A mom's heads-up: Teens in chat

As huge as IM is with kids and teens these days, chat has not gone away, Lauren, a mom in California, is here to tell you. Mother of two boys 13 and 10, Lauren has configured the parental controls on the computer they use so they cannot chat online, and their computer is one of two she has placed "side by side so can I watch all their online activity." Why so hands-on? Because of her own experience in online chat. Lauren recently emailed me an "open letter to all parents who have teens online" because of it. Please click to this week's issue of my newsletter for details.

New round of P2P lawsuits

The Recording Industry Association of America filed it latest round of lawsuits against file-sharers yesterday. Of the 757 sued (bringing the number to 14,800 in the US), "about 64 were filed against individuals using college networks," Reuters reports. For more on this, see "MI court rejects P2P suit [against parents]," "Anti-P2P software for parents," and "File-sharing realities for families." The 757 sued are at 17 US universities, according to Good Morning Silicon Valley's somewhat tongue-in-cheek coverage.

Bold Net goal in Maine

The former governor who put laptops in the hands of 7th- and 8th-graders statewide is now working on making Net connectivity available for free to any household in Maine that can't afford it. Angus King, who left office in '02, has started a foundation, the Maine Learning Technology Foundation, to extend the laptop program to connectivity for all students," Stateline.org reports, in keeping with his vision for Maine to gain "an economic edge by becoming the most digitally literate state in the nation." At least where tech-enabled students are concerned, the numbers are positive. "Independent studies by researchers at the University of Southern Maine say the positive impact of the laptop program is being felt statewide." More than 80% of the teachers surveyed last year said students who are using the state-provided laptops were more engaged in their schoolwork and produced better work, and 70+% of students surveyed said the laptops "helped them to be more organized and complete higher-quality schoolwork more quickly."

From Wikipedia to wiki-textbooks

I have to admit to a little skepticism about this - how could a "textbook" written and edited by the online masses be reliably accurate? What I discovered in reading CNET's piece about Wikibooks is that mine was an old, narrow view of textbooks. Wikibooks won't necessarily replace textbooks (at least not for a while); they add something new to the equation. They're a teaching tool. They're also a catalyst, lighting a fire under very proprietary textbook publishers that take years to get new material into the pipeline. But the teaching-tool part is the really interesting one. CNET cites U. of Massachusetts biology Prof. Steven Brewer's vision of "teachers - at any level - asking students to examine existing Wikibooks entries for accuracy and relevancy and then appending their findings to those entries … teaching tool and a work in progress all at once." The Net as it should be - a tool to enhance the immediacy, richness, and empowerment of collaborative learning, teaching kids critical thinking in the process. There's much more about this in the CNET piece, including some pitfalls that will have to be worked out - do check it out. BTW, if you want to see how the Wikipedia works, with its "749,000 some articles in English alone [among its 10 languages]," see this other CNET piece. It really is the information version of the open-source Linux operating system. I wish we could make this newsletter just as open-source - send in your comments (or post just below)!

MTV on phones

Music videos have been on the Web for some time. Now they're coming to cellphones - MTV-produced ones, anyway, USATODAY reports. "MTV will create and distribute videos with Warner artists such as Green Day, Sean Paul and Twista for cellphones and other wireless gadgets." Warner's the first of the major record labels to strike a deal with MTV for the phone platform, USATODAY adds. Pricing will depend on what the phone companies offer, whether pay-per-video or subscription. Here's another view from the San Jose Mercury News. A phone content-rating system is in the works in the US (see my 5/6/05 issue, though there are signs the cellphone services are interested in selling porn on video-enabled phones (see last week's issue).

Videogames & ADD

"Son, don't forget to do your videogaming tonight." Ever think that sentence would spill from a parent's lips?! Well, USATODAY reports that some kids who have attention deficit disorder are being prescribed videogame therapy by psychologists - aided by the S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames system currently being used in 50 US clinics (according to the psychologist who adapted it for this type of therapy). Working with a PlayStation 2 console, the "consists of a special controller, a helmet with built-in sensors for monitoring brain activity, and a Smartbox that receives the brain signals," according to the USATODAY piece. When players are calmly focused on the game, it plays normally; when their minds wander, "the Smartbox sends a signal to the controller hindering acceleration or character movement in the game." The system was among 40 projects on display at a recent "Games for Health" Conference in Baltimore, Md. - "an offshoot of The Serious Games Initiative, which seeks to push the evolution of games technology to aid in problem solving, public policy and social issues," USATODAY adds.

Anti-P2P software for parents

The US film industry released it last February (see my coverage), and now the free software's available under a different name in six more languages at a site representing the recording industry worldwide. What Parent File Scan and Digital File Check do is 1) scan your PC and tell you what media files (video, music, photos, etc.) and file-sharing software you may have on it, and 2) let you delete any of those files and programs. The very easy-to-use app, which works only on Windows PCs, is designed to help less-than-tech-literate parents educate themselves about multimedia on the family PC, but TechWhack.com in India suggests that, these days, "when the kids at home are smarter than their parents when it comes to using computers … we at TechWhack doubt that this application is going to make much of a difference." In other words, this software may not be able to find the more sophisticated work-arounds young digital-media fans are undoubtedly already developing as P2P services "go legit" (see this blog post). Here's Digital File Scan at the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's site. You can get Parent File Scan at the Motion Picture Association of America's site, RespectCopyrights.org, or through its developer's site. And coverage of its release at the BBC and the International Herald Tribune. See also "File-sharing realities for families."