An App to Teach Tweens About Online Safety

Posted on July 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm

Common Sense Media has developed Digital Compass to help tweens learn about safety, privacy, and “digital citizenship,” as they begin to go online by themselves and get their first smartphones.

Designed by Common Sense for middle schoolers, this engaging game helps teach the valuable lessons that today’s kids need to thrive in our digital world. It’s an invaluable tool to open up the conversation around digital citizenship between parents and their (almost) teenagers to help kids think about the real-world impact of their online choices.

In this animated, choose-your-own-journey format set in a fictional town called Anywhere, players control their characters’ digital fates by making good and not-so-good decisions. Kids have the freedom to safely experiment with the impact of their choices while keeping their real-life digital reputations intact. Kids will be faced with a number of challenges and lessons that explore safe sharing, copyright rules, and dealing with digital drama.

Go to DigitalCompass.org to get the app (also available in Google Play or the App Store

Comic-Con 2015: My Rotten Tomatoes and Common Sense Media Panels

Posted on July 16, 2015 at 8:07 am

I was thrilled to be invited to be on two of the best panels at Comic-Con. Every year, movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives attendees the chance to talk back to the critics at “Your Opinion Sucks!” Each person is given a paddle with a ripe tomato on one side and a rotten tomato on the other. Attendees have sixty seconds to explain why the critics are wrong about a movie and then the critics have a chance to respond and the whole crowd indicates their views with the paddles. The result is raucous, passionate, and very funny. Everyone who got up to speak had some defenders with the possible exception of the guy who, over the objections of his girlfriend, wanted to tell us why he didn’t like “Inside Out.” Scott Mantz of “Access Hollywood” went so ballistic that I had to explain to the crowd that it was Lewis Black controlling his brain. The glamorous, gorgeous, witty, and all-around magnificent Grae Drake is out in the audience talking to the crowd, and Top Tomato Matt Atchity does his best to moderate the very immoderate panel of critics.

This was the first time my friends at Common Sense Media had a panel at Comic-Con and I was honored to be invited to participate. The topic was “Fandom: The Next Generation” and we talked about whether and how to get kids interested in their parents’ nerdy, geeky passions. We had a surprise guest star: Agent Coulson himself, Clark Gregg of “The Avengers” and “Agents of Shield” — and father of a 13-year-old. All of us on the panel are parents, and three of us had our children in the room. The conclusion: kids are, thankfully, their own people and we should be open to whatever their own nerdy, geeky choices are as we share our own. I got a big kick out of one of the attendees who came over to me after the panel, an adult woman whose father was wearing an “Incredibles” shirt because they love to cosplay together.

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Festivals

Comic-Con 2015 Panel on Fandom: The Next Generation

Posted on July 12, 2015 at 11:16 am

I was thrilled to be invited by Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media to appear on a panel discussion if and how to share our nerdy passions with our children. I was even more thrilled when I found out who would be on the panel with me: Jeffrey Brown, author of Darth Vader and Son, Jim McQuarrie of GeekDad, and none other than Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson himself!

We all dream of sharing our passions with our children. But it is important to be careful about it. Everyone on the panel had a story about sharing the wrong movie — or the right movie too soon — with a child who got upset, and feeling that we had “flunked parenting.” Young children will say what they think you want to hear and if it seems too important to you, they will tell you they like something when they really do not. Older children will say the opposite of what they think you want to hear; they will tell you they don’t like something when they really do. What matters is to let them develop their own nerdy attachments, the ones that they use to connect with their peers. Let them see you be passionate about something. If you want them to read, don’t tell them to read; let them see you read. If you want them to put down their devices, don’t tell them to put down their devices; put down your devices.

The best moment of the panel was when I mentioned Pokemon as a nerdy obsession kids love and adults generally do not, and McQuarrie said that his son had been a huge Pokemon fan, pointing to his now-adult son sitting in the audience. The entire room smiled at him and then, all at once, noticed that the young woman he had his arm around was dressed as…Pokemon!

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Common Sense Media Gives Its First Seal of Approval

Posted on October 8, 2014 at 7:00 am

I’m a big fan of Common Sense Media. I helped them get started and have been very impressed by how much they have achieved. They have just awarded their first-ever seal of approval to this week’s release of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.” Great organization, great idea, great choice! Parents can look to CSM for guidance in finding entertainment that the whole family can share.

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Awards Parenting

New Report on Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media

Posted on November 9, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Common Sense Media has issued a new research report, Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View from the Classroom. Findings include:

Most teachers think that use of entertainment media has impaired ability to learn and perform in the classroom by decreasing attention span and hurting their critical thinking ability. The greatest area of concern is about the impact of media use on writing ability. The media most often cited as problematic are texting, social networking, video games, and television, depending on the students’ age. While teachers praise the benefits of media in teaching multi-tasking and researching information resources, overall they were concerned about the impact it has, not just on learning but social interaction.