ARTICLES: Young people switch media 27 times per hour

While naysayers fear technology is destroying the attention spans of our nation's youth, it may be far more detrimental to the future of advertising, a recent study reveals. 

"Digital natives" – those who've never lived in a world without 24/7 cable TV, Internet access and cellphones – switch media venues 27 times per nonworking hour, according a small-but-telling study commissioned by Time Inc. and conducted by Innerscope Research. And, as Advertising Age notes, if the kids keep switching between cellphones, TVs, magazines (young people still read magazines, right?), there may not be nearly enough time for advertisers to sell them stuff!

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/young-people-switch-media-27-times-hour-689770

ARTICLES: The young and the restless

While teens happily barrel along the information highway, parents are setting up a few roadblocks.

Children aged eight to 18 seem to be surgically attached to their phones these days, absorbed in a digital world far removed from physical boundaries, and often parental ones too. But parents are getting increasingly concerned, and clued up, about thevirtual playgrounds their children are frequenting.

Heather Hansen, who runs educational workshops on Internet safety at Teenworx, says while children have the digital world at their fingertips, they don't necessarily know how to use it. “We're asked to go into schools and sometimes children as young as Grade Four (nine to 10 years old) have access to BlackBerrys, which is stressful for them because they have all this technology and aren't sure what to do with it.”

full article

ARTICLES: Vox-pop: Being a young journalist in Montenegro

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ARTICLES / OPINIONS: "A Screen Is a Screen Is a Screen" Is a Meme

Children's television has been a playground for memes for as long as it's existed (much longer than "meme" has been a word!). Most are light and from pop culture -- from Davy Crockett coonskin caps to rumors of gay Teletubbies. Others grow from more dire murmurs about media's effects on children -- sit too close and you'll ruin your vision, short segments decrease attention span, digital kids can't write standard English.

Recently, I've noticed an emerging meme -- "a screen is a screen is a screen." This or similar phrases suggest that only total time matters in children's relationship with media, not what's being viewed or used by whom, nor how and why. As used, it's a facile way to tar all media and absolve parents or activists from doing the hard work of addressing specific content or context.

full article in the Huffington Post

ARTICLES: When Youth Own the Public Education Agenda

I've devoted my career to researching how young people take up new technologies like computers, mobile phones, and the Internet and make them their own. If we pay attention to what young people do when they are socializing and having fun with these new media, it's clear that they are both highly engaged and learning a great deal. For most young people, however, this is about learning how to get along with their friends, what it takes to get a date, or how to get to the next level in Halo, and not the kinds of academic learning and civic engagement that schools are concerned with. As a parent and educator who is also an anthropologist committed to appreciating youth perspectives, I stand at the cusp of two different learning cultures--one that is about youth-driven social engagement and sharing, and the other that is embodied in educational institutions' adult-driven agendas. My biggest challenge has been to find what it would take to get alignment between the energy that kids bring to video games, text messaging, and social network sites and the learning that parents and educators care about. I have been on a quest for examples of educational institutions and programs that can bridge this cultural divide, and I'd like to share an example that has come out of collaborations I have had with some of my colleagues in the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

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ARTICLES: Can creative media training help at-risk youth?

Deb Anderson - November 23, 2010

GETTING young people excited about learning can be tough, but it's a critical part of the challenge for Youthworx. With its range of media courses (from short courses in radio, film and music to full-time TAFE training), the Brunswick-based training studio wants to give homeless, marginalised and disadvantaged youth a fresh start in life by helping them reconnect with society. But does it work? Swinburne University social scientist Denise Meredyth, with colleagues Julian Thomas, David MacKenzie, Ellie Rennie and Aneta Podkalicka, has been tracking Youthworx's progress. The research is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Youthworx, says Professor Meredyth, is social innovation in its prime.

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PROJECTS / WEBSITES: Student News Action Network

In brief

The Student News Action Network was created, and is maintained, by students and teachers at Washington International School in collaboration with TakingITGlobal and bureau schools worldwide.

Global Issues Journalism

The Student News Action Network takes the concept of the school newspaper beyond school walls and the confines of print media, allowing students to work collaboratively on a global level to create an interactive, multimedia-rich student-driven online newspaper. It brings together a network of students in an online peer-driven environment to address issues of local and global significance, such as poverty, the environment, and human rights, in a creative and constructive format that culminates in meaningful efforts to make a positive impact on their world. Contributors bring their unique voices to the discussion, representing their regions and their cultural histories.

Website: http://newsaction.tigweb.org/about/

ARTICLES: A teens-eye view of the digital future

“My kids never watch TV anymore. They are always on the computer.”

It’s a common remark from the parents of teens and young adults. Probe a little deeper and you may discover that contemporary youth, like young people before them, are too busy socializing to watch TV — in this case by texting their friends or logging on to Facebook. Or you may find out they are watching TV shows and movies on their computers, downloading them from file-sharing sites.

To get a glimpse of the future, we asked the class of 2010 what media they owned and how they used it. Some of them watched TV, some of them didn’t, but only one of the five interviewed couldn’t name a favourite TV show.

full article

ARTICLES / PROJECTS: Children share hopes, dreams through animated short films

Simple paper cutouts, drawings and pieces of clay offered opportunities to laugh and consider dire warnings Friday night during a screening of youth-produced animation at the Children's Media Project in Poughkeepsie.

The animated shorts, produced by students from the Children's Media Project, local schools and children from Brazil, Poland, New Zealand and South Africa, touched on the serious and the silly.

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ARTICLES: Growing Up Roma

When I was nine years old I realized I was different and did not know why. I had always been a happy child. I had many friends in school. But this all changed in the fifth grade.

In Bulgaria, like many parts of Eastern Europe, Roma children often don’t have access to quality education. Roma children in segregated schools graduate without knowing how to read or write. In my hometown, we have a segregated primary school up until the fourth grade. That school was only 100 meters from my house but my mother would not let me go there. She knew I would not receive a good education and so she enrolled me at the public school for Bulgarian students.

Her decision was not easy. The trip to and from school was difficult. Even my father and my grandparents did not agree with her decision. They did not understand why I should go to a school so far away from my home and be separated from my cousins. But my mother knew why. She knew that education was key. My mother tried to protect me from being mocked by the children at school. My parents agreed only to speak to me in Bulgarian so that I would not develop an accent. But they could only protect me so much.

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