Digital Citizenship

According to a Slate.com article by Alexander Burgoyne and David Hambrick, human brains are wired to retain only the gist of information consumed, creating difficulty in remembering the source of news and whether it is flagged as fake or not. Exposure to fake news could even lead us to “remember” things that never happened. Other research has shown that people are vulnerable to false memories even when they are explicitly warned that they may be exposed to misinformation.  This might undermine efforts by Facebook and others to curb false news on social media, a problem particularly prevalent during the presidential election and certainly something you might want to talk with your children about as part of your ongoing discussion of digital literacy and citizenship.

If your New Year resolution has anything to do with getting organized, you may be interested in a way to digitize old pictures. If you are curious about scanning and restoring old photos, give Photomyne a try. It is especially good for scanning old albums since it lets you scan multiple pictures at once. Once images have been scanned, Photomyne gives you a few retouching and restoring options, as well as sharing features. Photomyme comes in several variants: you can either install a free version that lets you pay per session via in-app purchase, or a paid version for $5 that gives you a range of basic features. On top of that there is a $12 per year premium plan that includes unlimited saves, backup and access to your scans from desktop computers. Interested in more free and inexpensive photo apps? See Photojojo's updated list.

After this last election many people looked around and wondered how we became so estranged and divided from each other. Some blame is placed on the fact that when searching for information online, the top results are sites that reflect the kind of outlook and political ideology that you already favor. Now it seems that one of the ways that had exposed us to the lives of people different than ourselves in the past is also disappearing. Mainstream network television that used to introduce the American public to multiple viewpoints is beginning to transform into a different experience. For example, “One Day at a Time,” a 1970s sitcom about what it was like to be a single, working class parent, regularly attracted 17 million viewers every week. With the advent of streaming and subscription on demand services, television no longer has that broad cultural reach. Instead, what we watch is consciously chosen, and just like an online search, most often reflects the views and opinions we already hold. In a way, we’re returning to the cultural era that predated radio and TV - one where there wasn’t very much shared culture.

Thomas Friedman suggests in his The New York Times article, Online and Scared, that we may have reached a tipping point in our online interactions. There is an urgent need to recognize that we are all, as Freidman puts it, “connected but no one’s in charge.” As we spend more time online shopping, dating, friendship sustaining, enemy making, learning, teaching and even collecting what we know about the world, Friedman points out that it is even more important for kids to have some grasp of digital civics. Both kids and adults need to come to the realization that the internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information, where everyone needs to bring skepticism and critical thinking to everything they read and basic civic decency to everything they write. It is a tall order, but he feels our very existence may depend on it.

Thomas Friedman suggests in his The New York Times article, Online and Scared, that we may have reached a tipping point in our online interactions. There is an urgent need to recognize that we are all, as Freidman puts it, “connected but no one’s in charge.” As we spend more time online shopping, dating, friendship sustaining, enemy making, learning, teaching and even collecting what we know about the world, Friedman points out that it is even more important for kids to have some grasp of digital civics. Both kids and adults need to come to the realization that the internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information, where everyone needs to bring skepticism and critical thinking to everything they read and basic civic decency to everything they write. It is a tall order, but he feels our very existence may depend on it.

Could your smart home testify against you? Prosecutors investigating a murder case in Arkansas have served Amazon with search warrants for data collected by one of its Echo devices. Police found an Amazon Echo – a home assistant that responds to voice commands – at the home of James Bates, who is charged with murdering his friend Victor Collins in November 2015. They seized the device as evidence but are now seeking any audio or text records it may have sent to Amazon’s servers around the time of the incident. The Echo streams audio to Amazon’s cloud, where the data is processed and stored when it hears its “wake word” – usually “Alexa”.

Amazon has been served with several warrants but refuses to provide all of the data requested. “Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us,” the company said in a statement. “Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”

Although it may not seem necessary, helping kids learn how to use those all those apps available on digital devices is important for parents to do. One recent study showed that 2-to 3- year olds who watched a demo by an adult on how to assemble a puzzle did much better later on in putting the puzzle together on their own as opposed to when they watched a machine generated, digital “ghost” demo. While it may not be all that surprising that this “social scaffolding” helped the learning process, it is a good reminder for all parents that these devices are not digital babysitters. Parents see how quickly their kids pick up on using technology and may forget that digital devices are just like any other tool…and just like any other tool, children are going to need to learn from their parents.

How would you feel about a sound activated, WiFi speaker that is being touted as a device to help take care of your kids? Toymaker Mattel recently announced Aristotle by Nabi, a smart baby monitor device that has interactive capabilities. Aristotle is designed similar to an Amazon Echo or a Google Home, but programmed for children. Put another way, the hub is “an AI (artificial intelligence) to help raise your child,” as Fast Company described it. Mattel said that Aristotle could do everything from playing a lullaby for a crying baby to ordering diapers. It sounds like a device from the future and might make some people question how much is too much technology in our lives?

Looking for free or inexpensive eBooks for you or your kids? There are three sites you might want to try: BookBub, bookgorilla and The Fussy Librarian.  All three sites can be joined for free. After signing up and taking a quick survey, you will receive a daily email with suggestions of books that fit your interests. All three sites have good ratings and reviews for both their services and for protecting your personal information.

One movie you and your family may be interested in if you are curious about the history of technology is Hidden Figures, a story about the African American women who conceived some of the important mathematical constructs and engineering that aided the early US space effort. The movie shows the implementation of an IBM mainframe computer as part of the effort, but what may be shocking to some younger viewers is that smartphones, computers, and even calculators today possess several hundred times the computing power of that early device.

With the amazing capabilities of technology today, many are questioning their place in high school and college classrooms. Students in many high-school math classes employ graphing calculators, but research has shown the devices are often banned in high-level math classes at large research universities. Educators and experts continue to debate whether calculators help or harm math instruction. What are your thoughts?