Slate’s Katie Roiphe talks to the controversial danah boyd about kids online
We all know there’s a lot of wild and crazy stuff on the internet, stuff that we don’t want our kids to see, but that’s no reason to hover over our kids’ shoulders as they go about their business online, says Microsoft researcher danah boyd. (Yes, it’s danah boyd, not Danah Boyd, and it looks awfully foreign, especially at the start of a sentence.)
Slate’s Katie Roiphe met with boyd and afterwards, decided she didn’t need to worry about what her 9-year-old was doing online. (When she snuck a peek anyway, her daughter was simply looking up Harry Potter characters.)
Britain has an opportunity to reinvent how it teaches information technology
A recent editorial in the Guardian newspaper wrote that Britain is in danger of producing a generation that doesn’t know how Google works. As such, the editorial states that this is a prime opportunity to overhaul the education system and bring information technology education into the 21st century.
Is North America any better? Maybe a little. Our kids know to how to download an app or a song and we’ve raised them to think of Google as a verb as much as a company, but are we providing them with the right tools to invent the next Google? In the current and old system, kids learn how to use specific programs, but what does that do when the essential programs completely change every few years? Schools should instead be teaching information systems. Read more...
2. Easy-Bake Oven, the iconic kids toy that lets you cook food by the heat of a light bulb, went for an extreme makeover. (No more light bulbs) Jezebel’s right: it looks like it’s from The Jetsons.
