Digital Smarts Blog

While this article on Maximizing Digital Stamina is intended for schools who need to think about setting an ergonomically safe space for students to work with digital devices, there are a lot of helpful hints for parents and teens to do the same  as well. Advice on how to create a comfortable digital space that includes proper headsets, keyboards, tablet stands, webcams and more for children and teens use is discussed.

Children's voices are not always recognized or understood by voice technology, says Patricia Scanlon, the founder and executive chair of a SoapBox Labs, which is working to address this challenge. The Dublin tech startup's voice recognition technology is targeted to children 12 and younger, aiming to improve learning and gaming software for this age group.

Since the pandemic, digital books have become firmly part of the classroom and home learning landscape. Colleen Hoban, technology specialist for the Colonial School District in Delaware, offers a blog post with five tips for parents and educators as they expand their own digital collections, including maximizing features available when using digital books.

As emerging technologies develop and continue to collect data at breakneck speeds, we should be mindful that our children are the technologists and ethicists of tomorrow, say Karen Ingram and Megan Stariha in article entitled The Moral Imperative of Teaching Every Student Tech Ethics. They advocate for today’s schools and parents to start laying the ethical groundwork now. Facilitating conversations around ethics in technology with young people will help ensure that future technologies are developed equitably and that young people are conscious of their implications.

During the pandemic, teacher and student communications often suffered with the abrupt move from in person to online learning. A free new digital reflection tool, Along, can help teachers create personal relationships with students while allowing each student to feel seen and understood. The service lets teachers send thought-provoking questions to students, who can answer in a range of formats, including audio and video. Perhaps something to pass along as school kicks off, especially since some schools are pivoting to online learning once again given rising Covid case numbers.

As we get back to school, this latest research is a good reminder to parents and kids that there is more to life than what is on a screen and it is important to keep screen time regulated. In a recent study, 577,000 youths ages 11 to 15 in 42 countries were surveyed, and researchers found that girls who spent an hour a day on devices, such as cellphones and computers, and boys who spent about 90 minutes on their screens were more likely to feel sad about their lives, and the more time they spent on screens, the worse they tended to feel. The findings in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health also showed that teens who were more physically active reported improved well-being.

A recent article published in The Journal discusses the need to prioritize the social and emotional well-being of students as they have been forced into almost a completely digital life during the pandemic. Remote learning and Zoom “visits” with family and friends are only two of the ways that the role of media and technology has been cemented into young peoples’ lives.

The digital context in which young people are interacting is core to their life experiences, emotions, relationships, and identity development and is something schools and parents will need to acknowledge and address as they enter the new school year. The social and emotional wellbeing of students, particularly in and around the digital world, must be a priority for both educators and families as everyone tries to figure out what the “new normal” entails, and should be a constant subject of conversation. It is important for parents and teachers to really listen as kids talk about their individual experiences online. Many kids have acquired an array of digital skills, and probably some bad habits, during the pandemic. With that in mind, parents and teachers cannot be cowed by how proficient kids may have become nor overly shocked by where they may have wandered online. Instead, be open to their new expertise and willing to help them figure out what positive directions to take with the tech-saavy they have acquired.

Following the social media trend of posting photos of food, school nutrition professionals in Texas' Flour Bluff Independent School District are using social media, including TikTok and Snapchat, to demonstrate how they serve healthy meals for students. Brittany Garcia, the district's school nutrition coordinator and a registered dietitian, said the social media posts help spread the word that students are being served nutritious foods, including fruits and vegetables, and remove the stigma of school meals.

In a recent blog post, TikTok announced plans to make its platform safer and less addictive for teenagers. The changes, expected to be released in the coming months, expand on earlier efforts to improve privacy settings and defaults for children under 18 and include options such as choosing who can view videos and limits on when younger users get notifications. One of the featured updates is a prompt that appears when younger users are about to share a video, asking whom they want to allow to view it as well as whether they want other people to download their post.

This should be good news for parents since TikTok ranked first in July in nongaming app downloads, with more than 63 million installs, -- a title it has held for all but two of the past 18 months, analytics platform Sensor Tower reports. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp rounded out the top five in overall download rankings in July.

While hopes remain high that online learning will be more limited this school year, Zoom recently released a Focus Mode feature aimed at limiting distractions for students. When the Focus Mode is activated, teachers can see all students in the Zoom "classroom," but students can see only the teacher or host as well as presentations.

Curious about what artificial intelligence applications are possibly coming to your children’s classrooms in the future?  An article in The Wall Street Journal profiles several and discusses the transforming role of teachers in the future. Despite the many technological advances, AI and education researchers still believe that a future where students might receive a personal robot or on-screen AI buddy along with their textbooks is rife with ethical and design challenges, citing ease of use, inclusivity and data use and privacy.

Google is now blocking gender-, age- or interest-based targeting to children under 18, accepting minors' requests to have images removed from search results, and disabling location history within account settings. The company is also rolling out protections on its YouTube platform, such as defaulting video uploads by kids between 13 and 17 to a private setting and taking "overly commercial content" off of YouTube Kids.

Google says these new changes are based on new regulations being introduced in some countries, and that it wants to offer “consistent product experiences and user controls” globally. Requesting an image’s removal from Google’s image search won’t remove it from the web entirely, Google cautions, but it says this should give users more control over the spread of their images. Alongside its changes to ad targeting, Google also says it’s expanding safeguards to stop “age-sensitive ad categories” from being shown to teens.

The new features are being introduced on different timelines. The option to request that images be removed from Google’s image search, as well as changes to default YouTube video privacy settings, will roll out in the coming weeks. The new restrictions on ad targeting, SafeSearch changes, and tools to block content on Google Assistant-enabled smart devices are launching in the coming months.

YouTube and Interesting Development have rolled out YouTube’s first worldwide campaign to show how easily creators can make Shorts. Advertisements use music from the world's top artists, such as The Weeknd, Camila Cabello, BTS and Doja Cat, and are running on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat as well as YouTube properties. This is YouTube’s push to attract tweens and teens away from TikTok, which has had more than 63 million installs and ranking first in nongaming app downloads almost consistently for the past 18 months, according to reports from analytics platform Sensor Tower. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp rounded out the top five in overall download rankings in July.

Non-fungible tokens are creating buzz in the tech world and could play a role in education, say teachers and students who are using NFTs. In a podcast, a high-school teachers, students, and others explain how they used NFTs -- which allow for creation of a one-of-a-kind digital file that is authenticated -- as a form of a transcript or as a way for art or music students to get their creativity out into the world. NFTs could also be a great way for students to have an authenticated version of their transcript – including projects done or papers produced – to present to a new school during a move or for college applications.

Parents should be glad to hear that one of the changes brought about by the pandemic is a greater emphasis on remote education during teacher training, says Jennifer Krawec of the University of Miami. Colleges and universities across the country are training future teachers to incorporate digital tools into the classroom, create virtual lesson materials and use videoconferencing software, so they are prepared to teach remote as well as in-person students.

Teachers and parents may want to evaluate how they view social media when it comes to youth, says Rick Hess, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the director of the think tank’s Education Policy Studies. In this commentary, Hess asserts that social media can be valuable, but that kids need to be better equipped and trained to navigate its complexities and reminds adults that “Social media tends to reward outrage and certainty. It has little use for empathy or nuance.” The same way you would never toss your child the keys and expect them to drive well their first time, parents should guide their children in navigating the world of social media.

Parents have a love/hate relationship with educational technology, and their views about the pros and cons of using more tech in the classroom and at home have probably been even further cemented after this last year of online teaching. It may be that many parents just wish the technology would go away completely.

How can you communicate with your children’s teachers and open up the lines of communication about technology and learning? If your kids are going to be expected to do work that requires using tech tools or devices at home, then teachers will have some obligation to provide parents and caregivers with some level of support. For example, if your kids are being asked to complete a Flipgrid, a popular discussion and presentation tool for students, teachers need to be sure that both students and their parents have access to a short instructional video on how to use Flipgrid. It is hard for teachers to always remember that parents need that kind of support, but a gentle request can help remind them children are still going to be coming to parents to ask for help with their online work.

Using technology to full advantage is a theme for this school year’s recommendations for a better home-school connection. An article on the Edutopia site entitled Teacher-Parent Communication Strategies to Start the Year Off Right focuses on strategies for better communication between teachers and parents and suggests several tech tools and techniques to get the process kicked off. While a good resource for teachers, and one you may want to pass on, many of the ideas are useful for parents who want to communicate better with teachers also.

The next generation of the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus family of graphing calculators will include Python, a programming language. Peter Balyta, president of TI Education Technology, says the devices will help students learn coding skills that they can use in future STEM careers. The calculators have long been a tool used in advanced math classes.

A greater share of back-to-school spending is expected to go toward electronics, as parents outfit kids with tablets, e-readers, cellphones and wearable gadgets and sign them up for e-learning program subscriptions to keep them from falling behind after last year's disruptions. Families are on track to spend $37.1 billion on back-to-school, up 9.4% from last year, according to a National Retail Federation survey.