Technology

Technology and the 3 R’s

To take a historical overview, which would be familiar to many Steiner students from the writing main lesson in Class 4, the Chinese invented the first printing process for text in Ad 600, using wooden blocks and ink. But it didn’t catch on. The fact that 10,000 plus characters were needed, each individually carved, didn’t help. It wasn’t until nearly 1000 years later that the invention of Guttenberg’s printing press brought the potential of mass literacy to fruition. It was the original convergence device. It brought Chinese printing know-how, Korean metal type technology and recent advances in ink and paper…

I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation

Sherry Turkle: ‘I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation’ Sherry Turkle interviewed by Tim Adams Sherry Turkle at home in Boston, near MIT. Photograph: Blake Fitch For nearly 30 years now, Sherry Turkle, professor of social psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been exploring the effects of digital worlds on human behaviour. Her books, Life on the Screen, The Second Self and Alone Together, have charted the seductions of “intimate machines”, the advance of social media and virtual realities and the all-pervasive internet, and the effect these things have had on our culture and our lives. Her latest…

What age is appropriate to join social media?

by Lucy Battersby: The Age online Oct 17th 2015Age limits are arbitrary and parents must assess when a child has the social skills for social media, eSafety watchdog says.Teyalee has two Instagram accounts, one is private the other is purely for dance. Teyalee opened her first social media account when she turned 10 years old. "I wanted to keep in contact with my friends in Darwin and school," she explains. She now has two Instagram accounts – one private account just for friends and one public to promote her dance skills. "The only other one that I wanted to join was…

The Secret Life of Kids Online: What You Need to Know

Facebook, Twitter, Shelfari, Moshi Monsters, Club Penguin, The SIMS—the list of online games and social networking sites seems to grow longer every day. Also on the upswing: the alarming headlines about cyberbullying, sexting, and other forms of online harassment. This ever-increasing presence of social media in kids’ lives, often starting in the prepubescent years, has prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to issue a clinical report to increase parental awareness of the sites their kids are visiting and how they work. “The digital world is an evolving landscape that parents have to learn to navigate,” says Kathleen Clarke-Pearson, M.D.,…

Social Media Monitoring – 13 tips

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently released findings from a comprehensive study on the impact social media has on kids and families. Although there are real benefits to kids using sites like Facebook, including increased communication, access to information and help in developing a sense of self, there can be serious downsides to all this online sharing too.Social networking is on the rise, and the study found that 22 percent of teenagers log onto their favorite social media sites more than 10 times a day,and that 75 percent own cell phones. This level of engagement online increases the risks of…