Posting & Sending “Less Than Appropriate” Photos

Terry Darr, librarian at Loyola Blakefield, an all-boys high school in Baltimore has started sessions at her school that give students the chance to talk about decision-making when using technologies. The groups discussed what to do if someone asks you to take “a less than appropriate” photo to post online.  Many said they’d take the photo as the person asked, for decisions about using it were the responsibility of the other person.  Were they saying that they were hesitant to turn down a friend’s request even though they knew taking the photo was not a good idea? Another question tackled in the sessions was what to do if you receive a nude photo from a girl you know. Most said that they would not forward the photograph. They expressed confusion about what to do with the photo and why some girls think sending out photos like this is a good idea.  The librarian wondered if discussions would be different if the sessions were coed and how honesty would be affected. The sessions focused upon real-life situations and moral decisions that students face today but that they don’t often get the chance to discuss and think about.  

User Generated Content on Websites: Hard to Keep Up With

User Generated Content or UGC is the stuff that users upload to blogs, social networks, discussions, evaluations of products—it's all that text, photos, images, audio, slideshows, etc. that people can upload online. It sounds like a good idea to let users upload to pages on a site or make comments, but this can be a big problem. What's uploaded might be not be appropriate, and/or it may be racist, pornographic, or bullying. It's difficult for sponsors of sites to keep up with what's posted, for the amount of content uploaded multiplies each day. Social networking sites and commercial sites often hire an army of monitors to oversee user-generated content. Some sites say they look at every photo that's uploaded. Think of the number of people hours this must take. Realizing the problems involved when trying to oversee UGC, Keibi (pronounced Kay-bee) Technologies has developed a system that can evaluate uploaded content. Keibi pulls out what it considers possible problems and gets them ready for human monitors to check. To do this, the company has developed a number of ways to check audio, graphics, video and text and how these might relate to one another. It can check to see if the person uploading has violated the site's Terms of Use in the past. Video is evaluated by breaking it down into frames and targeting the five frames with the most unfavorable score. For text, Keibi uses a semantic filter to look at word relationships. After Keibi does its work, about 20% of the content is then sent on to monitors who do the final evaluation. Results from the monitors are put back into the system to help Keibi continue to improve its evaluations. —Sounds like something that's needed to keep UGC in line with standards or Terms of Use of the organizations that encourage uploading of content.

NPR Rolls Out a Stronger Digital Presence

National Public Radio (NPR) is initiating a digital push intended to offer a greater variety of sophisticated tools like social networking features to listeners nationwide. The move is aimed at the youth audience, which NPR views as the key to its financial future. However some local stations worry that listeners will go to the NPR site online to get content rather than listen to local stations supported in part by advertising dollars and program sponsors. A couple of interesting tidbits from this new push for parents and kids. First, NPR is working to increase the flexibility of its popular "podcasts," audio downloads that have tripled in usage over the past two years. This includes increasing program content podcasts for younger users. Second, NPR also plans to expand its library of Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, which are software tools to let the general public and local stations incorporate NPR content into their own applications. One use of the APIs plots the subjects of NPR stories on a world map. (A great way to introduce kids to current events.) Another lets people listen to stories on Apple's iPhone.

Best Audio Books for Children

The Audible site, which has a nice selection of downloadable audio books for adults, has created AudibleKIDS. At AudibleKIDS, teachers and parents can download children's books to be used on computers or MP3 players. Four thousand books are ready now and cover ages 0-4, 5-7, 11-13, and 13 & up.  You can find books by age level, grade level, or subject area. There's even a section on Parenting & Teaching. Check out Mel Levine's A Mind at a Time, Peter Pan, Horton Hears a Who, Newbery books, ...

iTunes Tutorials

Got a new iPod for the holidays or maybe you've had one you never have learned to use? Or perhaps you're just tired of being dependent on your kids to load music on your iPod? Whatever the reason, there are no more excuses for not taking advantage of all that device has to offer with the new tutorials offered on the Apple site.

Best Podcasts of 2007

Interested in the best Podcasts of 2007? Apple has compiled a list on iTunes. If you already have iTunes downloaded just go to the Podcast section and look for  the "Best of 2007 podcasts." If you don't have iTunes you can download it off the Apple site. Both Audio and Video podcast choices are highlighted.

Teaching and Learning in School 2.0

Tim Fish, Academic Program Director, McDonogh School in Maryland, is a tech educator who keeps his school on the cutting edge of technology in education. In a recent talk at the Baltimore Convention Center he led and audience of teachers and administrators from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to School 2.0. Fish began by showing how, easy it was for him, when using the Internet, to identify and download a piece of music he'd heard on the radio. When he mentioned this to his children, they weren't at all impressed. Why? Because Web 1.0 was old stuff to them and finding information is so Web 1.0. Today's kids are living in the interactive world of Web 2.0, which means our teaching needs to move there as well. Linear learning is not what many of today's students do best; multitasking is. In the talk, Fish shared his ideas about what all this means to educators and what the core values of School 2.0 are. Start your 2.0 educational thinking with words like: evolving, interactive, collaborative, creative, flexible, global, personal, and essential. Will our schools be able to change if we don't change ourselves?

Your Family and iTunes U

Wondering what’s going on at colleges these days? Take a minute to sample a few lectures the easy and free way off of iTunes U (you’ll need to register on the Washington Post site to read this article for free.) While what’s on there may be a little uneven, there are lots of topics covered from physics at MIT, to a course on Ben Franklin at Stamford, to lecture on the psychosocial aspects of health care from Northeastern University. All you need to do is download the lecture or presentation to your iPod or other mp3 player and it’s like sitting in the lecture halls of some of the greatest universities, all for free. If you believe we never stop learning, this is quite a digital opportunity.

Happy Birthday iPod

I have to admit that for someone like me who has been immersed in the technology scene for more than 25 years it is so funny when I see a "retrospective". But if you are interested in the iPod , how it came to be and where it might be heading, you'll enjoy and article called iPod, This Is Your Life in the online e-zine MacNewsWorld.

Excerpts from Newbery Favorites-Free

Audible and Listening Library offer for free Listen to the List, 52 minutes of selections from the Newbery award-winning books  Shiloh, Hatchet, The Tale of Depereaux, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, A Long Way from Chicago, The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963, and Whittington. After listening to the selections, Listen to the List offers games that feature memory, vocabulary, and listening skills. While you're on the Audible site, why not browse through the selection of audio books that might get your kids interested in reading some great books? There are books for all levels (K-3, 4-6, and Young Adult). Although all kids will love listening to audio books, they are a lifeline for children who have problems with reading.