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Strollerderby
Can porn be easily accessed in your child's school?
How safe are the internet filters at your child’s school?
According to KTVX in Salt Lake City, elementary school students were able to breach the school’s filters to access porn on-line by typing words in Spanish.
Four 9 and 10 year old boys were able to bypass the filter installed on computers at McPolin Elementary in Park City.
The students were able to view on-line racy images at least 25 times in the last couple of weeks, while their teacher was in the classroom. “There were some inappropriate scenes with nudity,” admits Tom VanGorder, Park City School District. He continues, “With technology these days, it’s going to be impossible to stop everything”. Continue reading »
Looking for answers
Remember when you needed to find the answer to a burning question — maybe for a homework assignment or to settle a dispute — and you had to mosey on over to the bookshelf, finger through the encyclopedia volumes until you found the right one, and then flip it open to scan the pages for the right alphabetical listing, hoping you’d be lucky enough to find an entry? Inevitably, when I had procrastinated too long on a homework assignment, I’d find that – Doh! – the encyclopedia volume I needed had gone missing, or didn’t have what I needed, and the library was already closed. Argh. I had to hope that my parents, or maybe an older sibling, would know the answer.
Kids these days … they’ve got all the information in the world right at their fingertips, on their handy dandy iPhones and tablets and computers. And apparently, last night, many of them were using them as they watched the Million Dollar Money Drop game show, Googling to find the answers to questions like “Who is on the dime?” and “How many states touch the Pacific Ocean?” and “Big Mac ingredients.”
There was big money at stake. And, I would argue that there’s something even bigger at stake here. Continue reading »
If you or your kids have logged into World of Warcraft recently, you might be getting an error stating “Launching cannot obtain patching information.” Before you restart your computer, successfully download the new patch, and continue playing, consider this — is World of Warcraft a safe game for kids to be playing anyway?
When I was tween (back before the Warcraft franchise was WOW), I spent countless hours playing this game with my dad. He would set up on his work computer, and I would be in the room right next to him on our home computer. It was our special time and we would work together to win at a game, which yes, had a violent premise, but was not graphic by any means. It was actually kind of hard and required lots of teamwork and strategy — definitely great for developing young minds’ problem solving skills.
But how has technology changed since then, and why is it more dangerous?
Do kids these days really know the value of friendship? After all, sharing details of one’s life is as quick as the click of a mouse. Breaking off contact, at least over broadband, is just that simple too. Log on, click. You’re no longer BFFs.
Is that really how kids think these days? Jimmy Kimmel, who is not one of this decade’s foremost social commentarians, believes so. He has declared today, Nov. 17, National Unfriend Day.
The ponderous comedian with the so-so ratings thinks people spend far too much time on Facebook, collecting friends like Beanie Babies, and that we’re not only wasting our time but watering down the meaning of human connection. (I just made that last part up. He hasn’t said much in terms of human connection other than declaring it impossible to have 500 friends.) Continue reading »
Do mommy bloggers owe their kids more privacy?
What kind of privacy do we owe our kids? Especially we writers and bloggers who specialize in parenting and child-rearing topics? How can we be sure that what we say about them now, when they’re young, won’t come back to haunt them when they’re older and, you know, literate?
We can’t.
So should we stop? It depends. John thinks we should just a little but I’m inclined to stay the course. Continue reading »
One of the biggest rules of writing is to write what you know. For that reason, I’ve never been afraid to chronicle my life as a husband, as a stepdad and as the father of triplets — much of it online.
Though the vast majority of people have no problem with this practice, there does exist a vocal minority who are quick to call me out from high atop their soapboxes, angrily (if not sanctimoniously) pointing out my recklessness. Writing about my children online, they contend, exposes them to great danger as virtually anyone who is hell-bent on accessing them could probably do so.
Guess what? Continue reading »
Cyberbullying is real
After Tyler Clementi‘s recent death, a flurry of warnings went out to parents everywhere about the dangers of cyberbullying. But does cyberbullying even exist, or is it just straight up bullying whether it’s on the Internet or in a classroom?
Anil Dash says there’s no such thing as cyberbullying. Cruelty, racism and homophobia are awful to endure and evil to perpetrate. Dash argues that there’s no difference in the medium used. More importantly, he sees the word as a cop-out for parents, teachers and traditional media to let themselves off the hook.
By pointing fingers at new technology, we can blame the unknown interloper in our midst, rather than having to deal with our own failings in protecting our kids from becoming either bullies or victims.
Sure. Yet I’m going to respectfully disagree with Mr. Dash: I think cyberbullying is a unique thing, different from schoolyard bullying in important ways.
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Katherine Stone 
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