Digital Smarts Blog

Teachers say they are taking steps to try to stop cheating during remote instruction, including setting time limits for testing and adopting more written and oral tests, rather than multiple choice. Yet, some parents say some collaboration and looking up answers is OK in this challenging year, saying it may be the only way their children learn in this upended school year. It is a slippery slope and will be interesting to see how it plays out when schools get back to normal.

Many high-school students are balancing online classes with work to help support their families during the economic downturn related to the coronavirus pandemic. Some students say they can make time for classes while earning a paycheck, while others, such as 11th-grader Carlos Martinez, says it is challenging to work full time and keep up with his studies, adding that his teachers help him catch up during his off-hours.

The pandemic has disrupted parent's work lives, helping some realize that they can be productive while working fewer hours, delegating tasks and making time for personal and family pursuits, all with the blessing of their employers. "Business leaders will have to empower employees that have discovered new mindsets that work better for them -- or risk losing them to companies that do," writes entrepreneur Steve Waters.

Parents and students are all too familiar at this point about what it feels like on their end during remote learning during Covid, but what about the impact it has had on  teachers as well? The Chalkbeat site is running a series of articles on just that subject including looking at how teachers are learning to convert classroom lessons to lessons that take advantage of technology. Articles like “No Instruments, No Problem” and “Pencils Down” offer insights on how to cope with technology, stress and remote learning during Covid from a teacher’s point of view.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case that may determine whether schools can discipline students for comments they make on social media. A student in a Pennsylvania district was suspended from a cheerleading team after a Snapchat post surfaced in which she used foul language and was disrespectful to the school and cheer team, but she and her parents say the discipline violated her First Amendment right to free speech.

Still think esports teams in schools are just a fad? That‘s what many parents and administrators thought in one district in Texas, until Chief Technology Officer Kyle Berger explained that 250 colleges are giving full-ride scholarships to players. Berger points out that playing esports is about strategy, teamwork, and other high-level skills that every school should want to foster in their students.

How do we adapt to avoid being manipulated and spreading false information to the people we care about? Past methods of spotting untruthful news, like checking articles for typos and phony web addresses that resemble those of trusted publications, are now less relevant. We have to employ more sophisticated methods of consuming information, like doing our own fact-checking and choosing reliable news sources. It sounds simple enough, but it is hard to slow down and stay vigilant and skeptical at all times. Need a refresher on some ideas for staying optimistic but proactive? An article entitled How to Deal with a Crisis of Misinformation may just be what you are looking for.

The experience of sinking into emotional quicksand while bingeing on doom-and-gloom news is so common that there’s now Internet lingo for it: “doomscrolling.” While this article entitled You’re Doomscrolling Again. Here’s How to Snap Out of It is from this past summer, it probably is a good reference as we stare down all the misinformation proliferating on the Internet as we are about to have a change in political leadership, amidst the continuation of the Covid pandemic.

It may have taken the invasion of the US Capital Building for regulators to recognize the danger of misinformation, and even cyberbullying, though critics have been piling up evidence for years. Democrats, who will now control both houses of Congress, are promising to use their powerful new perches to proffer the sort of tough new laws and other punishments that tech giants have successfully fended off for years. This political shift could result in major repercussions for the industry, opening the door for a wide array of policy changes that could hold Facebook, Google and Twitter newly liable for their missteps.

The "Let's Learn NYC" is a TV program that aims to help remote students who lack the necessary technology for distance learning by providing lessons, virtual field trips and other educational programming. The lessons and demonstrations shown on the program engage students, and the article cites the case study of 5-year-old Valentin Vivar, who had been feeling disconnected and was struggling with speech therapy, who felt a connection to the NYC teachers on the program and has found a renewed interest in books and vocabulary.

Nickelodeon's network for preschoolers, Noggin, has some of the most popular programs for kids with shows including Paw Patrol and Dora the Explorer, but they have not focused on much beyond the entertainment value of that media. Now, after acquiring Sparkler, an early childhood learning platform, the network is launching a “massive transformation” aimed at infusing its entertainment offerings with more educational content and helping kids’ reach specific learning goals. The shift also includes a focus on encouraging children to engage and participate in the content.

If you’re seeing double, don’t adjust your prescription. Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas message to the United Kingdom was followed by alternative remarks from a digitally created ‘deepfake’ monarch meant to warn about the dangers of misinformation. After the real queen delivered remarks on the BBC and ITV, the deepfake aired on Channel 4 in a five-minute segment hitting on hot-button royal family issues. The lookalike queen also tried her hand at a TikTok dance challenge. Despite the silliness, the stunt was meant as a warning about the dangers of fake news, particularly as delivered through digitally manipulated media.

“If there is a theme to my message today, it is trust,” said the fake queen in the clip. “Trust in what is genuine and what is not.” Earlier this year, Facebook banned deepfake videos to stem the spread of misinformation ahead of the US presidential election, while Microsoft launched a program designed to give a “confidence score” on whether a video has been digitally manipulated.

In a move celebrated by privacy advocates, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill into law that prohibits the use of biometric identifying technology -- such as facial recognition software -- in schools. Linnette Attai, founder of PlayWell, a privacy consulting firm, said other states are likely to adopt similar restrictions citing privacy issues and the inaccuracy of the technology in correctly identifying individual girls, women, and members of certain ethnic and racial groups.

When trying to explain misinformation to kids, it is important to understand how misinformation gets started and persists. The misinformation effect is the tendency for post-event information to be added to the memory of the original event. Researchers have shown that the introduction of even relatively subtle information following an event can have a dramatic effect on how people remember. A good introductory article on the subject is The Misinformation Effect and the Psychology Behind Fake News.

Gaggle has published a Cyberbullying eBook to help administrators, educators, parents, and students understand and react to digital harassment. The new eBook offers a fresh and up-to-date analysis of cyberbullying, with additions on remote learning and updated resources. Available for free, the comprehensive eBook details the importance of full awareness and involvement from administrators, teachers, and parents in order to protect students online. The eBook includes guidance for dealing with all aspects of cyberbullying, from prevention to identification to discipline. The guide also offers an updated list of cyberbullying resources and websites, so students, parents, teachers, and administrators can do further research and learn new ways to handle incidents of cyberbullying in the future.

While TikTok has seemingly avoided a ban in the US (for now), the app remains under scrutiny, due to concerns about its impact on young users and international data security considerations given its Chinese ownership. On the first point, TikTok is set to once again be examined over the ways in which it tracks and uses data from underage users as part of newly launched legal proceedings in the UK. The case is the latest of many that have brought against the app over the same concern.

The New York Times recently ran an article about a 15 year old girl in Nashville, TN who three years ago sent a three second video using a racist term to a friend as a celebration of getting her driver’s license. The girl is white. The person who received the message forwarded it on to another student, who sent it to another, and eventually it made its way to a male student at the same school. This student, who is multiracial, took the message to school administrators who said they could take no action because the message was sent from off school grounds. Angry at the inaction of administrators and the climate at the high school where this racial epithet was thrown around regularly, the young man saved the video and after the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last spring, put it up on social media- right after the female student had been admitted to the University of Tennessee and their prestigious cheerleading program. The young woman was shamed online and the university, under pressure, rescinded her admissions offer. She is now taking college courses online and the young man is off to college in California. They never spoke to each other directly about the incident.

While the right or wrong of this incident can be argued, what remains is that what one puts up on social media lasts forever and always has the possibility to resurface. Many teens are also finding out that when these incidents occur (no matter how isolated), they can be captured, even from apps such as Snapchat where messages are supposed to be fleeting. Second chances also seem to be in short supply for some. It is a bit of an extreme tale, but a cautionary one you may want to tell your children about.

YouTube's first ever "Culture & Trends Report" reveals that 58% of users are willing to watch content created by people of any age, and Baby Boomers are increasingly searching YouTube for information, with their consumption of beauty tutorials increasing by 50%. The report also points to the rise of "cowatching" for live, virtual events and states, "Whether the motivation was community connection, finding resources to stay resilient or exploring new ways to be seen and heard, audiences and creators showed us that adversity drives innovation."

The Federal Trade Commission has given nine top social media and Internet firms 45 days to provide details about "[how they] collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens." No penalties apply if companies fail to answer. So far it seems many of the social media companies are pointing fingers at each other’s practices, claiming they are worse  than their own, but if you are interested in consumer privacy it is a story you will want to watch unfold.

Thirty-nine states have reported plans to use federal coronavirus relief funds to bridge the digital divide for the approximately 16 million students -- 30% of K-12 students -- who lack either at-home Internet or devices to help facilitate remote instruction. The fixes can be fairly simple. School-district and municipal IT departments are using technology that has been around for years, such as solar-powered antennas to transmit Wi-Fi, or wireless broadband, closer to more peoples’ homes. With fresh funding comes more elaborate fixes, such as extending a school’s network infrastructure right to students’ doors. What is proving to be the hardest part is determining exactly who needs access. Administrators can narrow down which students are likely to be in need based on the families that qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, and then subsequently survey parents about their Internet needs, but don’t always get a high response rate.