Culture

Profs compete for students' attention

"...Nobody is in the room. The professor is just another open browser window, 1 of 10." --UNC graduate student on the distracted classroom experience

Immersion in online technology and media has fundamentally changed the way our minds work, the way we gather information and split our attention. It may be harder than ever for educators to avoid coming across like the monotonous economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I taught high school 10 years ago, and in many ways I am thankful that I was teaching in the era before networked laptops.

I was a talented teacher, but let's face it, when you are trying to convince 16-year-olds that they really are interested in learning chemistry at 8:30 in the morning, it helps to have a captive audience.

Now teachers face new pressures: competing for their students' attention inside the classroom, and presenting material in a way that resembles the variety of mass media that teens consume on average more than 40 hours a week.… Read more

'Frontline' on 'Growing Up Online'

When PBS's Frontline reported on "Growing Up Online" this week, it called the gulf between kids who grew up with technology and their parents "the greatest generation gap since rock 'n' roll." That's a bitter pill to swallow for adults in their '30s and '40s who have been involved in computers for 20-plus years, but I have to say I agree with their assessment. Maybe we kicked it old school with Pong and the Atari 2600. Or we had a Commodore 64 or a Macintosh with a whopping 512K of memory. We may have even written code since we were teens ourselves, but that's nothing compared to growing up with ubiquitous access to cell phones, media, and social networking.

Producer Caitlin McNally describes this shift in thinking that exists even between her, as a twentysomething, and the teens she interviewed:

Despite the research we did, I don't think I was prepared when we started talking to kids for the extent to which the Internet and other electronic communication has permeated all aspects of being a teenager. Almost every kid expressed the utter importance of being connected with friends all the time and how unthinkable a life without that connection would be. I think a lot of kids were bemused by our list of questions about 'life online,' because they don't sit around thinking about the Internet in their lives. It's just there, always, another tool for them to use or place for them to go.

… Read more

MySpace takes a step toward safety

I've been writing about parenting and technology long enough for themes to begin to emerge. Like Lou Dobbs talking again and again about the "War on the Middle Class," I am going to keep following the evolving story about kids and online safety, and supporting the idea that "Safe Product Design is Good Product Design."

Monday's announcement that MySpace has unveiled a new safety plan, working in cooperation with 49 attorneys general, is a step in the right direction. However, it did draw the predictable criticism epitomized by this reader comment on The Social blog:

A Novel Idea...: reader comment from jltnol Posted on: January 14, 2008, 2:24 PM PST Story: MySpace agrees to social-networking safety plan

Why can't parents just do what the [sic] are supposed to do? Part of parenting is knowing what your kids are up to all the time.

If you can't do it then hire a baby sitter who can.

You need a license to drive and a license to fish, but anybody can have a child.

Go Figure.

Wonderful! Another chance to hone my argument against such an unrealistic point of view. This is like saying, "You had a kid, so it's your job to drive safely. Why should car makers have to provide seat belts and antilock brakes? If you don't like it, don't drive at all."

Parents can't know exactly what their kids are up to at all times, especially when the category "kids" includes teenagers. In fact, I bet that if I told you that I maintained absolute surveillance on a 15-year-old at all times, you'd think I was a paranoid, hyperinvolved parent.… Read more

What CES taught me about work-life balance

One more quick CES-inspired post:

Work-life balance may seem a bit off-topic from parenting and technology, but if you are like me, your "digital leash" is a large part of both work and family life. It's mostly a blessing, but can be a curse when you find yourself pulled in so many different directions that you feel that you aren't doing anything well. Nonetheless, I had gotten so used to the idea that blending job and family in the most flexible way was always a good strategy that it took a trip to CES to remind … Read more

Kodak looks to the future

CES is all about what's cool right now, up to the latest nanosecond. One of the Sandbox Summit panelists summed up the pace of development when she said that her wired kids thought that the Amazon Kindle was old news.

I have to say that one of the CES displays that impressed me the most was from a classic American company that had to be one of the oldest manufacturers at the show: Kodak. Think about the transition they've had to pull off, from film to digital photography, upending their previous innovations and business. A few years ago the outlook for the company's future was incredibly pessimistic.

Kodak had a massive booth at CES and after all was said and done, I realized that they had presented some of the best home-office photo printers, digital photo frames, and scrapbooking software that I'd seen at the show. (Keep in mind that seeing everything at CES is like trying to eat at every restaurant in Manhattan in two days; no one person can possibly scour more than a fraction of the total offerings.) Hewlett-Packard demonstrated a wide variety of equipment that would definitely do a good job, but Kodak seemed to have developed the whole package deal, understanding their target audience as photographers and memory makers rather than just people who print photos.… Read more

CES: Sandbox Summit highlights kids and tech

I spent the whole day at CES attending the Sandbox Summit, an ambitious new specialty session put on by the Parents' Choice Foundation. We heard presentations from over 20 speakers, from Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop (an Elvis-impersonating Elmo showed up live as a keynote speaker!), to Michelle Slatalla, Cyberfamilias columnist at The New York Times; Anastasia Goodstein, founder of YPulse.com; and Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Technology Review. The five panels addressed topics in depth and from several angles, including marketing, safety, the quality and effectiveness of educational media, and the question of how families can develop reasonable limits on screen time. I will be covering the details this five-hour summit in many upcoming blog posts.

The Sandbox Summit was well-attended and I had the most amazing networking experience afterward, talking to other women who attended as audience members. … Read more

Microsoft's Stay-At-Home Server campaign deserves a time-out

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: That's not funny.

OK, getting that out of the way, let me tell you about the greatest marketing campaign since "The Wow Starts Now."

You see, Microsoft, known for its riotous sense of humor, thought it would try its hand of parody, creating a Colbert-like investigative report about whether servers belong in the office or in the home to promote the Windows Home Server. There's a whole series of larger than life posters here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The problem is, the attempted parody ultimately reinforces all the stereotypes about moms, domesticity, and the so-called "Mommy Wars" that writers and activists are working really hard to erase.… Read more

Digital photo frames have arrived

Now that digital photography is a ubiquitous part of family life, digital photo frames are emerging as a hot new device for displaying and sharing memories. Not only can you set a frame to run through a dynamic slide show, but you can send photos remotely to a loved one's frame.

I had a chance to preview three lines yesterday: Kodak, Cevia, and Smartparts. All of them delivered beautiful images and they each have differentiating features that may be a deciding factor for you. … Read more

CES: What does it take to motivate consumers?

CES 2008 is waking up and quickly accelerating to a fever pitch. I walked through a convention hall the size of an airport terminal (one of about 10 such halls) to get to the CNET office, and I can tell you there are a lot of companies who are hoping to sell you a flat-screen TV.

The question that formed in my mind during yesterday's media prevew is, What does it take to motivate consumers in today's bountiful tech marketplace? The manufacturers have a daunting task ahead of them. One of their biggest challenges is that frankly, consumer electronics have reached a level of such high quality that it takes a lot to convince everyday people to ditch the $2000 TV they bought two years ago to upgrade to the latest and greatest model.

This dynamic is playing out right now in the battle between HD DVD and Blu-Ray DVD. While the industry is buzzing with the latest developments about which platform is gaining the upper hand, many consumers like me are sitting on their existing DVD collection, thinking that the picture already looks pretty darn good.

I have several suggestions for companies as they try to turn enthusiasts into customers:… Read more