slight dip in 2012, and 14% of adults listened to an audiobook.

Though e-books are rising in popularity, print remains the foundation of Americans' reading habits. Most people who read e-books also read print books, and just 4% of readers are "e-book only." Audiobook listeners have the most diverse reading habits overall, while fewer print readers consume books in other formats.

Overall, 76% of adults read a book in some format over the previous 12 months. The typical American adult read or listened to 5 books in the past year, and the average for all adults was 12 books. Neither the mean nor median number of books read has changed significantly over the past few years.

More also own dedicated e-reading devices

The January 2014 survey, conducted just after the 2013 holiday gift-giving season, produced evidence that e-book reading devices are spreading through the population. Some 42% of adults now own tablet computers, up from 34% in September. And the number of adults who own an e-book reading device like a Kindle or Nook reader jumped from 24% in September to 32% after the holidays.

Overall, 50% of Americans now have a dedicated handheld device-either a tablet computer like an iPad, or an e-reader such as a Kindle or Nook-for reading e-content. That figure has grown from 43% of adults who had either of those devices in September.

In addition, the survey found that 92% of adults have a cell phone (including the 55% of adults who have a smartphone), and 75% have a laptop or desktop computer - figures that have not changed in significantly from our pre-holiday surveys.

People read e-books on other devices, too

E-book readers who own tablets or e-readers are very likely to read e-books on those devices-but those who own computers or cellphones sometimes turn to those platforms, too. And as tablet and e-reader ownership levels have risen over the past few years, these devices have become more prominent in the e-reading landscape:

About the survey

These findings come from a survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between January 2-5, 2014. The survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 1,005 adults ages 18 and older living in the continental United States. Interviews were conducted by landline (500) and cell phone (505, including 268 without a landline phone), and were done in English and Spanish. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

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E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps

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Three in ten adults read an e-book last year; half own a tablet or e-reader Most American adults read a print book in the past year, even as e-reading continues to grow The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions.

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YouTube is giving cable TV a run for its money.

The popular video-sharing platform -- which was acquired by Google in 2006 -- reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in America than any U.S. cable network, said Google's chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, during an earnings conference call on July 16.

Despite increasing competition from Facebook, YouTube has seen a steep increase in its user engagement metrics. Visitors to YouTube's homepage are now up over three times year-over-year, per Kordestani. Meanwhile, "watch time" -- how much time users actually spend viewing videos -- is up 60 percent, the fastest growth rate the company has seen in two years.

Much of the site's traction comes from mobile, Kordestani said: The average viewing session on mobile devices has more than doubled compared to last year, rising to a record 40 minutes per session.

YouTube's increasing popularity among the younger demographics is part of what Kordestani called a revolution of "the television experience for the digital age."

For younger audiences in particular, the video-sharing website has become a platform to discover new content, thanks to new features such video suggestions and auto-play.

According to a recent study by Miner & Co. Studio, tablets and smartphones are replacing television as kids' screen of choice. Fifty-seven percent of parents say their child prefers a device other than TV to watch video content, and nearly one in two parents say they punish their kids by taking away their smartphones and only allowing them to watch TV.

Along with YouTube, other video-streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are challenging the traditional TV landscape. According to a report by Deloitte released in April, more than 42 percent of American households use video-streaming services, as an increasing number people are now watching TV shows on smartphones, tablets and computers.

Unsurprisingly, millennials are leading the change in viewing habits: Only 58 percent of people under 25 say they value traditional cable television, compared to 89 percent of adults ages 49-67, per Deloitte.

You will find more statistics at Statista

As video-streaming services like YouTube and Netflix continue to gain momentum, original programming has become a crucial factor in people's device of choice. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released in 2013, 63 percent of U.S. adults say original content is a key reason why they select a particular subscription service over another.

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YouTube Is Crushing Cable TV, According To Google

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YouTube is giving cable TV a run for its money. The popular video-sharing platform -- which was acquired by Google in 2006 -- reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in America than any U.S. cable network, said Google's chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, during an earnings conference call on July 16.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones.

Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center. More than half (56%) of teens - defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 - go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Just 6% of teens report going online weekly, and 2% go online less often.

Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, while just 12% of teens 13 to 17 say they have no cell phone of any type. African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens. These phones and other mobile devices have become a primary driver of teen internet use: Fully 91% of teens go online from mobile devices at least occasionally. Among these "mobile teens," 94% go online daily or more often. By comparison, teens who don't access the internet via mobile devices tend to go online less frequently. Some 68% go online at least daily.

African-American and Hispanic youth report more frequent internet use than white teens. Among African-American teens, 34% report going online "almost constantly" as do 32% of Hispanic teens, while 19% of white teens go online that often.

Facebook is the most popular and frequently used social media platform among teens; half of teens use Instagram, and nearly as many use Snapchat

Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17 with 71% of all teens using the site, even as half of teens use Instagram and four-in-ten use Snapchat.
71% of teens use more than one social network site
Teens are diversifying their social network site use. A majority of teens - 71% - report using more than one social network site out of the seven platform options they were asked about. Among the 22% of teens who only use one site, 66% use Facebook, 13% use Google+, 13% use Instagram and 3% use Snapchat.

This study uses a somewhat different method than Pew Research Center's previous reports on teens. While both are probability-based, nationally representative samples of American teens, the current survey was administered online, while our previous work involved surveying teens by phone. A great deal of previous research has found that the mode of interview - telephone vs. online self-administration - can affect the results. The magnitude and direction of these effects are difficult to predict, though for most kinds of questions, the fundamental conclusions one would draw from the data will be similar regardless of mode. Accordingly, we will not compare specific percentages from previous research with results from the current survey. But we believe that the broad contours and patterns evident in this web-based survey are comparable to those seen in previous telephone surveys.

Facebook remains a dominant force in teens' social media ecosystems, even as Instagram and Snapchat have risen into a prominent role in teens' online lives. Asked which platforms they used most often, the overall population of teens in this sample (ages 13 to 17) reported that Facebook was the site they used most frequently (41% said that), followed by Instagram (20%) and Snapchat (11%).

Boys are more likely than girls to report that they visit Facebook most often (45% of boys vs. 36% of girls). Girls are more likely than boys to say they use Instagram (23% of girls vs. 17% of boys) and Tumblr (6% of girls compared with less than 1% of boys). Older teens ages 15 to 17 are more likely than younger teens to cite Facebook (44% vs. 35% of younger teens), Snapchat (13% vs. 8%) and Twitter (8% vs. 3%) as a most often used platform, while younger teens ages 13 to 14 are more likely than their older compatriots to list Instagram (25% vs. 17% of older teens) as a platform they visit most often.

Middle and upper income teens lean toward Instagram and Snapchat

The survey data reveals a distinct pattern in social media use by socio-economic status. Teens from less well-off households (those earning less than $50,000) are more likely than others to say they use Facebook the most: 49% of these teens say they use it most often, compared with 37% of teens from somewhat wealthier families (those earning $50,000 or more).

Teens from more affluent households are somewhat more likely than those from the least affluent homes to say they visit Snapchat most often, with 14% of those from families earning more than $75,000 saying Snapchat is their top site, compared with 7% of those whose families earn less than $30,000 annually. Twitter shows a similar pattern by income, with the wealthiest teens using Twitter more than their least well-to-do peers. It should be noted that some of these differences may be artifacts of differences in use of these sites by these different subgroups of teens.

Smartphones facilitate shifts in teens' communication and information landscape

As American teens adopt smartphones, they have a variety of methods for communication and sharing at their disposal. Texting is an especially important mode of communication for many teens. Some 88% of teens have or have access to cell phones or smartphones and 90% of those teens with phones exchange texts. A typical teen sends and receives 30 texts per day

And teens are not simply sending messages through the texting system that telephone companies offer. Some 73% of teens have access to smartphones and among them messaging apps like Kik or WhatsApp have caught on. Fully 33% of teens with phones have such apps. And Hispanic and African-American youth with phones are substantially more likely to use messaging apps, with 46% of Hispanic and 47% of African-American teens using a messaging app compared with 24% of white teens.

Girls dominate social media; boys are more likely to play video games

Teenage girls use social media sites and platforms - particularly visually-oriented ones - for sharing more than their male counterparts do. For their part, boys are more likely than girls to own gaming consoles and play video games.

Data for this report was collected for Pew Research Center. The survey was administered online by the GfK Group using its KnowledgePanel, in English and Spanish, to a nationally representative sample of over 1,060 teens ages 13 to 17 and a parent or guardian from September 25 to October 9, 2014 and February 10 to March 16, 2015. In the fall, 1016 parent-teen pairs were interviewed. The survey was re-opened in the spring and 44 pairs were added to the sample. For more on the methods for this study, please visit the Methods section at the end of this report.

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Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones. Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center.

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American Association for Pediatrics new screen time guidelines

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American Association for Pediatrics new screen time guidelines

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For years, the American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) has adopted an on/off switch mentality when it comes to children and screen time. It used to recommend that children, ages two and under, have absolutely no exposure to screens. For older kids, the AAP recommended limiting 'screen time' to just two hours a day. Now, the guidelines have been changed so that they reflect a more nuanced approach.

It is about time. I suspect that most parents found it almost impossible to abide by the old guidelines. These days, there are monitors above the pumps at gas stations and always-on television in the electronics aisle at . Screen abstinence would pretty much be like sentencing a newborn to house arrest. And older kids, as any parent of a 10-year-old can tell you, will blow through their two hours before their Minecraft sessions even get going. Fortunately, the AAP finally realized it needed to keep up with the times.

Last month I wrote, "Parents Don't Need To Worry About 'Screen Time' Anymore." In that post, I argued:

Screens are now a ubiquitous part of our lives. It is a technology that has been completely integrated into the human experience. At this point, worrying about exposure to screens is like worrying about exposure to agriculture, indoor plumbing, the written word, or automobiles. For better or worse, the transition to screen based digital information technologies has already happened and now resistance is futile. The screen time rhetoric that accompanied the television-when this technology was still in its formative age-is no longer relevant.

The AAP now seems to agree. "In a world where 'screen time' is becoming simply 'time,'" the update reads, "our policies must evolve or become obsolete. The public needs to know that the Academy's advice is science-driven, not based merely on the precautionary principle." Of course, that's exactly what most experts in children and digital media previously thought, that the AAP guidelines seemed like they were the result of familiar technophobic paranoia that always accompanies new technologies.

In his excellent book Speed Limits: Where Time Went And Why We Have So Little Left, Mark C. Taylor reminds us that such a precautionary attitude always seems to accompany new innovations. "Like today's parents concerned about the psychological and physical effects of their kids playing video games, nineteenth-century physicians worried about the effect of people sitting in railway cars for hours watching the world rush by in a stream of images that seemed to be detached from real people and actual things." It seems there's something about the fast flicker of images that continuously terrifies us. My feed is, ironically, full of memes suggesting I put down my phone and "just slow down." Taylor agrees; his book is about the dangers of speed. He traces our historic relationship to the pace of technology. For example, he describes people's initial responses to the steam-engine: "some physicians went so far as to maintain that the experience of speed caused 'neurasthenia, neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, early tooth decay, and even premature baldness.'"

Speed, it seems, causes anxiety. Some of the time we're worried about going too fast. At other times, not fast enough. The AAP, in this instance, seems to believe it had trouble keeping pace. "Scientific research and policy statements lag behind the pace of digital innovation," the update reads. "Case in point: The 2011 AAP policy statement Media Use by Children Younger Than Two Years was drafted prior to the first generation iPad and explosion of apps aimed at young children." Certainly, these twelve new guidelines seem far more grounded in the current reality of digital life. But when it comes to innovation, technology, and human progress, even the scientific method can't provide the objectivity needed to escape the psychological burden of our paranoid default settings.

Here are the AAP's revised guidelines on children and screen time:

Media is just another environment. Children do the same things they have always done, only virtually. Like any environment, media can have positive and negative effects.

Parenting has not changed.The same parenting rules apply to your children's real and virtual environments. Play with them. Set limits; kids need and expect them. Teach kindness. Be involved. Know their friends and where they are going with them.

Role modeling is critical.Limit your own media use, and model online etiquette. Attentive parenting requires face time away from screens.

We learn from each other.Neuroscience research shows that very young children learn best via two-way communication. "Talk time" between caregiver and child remains critical for language development. Passive video presentations do not lead to language learning in infants and young toddlers. The more media engender live interactions, the more educational value they may hold (e.g., a toddler chatting by video with a parent who is traveling). Optimal educational media opportunities begin after age 2, when media may play a role in bridging the learning achievement gap.

Content matters.The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his time rather than just setting a timer.

Curation helps.More than 80,000 apps are labeled as educational, but little research validates their quality (Hirsh-Pasek KPsych Science2015;16:3-34 Google Scholar). An interactive product requires more than "pushing and swiping" to teach. Look to organizations like Common Sense Media (www.commonsensemedia.org) that review age-appropriate apps, games and programs.

Co-engagement counts.Family participation with media facilitates social interactions and learning. Play a video game with your kids. Your perspective influences how your children understand their media experience. For infants and toddlers, co-viewing is essential.

Playtime is important.Unstructured playtime stimulates creativity. Prioritize daily unplugged playtime, especially for the very young.

Set limits. Tech use, like all other activities, should have reasonable limits. Does your child's technology use help or hinder participation in other activities?

It's OK for your teen to be online.Online relationships are integral to adolescent development. Social media can support identity formation. Teach your teen appropriate behaviors that apply in both the real and online worlds. Ask teens to demonstrate what they are doing online to help you understand both content and context.

Create tech-free zones.Preserve family mealtime. Recharge devices overnight outside your child's bedroom. These actions encourage family time, healthier eating habits and healthier sleep.

Kids will be kids.Kids will make mistakes using media. These can be teachable moments if handled with empathy. Certain aberrations, however, such as sexting or posting self-harm images, signal a need to assess youths for other risk-taking behaviors.

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The American Academy Of Pediatrics Just Changed Their Guidelines On Kids And Screen Time

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For years, the American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) has adopted an on/off switch mentality when it comes to children and screen time. It used to recommend that children, ages two and under, have absolutely no exposure to screens. For older kids, the AAP recommended limiting 'screen time' to just two hours a day.

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Why AAP may allow screentime for babies 

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Why AAP may allow screentime for babies 

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Why the Doctors May Allow Screen Time for Babies

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The American Academy of Pediatrics previously recommended that children stick to less than 2 hours of screen time, but that might change

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Expanded version of how kid are using media 

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Expanded version of how kid are using media 

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O n weekdays in the Larsen household, Kirsten, 12, and Soren, 15, get up early and park themselves on the couch before school. But they do not turn on the TV. Instead, the youngsters each pull out their respective phones and fire up YouTube to get an A.M. dose of videos, essentially acquiring the information they need to know before encountering peers.

Say hello to the future cord-cutters of America. Not only is cable becoming increasingly unnecessary to them, but so, too, is the actual TV set.

In fact, the societal transference of TV viewing habits, from over-the-air to over-the-top, is most evidenced in how tots, tweens and teens consume content: using phones and tablets to access the Internet-based providers of their liking - no television necessary - with YouTube and Netflix consistently emerging as standouts.

"The shift away from traditional broadcast cable TV services, that's been happening for years, but now we've hit critical mass," said Terence Burke, the vice president of research for the kid-focused market research company KidSay. "Kids still watch TV. They still head to Disney and Nickelodeon, just in much smaller numbers and for much shorter durations."

Burke, who spends much of his time in elementary, middle and high schools for ethnographic purposes, believes there is a massive movement underway in 2015 with kids' attention diverting away from cable TV. The new normal is digital video consumed on handheld devices.

Smarty Pants, a market research firm that conducts an annual study on the digital behavior of kids ages 6 to 12, found that 81 percent of 6- to 8-year-olds and 76 percent of 9- to 12-year-olds use YouTube.

Netflix, meanwhile, is used by an identical percentage of the older set. A large chunk of the younger 6- to 8-year-olds, or 71 percent, are also Netflix users, according to the firm's, "2015 Clicks, Taps & Swipes Report," which was fielded between June and August with a nationally representative panel of kids and their parents.

With an endless selection of videos that are funny, irreverent and even educational, YouTube is not only the new stand-in for traditional cable TV when it comes to kids, but it's also their go-to search engine. And, as kids get older, Netflix satisfies tweens' emerging cravings for more serial material. Both video services win with kids because there is always something to watch, and all that's required is a click of button on their favorite devices.

To court kids and, more importantly their parents, YouTube, Netflix and even Amazon have all created special spaces just for kids. Those family-friendly zones do well with preschoolers and kindergartners, but older kids want the real deal.

"In order to use YouTube, kids should be 13, but the reality is that 8-year-olds are on YouTube all the time," Burke said. "How are you going to keep them on YouTube Kids when they've seen YouTube? You're not."

That, in part, explains the existence of YouTube Red, the digital video service's new $10-per-month subscription option that removes all ads, allows for offline viewing, lets users watch clips while they're using other apps, and will eventually come with original shows and movies featuring YouTube stars. The company has already successfully, perhaps unintentionally, hooked kids while they're young. Why not create a way for these future cord-cutters to pay for more of what they clearly love?

In fact, YouTube ranks as the most-used smartphone app, favorite app and top website for both tween boys and girls ages 8 through 11, according to KidSay's trend-tracker, which surveys 1,000 kids five times per year. And when asked to pick how they would watch shows if only allowed a single choice, 30 percent of pre-teen boys opted for YouTube, slightly edging out all other options, including regular TV and other streaming services, according to the survey.

YouTube star PewDiePie signs copies of his new book "This Book Loves You" at Barnes & Noble Union Square on October 29, 2015 in New York City. John Lamparski, Getty Images

Boys' favorite YouTube channels, which include "JackSepticEye," "PewDiePie" and "Stampylonghead," sound more like ridiculous, cartoon characters than important entertainment brands. Yet, these channels make up an important subculture on YouTube, one that has turned video game commentators and comedians into bona fide celebrities.

"They love YouTube," said Rancho Bernardo resident Gabriela Dow of her two sons, Alec, 8, and Evan, 10, who are avid viewers of another hit channel, "PopularMMOs," which regularly puts out Minecraft videos and has more than 6.2 million subscribers. "YouTube is definitely their favorite."

Young girls have slightly different tastes, but new still outranks the old when it comes to personal viewing preferences. KidSay's survey found that 33 percent of tweenage girls picked streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video as their first choice (over regular TV and YouTube) for watching shows.

YouTube is, of course, still very much a winner with young girls.

Susan Polizzotto's daughters Rachel, 9, and Lauren, 11, watch a variety of YouTube channels using their own iPad mini tablets. The Carmel Valley kids watch Stampy's Minecraft videos, check out clips on how to paint nails or style hair, and follow a cooking challenge show.

Their behaviors align with those of other pre-teen girls, a bunch that also named the family video blogs (vlogs) "Shaytards" and "Bratayleys" among their favorite channels in the KidSay survey. The vlogs are reality series-like YouTube shows, but created by real families with their real kids featured prominently. For young girls, the appeal is an intimacy and a connection to the family that feels more real to them than what's on TV, Burke said.

Hastening the transition away from cable is the growing prevalence of smartphones, which are now commonplace among teens.

Fully 88 percent of American teens ages 13 to 17 have or have access to a mobile phone, and 73 percent of teens have smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. But even tweens are increasingly getting access to their own devices.

"Once kids are tweens, they act like teens, and once they get a phone of their own phone, they're glued to it," said Wynee Tyree, the founder of Smarty Pants. Some kids as young as 8 are getting their own phones, she said, and "most have their own phone by the time they're 12."

If not phones, then tablets. And no matter the device, YouTube and TV are one and the same.

"Overall, kids love YouTube," said Tyree. "It's actually one of the very first platforms that they enter the media world through. Kids as young as 1 are starting to tap and bang on the screen to get the content they want."

From childhood through high school, YouTube serves as kids' go-to resource for everything, she said. They love watching products being unboxed, enjoy tuning into videos made by their peers and even use the service for homework help. Netflix, meanwhile, has a family friendliness to it that makes parents, who are footing the bill, feel safe.

But unlike their parents who cut ties with their cable companies out of principle or to save money, kids' digital viewing behaviors are far more instinctive than intentional. And in a trend that has far-reaching consequences for the future of television, kids are not all tied to the television set. Instead, they prefer screens on phones and tablets that they can more easily manipulate and control.

TV viewing on actual TV sets continues to drop, from 73 percent of kids in 2014 to 68 percent this year, according to the Smarty Pants report.

"They don't want to watch anything on the TV, despite the fact that we have all the shows accessible on the big screen through the Chromecast," said Scripps Ranch resident Liz Philips of her two sons Sutton, 7, and Greyson, 10.

The same holds true in the Larsen home in north Pacific Beach where the children have the option of watching YouTube on the big-screen TV - but don't use it.

The Kuder kids, Jack, 10, and Ashley, 14, also enjoy an entertainment diet that doesn't include an actual TV.

"It's always been that way," said their father, Ryan Kuder. "Since they've been big kids, the TV has certainly not been a big part of their entertainment experience at home."

While mom and dad hang out in the den of the family's Carlsbad home with the old-fashioned TV, the kids pick up a tablet, or a smartphone, go in another room, and tune into YouTube. Ashley, who has her own iPhone 5, may opt for Netflix, if in the mood for more produced material.

"Kids are finding (channels) because they now have the devices and connectivity to get all that they're looking for, at the time and place they want," KidSay's Burke said.

Often that even translates to the use of several devices at the same time. The Philips' boys are, for the instance, the ultimate multi-taskers. Typically, the kids are simultaneously watching YouTube on an iPad, playing Minecraft on a computer and looking up other things on a Chromebook.

"At first I did not like it, but that's how I experience TV, too," Philips said.

Perhaps that best encapsulates why kids are turning away from the traditional TV set. Thanks to YouTube and Netflix, and access to their own mobile devices, TV as they know it (and want it) is anything but a passive experience.

Copyright © 2018,
jennifer.vangrove@sduniontribune.com ▪ (619) 293-1840 ▪ Twitter: @jbruin
The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Say hello to the future cord-cutters of America

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On weekdays in the Larsen household, Kirsten, 12, and Soren, 15, get up early and park themselves on the couch before school. But they do not turn on the TV. Instead, the youngsters each pull out their respective phones and fire up YouTube to get an A.M. dose of videos, essentially acquiring the...

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The younger, Internet-savvy generation known as the Millennials gets its political news from Facebook far more than from local news or other sources trusted by older generations - but they're not doing so on purpose. A Pew Research Center study found that 61 percent of Millennials (aged 18-33 currently) get political news from Facebook at least once a week, compared with 39 percent of Baby Boomers (aged 50-68). Local TV was the more likely source for the older set, followed by national networks. Generation X, which falls between the two in age, also fell neatly between them in preferences and habits tracked by the Pew study.

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Pew Research Center

But young folks don't seem to visit Facebook with the specific intention of getting the latest political updates. When asked where they choose to get their political news from, only 3 percent of Millennials reported Facebook - instead preferring CNN and online news aggregators like Google and Yahoo! News. They're not even as interested in politics, the Pew study found (which has generally been the case for the age group). So what's with all the politics on the social network?
Related: Facebook, Google Launch New Privacy Features
It's simple: Millennials simply spend way more time on Facebook than older generations, and use it for more reasons. So it's not just more political news they're seeing, but more of everything.

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Millennials Get Their Political News From Facebook - But Not on Purpose

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Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE The younger, Internet-savvy generation known as the Millennials gets its political news from Facebook far more than from local news or other sources trusted by older generations - but they're not doing so on purpose.

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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Social Media - the Local TV for the Next Generation?

When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the Millennial generation. About six-in-ten online Millennials (61%) report getting political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than turn to any other news source, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. This stands in stark contrast to internet-using Baby Boomers, for whom local TV tops the list of sources for political news at nearly the same reach (60%).

At the same time, Millennials' relatively low reliance on local TV for political news (37% see news there in a given week) almost mirrors Baby Boomers' comparatively low reliance on Facebook (39%).

Gen Xers, who bridge the age gap between Millennials (ages 18-33 at the time of the 2014 survey) and Baby Boomers (ages 50-68), also bridge the gap between these news sources. Roughly half (51%) of online Gen Xers get political and government news on Facebook in a given week and about half (46%) do so on local TV.

This report, the latest in an ongoing study of political news and information habits, is based on an online survey conducted between March 19 and April 29, 2014, with 2,901 members of the Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel. An initial report on these data explored the ways news consumption differs across the ideological spectrum. Here, we consider political news habits across three generations. Because this is a survey of online adults, data is not reported on those in the Silent generation, ages 69 to 86 at the time of survey. This age cohort is considerably less likely to use the internet and, as a result, those who are online may not be representative of the generation as a whole.

Even looking just at members of each generation who are on Facebook, Millennials still stand out for seeing somewhat more political content on the site. Roughly a quarter (24%) of Millennials who use Facebook say at least half of the posts they see on the site relate to government and politics, higher than both Gen Xers (18%) and Baby Boomers (16%) who use the social networking site.

This occurs even though Millennials express less interest in political news. Roughly a quarter of Millennials (26%) select politics and government as one of the three topics they are most interested in (out of a list of nine). That is lower than both Gen Xers (34%) and Baby Boomers (45%). Millennials also are less familiar with many of the 36 sources asked about in the survey, which range from USA Today to Rush Limbaugh to Slate.

The data do not suggest, however, that Millennials' relative lack of engagement with or awareness of sources is based on some sort of deep-seated mistrust of the news media. Of the sources they are familiar with, Millennials are no less trusting than older generations. All three generations trust, on average, about four-in-ten sources they have heard of and distrust about two-in-ten. There are also few differences when it comes to which specific sources are trusted and distrusted across generations. Fourteen of the 36 sources are trusted more than distrusted by all three generations and four are more distrusted across the board.

A longer-term question that arises from this data is what younger Americans' reliance on social media for news might mean for the political system. Understanding the nuances of the social media news environment is complicated: The experience is individualized through one's own choices, through the friends in one's network and their proclivities, and through algorithms - all of which can change over time. We are only beginning to understand these complex interactions.

Viewed in the context of the ongoing debate over political polarization in social media, for example, it is the Facebook users in the oldest of the three generations studied here who are most likely to see political content on the site that supports their own views: 31% of Baby Boomers on Facebook who pay attention to political posts say the posts they see are mostly or always in line with their own views, higher than both Generation Xers (21%) and Millennials (18%). At the same time, though, Baby Boomers are the least reliant on this platform as a source for their news - meaning that at least at the moment, this affects a smaller share of them. And, across all three generations, most Facebook users who pay attention to political content do, in fact, see views on the site that aren't in line with their own.

As the research continues, these data suggest that younger and older generations espouse fundamental differences in the ways they stay informed about political news - differences that are of particular interest as the 2016 election campaigns ramp up.

About the Survey

This Web-based survey was conducted March 19 to April 29, 2014, among the 88% of the American Trends Panel - a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults - who have online access. The online format provided a unique opportunity to get both a depth and breadth of information about the media habits of our panelists in a way that could not have been accomplished through another mode. This is indicated throughout the report by references to "online" or "Web-using" segments of each generation.

Due to the reliance on Web respondents, this report focuses on three generations - Millennial, Generation X and Baby Boomer. The Silent generation, those 69 to 86 at the time of survey, is not included in the analysis because of the disproportionately large segment of that generation that is not online. Nearly one-in-three Silents in the first wave of the panel (29%) say they do not use the internet, much higher than the other three generations (2% Millennials, 6% Gen Xers and 14% Baby Boomers). Since all generations are not presented, figures based on all Web respondents are also not shown in the text of the report; figures based on all Web respondents can be found in the topline.

As a part of the survey, panelists were asked about their use and trust of 36 news sources (use, but not trust, was also asked of local television news and five social networking sites). The mix of sources is not meant to be exhaustive, but instead is meant to provide a range of news media, both in terms of platform and audience size. Most of the sources are drawn from those asked about in past Pew Research Center surveys on media consumption. From this initial list, researchers went through an iterative process to add additional sources to provide a greater range in the news media environment - including adding more international, radio and primarily digital sources. For more information on the sources, see Appendix C.

This report is part of ongoing research into political news and information habits in America. The initial analysis of this survey data examined differences across ideological lines. As a whole, differences across generations in levels of awareness and trust of the individual sources largely hold when accounting for ideological consistency. Many patterns also hold for news consumption, though ideological characteristics of Millennials helps explain their lower rate of use of niche sources that have right-of-center audiences. Similarly, the ideological characteristics of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers help explain their greater distrust of the more mainstream sources and niche sources with left-of-center audiences. To get a sense of how political ideology varies across the generations, please see this follow-up blog post.

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Social Media - the Local TV for the Next Generation? When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the Millennial generation.

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Newsela | Move over cable TV, kids are more interested in what's on the small screen

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New from @dgoble2001 Interview an Expert!  Download for FREE!

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New from @dgoble2001 Interview an Expert!  Download for FREE!

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Interview an Expert by Don Goble on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Interview an Expert by Don Goble. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Media Use by Tweens and Teens: Infographic | Common Sense Media

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Common Sense Media improves the lives of kids and families by providing independent reviews, age ratings, & other information about all types of media.

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Why we're more likely to remember content with images and video

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Why we're more likely to remember content with images and video

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Rachel Gillett

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If you want someone to remember your message-in a presentation, an article, or a report-tell them a story.

Our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than a list of facts-it's easier for us to remember stories because our brains make little distinction between an experience we are reading about and one that is actually happening. And while we've covered the importance of storytelling before, there is another element that can drive your point home even more-images. That's because visuals add a component to storytelling that text cannot: speed.

According to researched complied by 3M, the corporation behind Post-it Notes, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, which means you can paint a picture for your audience much faster with an actual picture. It's no surprise then that HubSpot's social-media scientist Dan Zarrella found tweets with images are 94% more likely to be retweeted than tweets without.

According to this infographic compiled by design agency Ethos3, adding images to your tweets isn't the only way to get in on the visual action. Here are three visual tools you can use to connect with your audience even faster:

Since 65% of people are visual learners according to the Social Science Research Network, one of the best ways to drive the message home is through visual content. One way to do this is to include embedded slideshows in presentations, or on your website or in social media using tools such as SlideShare.

Videos can be harnessed in all manner of ways, from convincing buyers that your product is worth the investment to learning a new skill. YouTube alone sees more than 1 billion unique visitors a month and has made stars out of everyday people.

In fact, Forrester Research found that your content is 50 times more likely to make it to the first page of Google results if it includes video.

As you've probably noticed if you are reading this article, infographics are an effective way to visualize information and data. Presenting data in a visual way has been proven effective for a long time.

According to the , Abraham Lincoln often referred to a map that "bore the marks of much service." More than just a map of the southern states, this three-foot parchment also reflected the number of slaves who lived in each county and was a constant source of reflection for the President.

Today we're seeing a significant uptick in the amount of people searching for information graphics-infographics. In the past five years alone, searches for these tools have increased 25 times.

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Why We're More Likely To Remember Content With Images And Video (Infographic)

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If you want someone to remember your message-in a presentation, an article, or a report-tell them a story. Our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than a list of facts-it's easier for us to remember stories because our brains make little distinction between an experience we are reading about and one that is actually happening.

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Check out the YouTube archive of our session here: 

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Check out the YouTube archive of our session here: 

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Don's class: LHS-TV & Films

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St. Louis, Missouri based high school multimedia website. Students from Ladue Horton Watkins High School produce this interactive multimedia publication promoting video stories, news briefs, student blogs, weekly polls and photos of the week.

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Download Kristin's free book Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner 

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Download Kristin's free book Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner 

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digital discourse in mathematics: strategies for the young learner

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Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner by Kristin Ziemke on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Digital Discourse in Mathematics: Strategies for the Young Learner by Kristin Ziemke. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Amplify Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom

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Amplify Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom

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Kristin Ziemke and Katie Muhtaris

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Connecting Comprehension and Technology 

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Connecting Comprehension and Technology 

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Harvey, Goudvis, Muhtaris & Ziemke

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Troy Hicks

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Renee Hobbs and David Cooper Moore

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discovering media literacy: teaching digital media and popular culture in elementary school

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teaching methods & materials - social science

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digital media - study and teaching (elementary)

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digital media;study and teaching (elementary).

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media literacy - study and teaching (elementary)

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media literacy;study and teaching (elementary).

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popular culture - study and teaching (elementary)

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popular culture;study and teaching (elementary).

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education / teaching methods & materials / social science

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educational: english language & literacy

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media literacy - study and teaching (elementary)

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media literacy;study and teaching (elementary).

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popular culture - study and teaching (elementary)

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popular culture;study and teaching (elementary).

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teaching methods & materials - social science

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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education / teaching methods & materials / social science

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educational: english language & literacy

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Discovering Media Literacy: Teaching Digital Media and Popular Culture in Elementary School

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Give digital kids a voice! Today's kids are digital natives, but what's the best way to help them become empowered and responsible communicators across different media? Discover insights and strategies specific to reaching children ages 5-12 in this guide from a nationally-acclaimed media literac...

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Renee Hobbs

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Blog posts by Don Goble

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Don Goble is an award-winning Broadcast, Technology, Multimedia and Film Instructor at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis. Journalism Education Association's National Broadcast Adviser of the Year in 2015, Don is also an Apple Distinguished Educator, PBS Lead Digital Innovator and author who advocates for media and digital literacy for all learners.

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Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-in World

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Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-in World

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Julie Smith

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Download Don's free iTunes U course: Become A Citizen Journalist 

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Download Don's free iTunes U course: Become A Citizen Journalist 

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Become a Citizen Journalist - Free Course by Apple Distinguished Educators on iTunes U

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Become a Citizen Journalist, Apple Distinguished Educators, Digital Media, iTunes U, educational content, iTunes U

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Defining What Broadcast Means for Scholastic Journalism

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Defining What Broadcast Means for Scholastic Journalism

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Don Goble

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I can't have a broadcast program at my school. I don't have a television studio. I don't have a green screen. I don't have broadcast equipment to stream the football game. I don't have time in our schedule for morning announcements. I don't have the budget for broadcast. There's another teacher who has a broadcast production class.

Have you found yourself saying any of these, or other statements, as they relate to "broadcast," and why you can't do it? I hear these complaints often in my travels, and they fill my inbox on a daily basis.

So how could we define broadcast, in terms of scholastic journalism at our schools?

verb

to send out by radio or television

to tell to many people

I don't see the words, green screen, television studio, or morning announcements in the definition above.

Did you know that Internet video is expected to account for about 84 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic in four years, up from its current 78 percent, according to Cisco? So how does this rising trend of information translate to broadcast?

Broadcast does not have to be a daunting, stressful, expensive, anxiety-ridden experience.

Rather, let's simplify the term, as I choose to do, and relate "broadcast" to how actual news agencies and audiences have defined the term for the last few years, by creating online video content to tell stories to many people, across multiple platforms.

According to a 2013 Poynter Institute analysis from a New York Times study, " 34% of millennials surveyed watch mostly online video or no broadcast television."

However, that same study also found that "users reported spending the most time with funny videos, movie clips, music videos and then news." I see this as alarming, and yet possibly changing, in our news culture.

The study suggests viewers are used to associating videos with content other news. Yet, when breaking news occurs, for example the Ferguson grand jury decision, millions of eyes were tuned into the television or device, to watch the "broadcast" video of the prosecutor's decision. Inevitably, viewers then began to immediately engage on social media.

In addition, as the events unfolded in Ferguson, broadcast videos from professional agencies, as well as citizen journalists, began documenting the chaos.

In fact, according to the PewRearch Journalism Project, "digital video will clearly be a part of how consumers get content, including news, in the coming years." I argue that we are already there.

I challenge you and your scholastic journalism publications to incorporate broadcast videos in whatever means you can and with whatever equipment or devices are present within your school or student staff. Online video is the new form of "broadcast" that must be adopted and deployed.

Create a sixty second short news package. Upload raw video footage from an event. Interview an expert with your mobile device and edit on your phone with iMovie. There are so many ways to adopt this form of broadcast...I know you can find one.

Understanding what a broadcast video is, how to produce a broadcast story, and why to do so are critical skills our student journalists need to acquire prior to college. Don't worry about the studio, green screen or equipment. Those are nice to haves.

Instead, realize it's our job as advisers to offer our student journalists the actual opportunities professional journalists are engaging in; writing, photography, video, publishing, social media, and more. It's a responsibility I don't take lightly.

Do you agree? Why or why not? Comment below and discuss this topic with me.

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Defining what broadcast means for scholastic journalism

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I can't have a broadcast program at my school. I don't have a television studio. I don't have a green screen. I don't have broadcast equipment to stream the football game. I don't have time in our schedule for morning announcements. I don't have the budget for broadcast.

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Warren Burger

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When asked recently to name the one attribute CEOs will need most to succeed in the turbulent times ahead, Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell, Inc., replied, "I would place my bet on curiosity."

Dell was responding to a 2015 PwC survey of more than a thousand CEOs, a number of whom cited "curiosity" and "open-mindedness" as leadership traits that are becoming increasingly critical in challenging times. Another of the respondents, McCormick & Company CEO Alan D. Wilson, noted that business leaders who "are always expanding their perspective and what they know-and have that natural curiosity-are the people that are going to be successful."

Welcome to the era of the curious leader, where success may be less about having all the answers and more about wondering and questioning. As Dell noted, curiosity can inspire leaders to continually seek out the fresh ideas and approaches needed to keep pace with change and stay ahead of competitors.

A curious, inquisitive leader also can set an example that inspires creative thinking throughout the company, according to Hollywood producer Brian Grazer. "If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group," Grazer writes in his book, A Curious Mind. Grazer and others maintain that leading-by-curiosity can help generate more ideas from all areas of an organization, while also helping to raise employee engagement levels.

The notion that curiosity can be good for business is not entirely new, of course. Decades ago, Walt Disney declared that his company managed to keep innovating "because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." But having that desire to keep exploring "new paths" becomes even more important in today's fast-changing, innovation-driven marketplace.

In my own research for my book, A More Beautiful Question, I found numerous examples of current-day entrepreneurs and innovators-including Netflix's Reed Hastings, Square's Jack Dorsey, and the team behind Airbnb -who relied on curious inquiry as a starting point to reinventing entire industries. Dorsey, for example, was puzzled when an artist friend lost a big sale to a potential customer simply because the artist couldn't accept a credit card. Dorsey wondered why only established businesses, and not smaller entrepreneurs, were able to conduct credit card transactions; his search for an answer resulted in Square, a more accessible credit card reader.

While curiosity has ignited numerous startup ventures, it also plays an important role at more established companies, where leaders are having to contend with disruptive change in the marketplace. "These days, a leader's primary occupation must be to discover the future," Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich told me. It's "a continual search," Shaich says, requiring that today's leader keep exploring new ideas-including ideas from other industries or even from outside the business world.

Advising business leaders to "be more curious" sounds simple enough, but it may require a change in leadership style. In many cases, managers and top executives have risen through the ranks by providing fixes and solutions, not by asking questions. And once they've attained a position of leadership, they may feel the need to project confident expertise.

To acknowledge uncertainty by wondering aloud and asking deep questions carries a risk: the leader may be perceived as lacking knowledge. In their book The Innovator's DNA, authors Clayton Christensen, Hal Gregersen and Jeff Dyer observed that the curious, questioning leaders they studied seemed to overcome this risk because they had a rare blend of humility and confidence: They were humble enough to acknowledge to themselves that they didn't have all the answers, and confident enough to be able to admit that in front of everyone else.

While we may tend to think of curiosity as a hardwired personality trait-meaning, one either is blessed with "a curious mind" or not-according to Ian Leslie, author of the book , curiosity is actually "more of a state than a trait." We all have the potential to be curious, given the right conditions.

Leslie notes that curiosity seems to bubble up when we are exposed to new information and then find ourselves wanting to know more. Hence, the would-be curious leader should endeavor to get "out of the bubble" when possible; to seek out new influences, ideas, and experiences that may fire up the desire to learn more and dig deeper.

Even when operating within familiar confines, curious leaders tend to try to see things from a fresh perspective. The ones I studied in my research seemed to have a penchant for bringing a " beginner's mind " approach to old problems and stubborn challenges. They continually examined and re-examined their own assumptions and practices, asking deep, penetrating "Why" questions, as well as speculative "What if" and "How" questions.

Such leaders sometimes also evangelize about curiosity, urging people in their organizations to "Question Everything." This can serve to model the behavior for others, though leaders may have to go much further-providing sufficient freedom and incentives-in order to actually create the conditions for curiosity to flourish company-wide.

In the end, it isn't necessarily easy for a leader to foster curiosity on an individual or organizational level-but it may be well worth the effort. "With curiosity comes learning and new ideas," says Dell. "If you're not doing that, you're going to have a real problem."

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Why Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite

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When asked recently to name the one attribute CEOs will need most to succeed in the turbulent times ahead, Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell, Inc., replied, "I would place my bet on curiosity."

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Center for Media Literacy | Empowerment through Education | CML MediaLit Kit ™ | | Empowerment through Education

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Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2021 October 8

The Double Cluster in Perseus
Image Credit & Copyright: Jack Groves

Explanation: This pretty starfield spans about three full moons (1.5 degrees) across the heroic northern constellation of Perseus. It holds the famous pair of open star clusters, h and Chi Persei. Also cataloged as NGC 869 (top) and NGC 884, both clusters are about 7,000 light-years away and contain stars much younger and hotter than the Sun. Separated by only a few hundred light-years, the clusters are both 13 million years young based on the ages of their individual stars, evidence that they were likely a product of the same star-forming region. Always a rewarding sight in binoculars, the Double Cluster is even visible to the unaided eye from dark locations. But a shroud of guitar strings was used to produced diffraction spikes on the colorful stars imaged in this vibrant telescopic view.

Global Moon Party: Including APOD's Best Moon Images:Saturday, October 9
Tomorrow's picture: 50 light-years to planet Dimidium< |Archive |Submissions |Index |Search |Calendar |RSS |Education |About APOD |Discuss |>
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff ( MTU) & Jerry Bonnell ( UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

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Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 October 8 The Double Cluster in Perseus Image Credit & Copyright: Jack Groves Explanation: This pretty starfield spans about three full moons (1.5 degrees) across the heroic northern constellation of Perseus.

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Download Don's free book Six Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia

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Download Don's free book Six Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia

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six unique shots: enhancing writing through multimedia

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Six-Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia by Don Goble on iBooks

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Read a free sample or buy Six-Word Story, Six Unique Shots: Enhancing Writing Through Multimedia by Don Goble. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

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Download Kristin's free iTunes U course Inquiry in Action: Africa

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Download Kristin's free iTunes U course Inquiry in Action: Africa

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Inquiry in Action: Africa - Free Course by Apple Distinguished Educators on iTunes U

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Inquiry in Action: Africa, Apple Distinguished Educators, Writing & Literature, iTunes U, educational content, iTunes U

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Yes, and...Thoughts on Print versus Digital Reading 

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Yes, and...Thoughts on Print versus Digital Reading 

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Kristin Ziemke

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Don Goble

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Editor's note: About once a month, the NewsHour's editorial staff huddles in our conference room to brainstorm ideas for "theme weeks" where we explore a single topic from all different - and sometimes surprising - angles. The idea for an off-the-grid week came up. Stories about energy, geography and even fine arts were pitched. We also talked about the social media "grid" and asked, how long do we keep our children off the grid and is there value in young people engaging with social tools from Instagram to iPad apps? For the latter we turned to two teachers who have competing views about allowing social media in their classrooms. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Yes: Bring social media to all classrooms
I have found the quietest students in my class speak the loudest on social media.
One day, Nadia, a very quiet and reserved student, walked into class and said, "Mr. Goble, guess what?"

"What?" I asked.

"I received a comment on my blog from a person in Australia," she said. "You're right! What we produce does extend beyond the walls of our classroom!"

At Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri, my broadcast technology, multimedia and film class uses Facebook, Twitter and student blogs with support from our school administrators and parents. The No. 1 reason for that support is trust. Our school leaders trust that my students and I are making the right choices. I treat my students as professionals and hold them to high expectations. In return, they are motivated, engaged and ultimately hold themselves to high standards.

I have worked hard the past ten years to help students become media-literate, which I believe is essential to a 21st century learner. I believe these skills will also make a positive impact on the Common Core State Standards for all of our students.

Think about it: would you give the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a 13-year-old with no driving lessons and say, have fun? This is essentially what we are doing with social media.Building a digital legacy is an issue that doesn't garner enough attention in our personal and professional lives. Some of the heaviest users of online tools and social media are our young students, who are growing up as a generation of visual learners and visual-attention seekers. This is, in fact, the YouTube generation, and the reality is that many teens are unconcerned about the dangers of sharing personal information online.

Students communicate, research, collaborate, create and publish online with or without the help of parents or educators. These same students then hop on social media to promote, discuss and share their thoughts with the world. The digital environment is offering us some of the greatest learning opportunities that young learners have ever had.

Yet in most cases, students are not learning social media skills. Think about it: would you give the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a 13-year-old with no driving lessons and say, have fun? This is essentially what we are doing with social media.

Social media has become one of the greatest educational tools of all time, and yet, it goes untaught. Why? Fear of the unknown? Lack of value? The time is now for education to instead embrace this form of learning and begin, even in small ways, embedding social media lessons in all classrooms.
Don Goble teaches Broadcast Technology, Film and Multimedia at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Goble was a part of the 2011 Apple Distinguished Educator class and speaks nationally on incorporating digital media into the classroom. No: Keep social media social
Are we jumping on the social media bandwagon "just because" or are the benefits clear and worth it? My conclusion is the former.

I think it was some time around my third year of teaching when I first heard of Facebook, a website to which my students were supposedly "addicted." I opened up an account with no intention of actually using it. What I discovered truly surprised me - I could reconnect with long lost camp friends, sneak a peek at ex-boyfriends and get annoyed with acquaintances who post antagonistic politics. Regardless, I forgot all about my students.

Facebook has become one huge "All About Me" project, and it has turned us all into self-absorbed eighth graders.Since that time, the number and choices of social media platforms has continued to grow, and each year, we teachers debate the benefits and trade-offs of trying to incorporate them into education.

I have tried to consider the positives to teaching social media. We can teach students how to discriminate "quality" shares versus irresponsible ones. (Do you vet what you read on the internet or just repeat misinformation?) We can teach them that sometimes writing less is more; conveying an idea with fewer words can be a valuable skill too.

But I've never gone much past dabbling. This kind of engagement might carry negative consequences, and at best, has dubious value.

The main reason I'd like to try to avoid social media use is a moral one. Kids today are addicted to technology; school can, and should, remain the one safe haven where they can unplug and just be present. Do we really want to give them another reason to be "connected?"

Students want to use social media for socializing, not as an extended classroom. Social media (more specifically, chatting on a cell phone via text or Twitter) is preventing our students from being socially aware of anything beyond themselves or their immediate social circle. A bored teenager no longer has to listen to adult conversation in the car, at the dinner table or on the living room TV, and so they pick up on absolutely nothing that's not already familiar and of interest to them. Social media is not expanding their social circle or worldview, it's limiting it. One student admitted to me, "I'm afraid we're going to grow up and realize we've wasted so much time."

I am also being told by students that using social media in education is a ship that has sailed. Students have told me they're already bored with teachers trying to create discussion forums. Other teachers have told me that students are actually participating less than they did a few years ago. And instead of encouraging them to share their thoughts, maybe we should be teaching them that no, they don't have to share every thought.

Young people have a tendency to want to be "heard," even if they are uninterested in what others have to say. My eighth graders can't wait to get up and present their beginning-of-year "All About Me" projects, seemingly unable to recognize that if they don't want to listen to others presenting, what makes them think anyone else wants to listen to them? Most social media sites merely perpetuate this phenomenon and are creating a whole generation of adults who sadly do the same. Facebook has become one huge "All About Me" project, and it has turned us all into self-absorbed eighth graders.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. But I think we should keep social media where it belongs: in the realm of that which is social. While I continue to keep up with friends on Facebook, my teenage students will continue to hang out with their friends on the medium of their choosing.

For now, I'll just see them in class. And when they claim to be "present," I'll hope they really mean it.
Gail Leicht teaches eighth grade Language Arts/Literature and has authored several city guide books. PBS NewsHour education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Should teachers be using social media in the classroom?

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Editor's note: About once a month, the NewsHour's editorial staff huddles in our conference room to brainstorm ideas for "theme weeks" where we explore a single topic from all different - and sometimes surprising - angles. The idea for an off-the-grid week came up. Stories about energy, geography and even fine arts were pitched.

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​An Open Letter to the AISB Community

Advised by Jennifer Stevens, seventeen year-old student Omotoyosi Ariyo, in Bucharest, Romania, wrote a first-person letter addressed to teachers and educators worldwide. To read her letter click on the image or click

​The Village School

Students at the Village Middle School in Waldwick, New Jersey create a journalism website documenting their experiences and much more. To watch their videos click on the image or click

​ASEF Global writing project 2020

Schools all the way from Australia to Portugal collaborate to create an international research project that creates writing, as well as other opportunities for students, in an attempt to better the world through education. To learn more about the project, click on the image or click

NHTV Quarantine Edition

Students at Northern Highlands Regional High School in Allendale, NJ, produced a quarantine edition of their morning show. Follow them on twitter @nhtvstudios.

CSMA Special Coverage Awards

The Colorado Student Media Association has announced their COVID-19 special coverage awards. For more information follow on twitter.

Sustainable Development Goals

High school students in class at Coppell High School in Coppell, TX, USA each worked through a process that determined a global goal they are most passionate about. Watch their stories in this YouTube Playlist and follow them on Twitter at and to learn more and to continue to support these and other SDG campaigns.

Storm TV

Cavallini Middle School TV

8th grade middle school students in Upper Saddle River, NJ produce their own school news show, CTV. Follow their adviser .

Riverside Military Academy ENN

Student producers Areeb, Luis, Abrahim, Shad, William, Luka, Mark, Connery, Andrew, McLin, and Kendall, in grades 7-12 produce videos for the Eagle News Network in Gainesville, GA. Follow their adviser @zachgarrett11.

Checking in from around the globe!

Behind the Minds: GSNN

Our team tweets themes using the hashtag The rest is up to you! Students K-12+, all over the world, are encouraged to produce a multimedia project relating to that month's topic. We accept any and all types of media. Once you submit your media, check our website to see if your video gets featured!

Go to the page for all of the details, and be sure to follow us .

Student broadcast's from Hong Kong

Click the image above to visit the amazing student school broadcasts in @MrErdoganEDU classes, ​grades 6-9. Students attend the Delia School of Canada - Kowloon East campus, Hong Kong.

How does the milk you drink get to you?

Drama Club video introduction for their music show

Drama students from Grades 3-5 at International School Saigon Pearl in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 🇻🇳. Video shared by .

Clips app in the Classroom

Click the image above to access the YouTube Playlist . Musiktek 2018, Norway, where teachers collaborated and created music with technology. (The student versions are examples of my classroom lessons in Vienna with the curriculum). Clips playlist submitted by

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Advised by Jennifer Stevens, seventeen year-old student Omotoyosi Ariyo, in Bucharest, Romania, wrote a first-person letter addressed to teachers and educators worldwide. To read her letter click on the image or click Students at the Village Middle School in Waldwick, New Jersey create a journalism website documenting their experiences and much more.

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Some experts predict the marijuana market could grow to $100 billion a year if and when federal prohibition ends.

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Fast Company posts tagged Infographic of the Day | Co.Design

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Fast Company articles and posts tagged Infographic of the Day with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, and design.

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Daily Infographic | Learn Something New Every Day

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Daily Infographic | Learn something new everydayDaily Infographic

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Award winning infographic site featuring infographic designs and data visualizations to help you learn something new everyday. The internet's best resource for easily digested visuals covering the web's hottest topics from cooking techniques to tech phenomenon.

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New York Times What's Going on in this Picture

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New York Times What's Going on in this Picture

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Intriguing Times images stripped of their captions -- and an invitation to students to discuss them live.

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Wordless News | One headline per day, vowel and consonant free.

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One headline per day, vowel and consonant free.

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Photography and Photos of the Day - National Geographic

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National Geographic is the source for pictures, photo tips, free desktop wallpapers of places, animals, nature, underwater, travel, and more, as well as photographer bios.

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Informational text and media all wrapped into one on Wonderopolis

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Informational text and media all wrapped into one on Wonderopolis

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What is a multiple?

How do multiples get used in everyday life?

How can you determine a number's multiples?

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Who was Mary Anning?

What did Mary Anning discover?

What is Jurassic Coast?

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Have you ever tasted an Arab taco?

When was the Arab taco invented?

What is shawarma?

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How are currency exchange rates determined?

What was the gold standard?

Which type of currency exchange rate system does the U.S. use?

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Which of the following is usually NOT a factor in determining currency exchange rates?

Test your knowledge

How can I use Wonderopolis?

What are the parts of a Wonder?

How do writers make a Wonder?

Find it out

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Where the Wonders of Learning Never Cease | Wonderopolis

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Where the Wonders of Learning Never Cease

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View to Learn with The Kid Should See This

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View to Learn with The Kid Should See This

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Yellowstone Bear Image | National Geographic Photo of the Day

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A brown bear in Yellowstone National Park inspects a car full of tourists in this National Geographic Photo of the Day.

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Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS): Critical Thinking and Inclusive Discussion

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VTS is an education nonprofit providing schools and museums with curriculum, professional development, and training in critical thinking skills.

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Kentaro Toyama

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By Kentaro Toyama

Technology is not the answer.

That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development. I was the co-founder and assistant director of Microsoft Research India, a Bangalore computer-science lab, where one of our objectives was to research ways in which information and communication technologies could support the socio-economic development of poor communities, both rural and urban. (By the way, I'm grateful to Jim Fallows for the opportunity to guest post! It was in Bangalore that I met Jim, thanks to an introduction through a good mutual friend, The Atlantic's deputy editor Scott Stossel.)

In one of our early projects, we worked with a rural sugarcane cooperative a few hours outside of Mumbai. They had a network of village personal computers that allowed the cooperative to report sales results to farmers. To reduce costs, we experimented with a mobile-phone-based system that replaced some of the PCs. Our system was faster, cheaper and better liked by farmers, but when it came time to expand the pilot, we were stymied by internal political dysfunction at the cooperative.

The second class of feedback went in the other direction: It nudged me to generalize beyond the developing world and beyond electronic technology. Let's consider, for example, poverty and technology in the United States. The rate of poverty in America decreased until about 1970, but it has since held steady at an embarrassingly high 13-14% only to rise in the recent recession. Since 1970, we've also had a boom in digital technologies from the PC to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook. If these technologies are solving social ills as social-media cheerleaders would have us believe, then we'd hope at the very least that in the golden age of innovation in the world's most technically advanced country, all this technology would have put some dent in poverty.

It hasn't. And, the theory of technology-as-amplifier explains why: As a society, we haven't been so intent on eradicating poverty, as much as perhaps, on ever cleverer ways to guide us to the nearest cup of coffee. The technology is incredible, but our intent is not there.

It's not just electronic technologies that we place undue faith in. We also expect too much from other technologies, institutions, policies and systems, or "TIPS" to coin an acronym. Like the tips of icebergs, TIPS are the most visible part of cultural change and public policy, but they are dependent on the much more significant, if invisible, bulk of individual and societal intent and capacity. Current events are constant reminders of this.

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By Kentaro Toyama Technology is not the answer. That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development.