Internet Filters at School – a Disadvantage?

As K-12 schools offer increased access to broadband Internet for students, it's important for schools to teach students how to use the Internet properly, according to writer and teacher Abigail Walthausen. In a commentary on The Atlantic site, she writes that schools' current use of Internet filters, however, hinders such lessons by preventing students' access to the full Internet. With the filters limiting what they see, students will not learn how to use the Internet properly when the filters are not in place, she argues. And, of course, as she mentions, students excel at breaking through filters and accessing what they want through proxy servers so the best course should be to take steps to educate students about how to live responsibly and productively on the Internet.

What is your school’s policy on filtering? What is their stance on teaching students about digital citizenship, digital etiquette, and media literacy?

Schools in New Jersey Take Social Media On

Schools in New Jersey are preparing to teach middle school courses on social media -- focusing on making the most of the technology and also on responsible use.  "Kids should never be held back later in life because of their social media use today. It is our job to prepare students for the professional world, one that increasingly takes place online," said Angel Fuentes, the New Jersey assemblyman who sponsored a bill that passed last month, making New Jersey the first state to require the courses. "Strategic social media use can build bridges just as easily as inappropriate social media use can build walls.

Self Promoting Tweets Can Fall Flat

Twitter users increasingly are finding ways to self-promote on the network, whether by posting self-congratulatory tweets or by sending near-random messages to the Twitter elite/celebrities in the hope of winning retweets. A certain amount of self-promotion is fine, experts say, but it's important to keep a sense of proportion. There are two things to keep in mind – first, self promotion becomes annoying when it is viewed as repetitive. Letting people know several times that you just won a gold medal probably can be forgiven, but minor events, even if they are important to you, become unseemly in the repeating. Second, readers are turned off when they’re made more aware of a tweet’s strategy than its content. For example, we were so wowed by the fact that you’re sending the tweet to @madonna and @GwynethPaltrow and @RinglingBros that we lost the fact that you just secured your first booking as a yoga clown. This is also known as a “humblebrag.” And remember – your content is going to be more appreciated if it is useful to people - otherwise, it might as well be spam.

10,000 Racial Slurs on Twitter Each Day

It is not surprising that people say racist things on Twitter –every day there is something in the news about some celebrity or famous athlete who has done so. But, what percentage is it? Turns out it is estimated that one in every 15,000 tweets contained a “racist or ethnic slur.” Actually, it is probably even less than that since anywhere between 47.5 percent and 70 percent of those were “non-derogatory” or used to “express in-group solidarity.”

Facebook Wants To Become a Big Fish in Yet Another Pond

Facebook is on a new quest – it wants to become the biggest player in mobile messaging with its purchase of WhatsApp, which offers consumers a free or cheap way to send messages. This will, of course, put Facebook in direct competition with the world’s biggest telecommunications operators like AT&T. While such competition sometimes leads to cutthroat competitive moves, Facebook is still one of the most downloaded applications for smartphones worldwide so few carriers would be willing to block Facebook’s services in fear of angering their customers. Of course, the question with Facebook is always privacy. Will they claim your texts as their property as they do with everything you post on your Facebook page?

Universities Brace for Another Year of Security Breaches

As 2014 begins, universities are bracing for another year of hacks, breaches, and malware attacks. Educational institutions have a real challenge when it comes to data security. There is a great emphasis on the sharing of information, which makes security a bit of a nightmare. Mobile devices just add to the headache. OpenDNS, an Internet security company, reports that higher education networks are 300 percent more likely to contain malware than their industry and government counterparts. Of course, similar issues face school districts. What do you know about your district’s efforts to maintain security?

Twitter Does Not Appeal to the Average User

It is interesting that it took Twitter going public to reveal what those of us who follow the social media beat have known for a long time – Twitter doesn’t appeal to the average user. While Twitter is still doubling revenue each quarter and has found ways to make more money per user, four out of five Americans with Internet connections still don't use it regularly. Facebook, by comparison, has more than half the U.S. online population covered and more than five times the worldwide users of Twitter. On one level, Twitter has evolved from a trivial messaging service into a vehicle for mass protests, a forum for big events, and an information network dominated by news media and prominent figures. As a result, it has become a necessity for journalists, public figures, activists, entrepreneurs, and businesses, but not so much for the average Internet user. Most people don’t feel especially tied to those they communicate with on Twitter – they communicate with people they know by text and Facebook instead – and Twitter often is just too overwhelming. There’s just too much trivial nonsense for the little bit that most people get out of it.

Of course, one way Twitter is trying to make a better connection with average users is tapping into a mobile user's phone book to discover contacts on Twitter. Twitter argues this can make it easier for newcomers to connect with people they already know on the service. For others, that’s just another unwanted invasion of privacy.

Changing the Image of Women in Stock Photos

Ask your kids to take a look at the images of women in the workplace they see online for an excellent lesson in media literacy. Likely, they will find stock photos – photos bought from image services like Getty Images and Shutterstock – that show women in one of three categories: a woman with glasses who could be a librarian or a secretary, a woman with a baby on her lap trying to work on her computer, or a woman standing atop a shorter stack of money than the man next to her is standing on. None of these images are very encouraging to young women entering the job market.

Recently, the massive stock photography company, Getty Images, announced a partnership with LeanIn.org, the organization started by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to advance women’s issues. Together, they have created a library of 2,500 stock images, called the Lean In Collection, that features new, more empowering portraits of women in addition to drawing on the best (that is, least stereotypical) of Getty’s existing images. Some might say this is a symbolic move, but never underestimate the power of pictures.

Facebook is Challenged Again on Using Teens Pics in Ads

Facebook's use of users' information, especially underage users, in ads is facing a fresh legal challenge from Public Citizen, a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Public Citizen is contending that a previous privacy settlement didn't go far enough to protect the rights of teenage users. "The default should be that a minor's image should not be used for advertising unless the parent opts in. Putting the burden on the parent to opt the child out gets it exactly backward," Public Citizen lawyer Scott Michelman says. Do you know what your child’s privacy settings are set to?

Whisper and Secret Apps Offer “Confidential” Places to Dish Freely

Whisper and Secret are new social media apps that let users share “anonymously," with text comments self-destructing after they are read. Of course, as so many people have found out the hard way, perhaps we all need to be very careful before we trust any of these apps completely. Snapchat, where users can send pictures which are purported to self destruct 30 seconds after being opened, has been hit with a series of stories questioning its security and privacy, from forensics companies recovering supposedly “deleted” snaps and apps designed to circumvent its protection, to Tumblr blogs of topless Snapchat users and reports of a loophole enabling hackers to access users’ phone numbers. While Whisper and Secret seem to be the “apps du jour,” you need to remind your kids that the very nature of these apps makes them likely to be full of nasty commentary and bullying. The lack of accountability also makes such forums vulnerable to lies.

Bottom line: Remind kids to think before they vent and never rely on any app to keep their secrets forever.