Immigrant or Native?

When considering the words “native” and “immigrant”, digital is not the word that comes to my mind. By reading an article by Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, I was challenged to consider myself an immigrant.

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

The faculty at my workplace was asked to discuss the article in our teams that we meet weekly with. I’ll admit that I quickly forget many of the articles we are asked to discuss, but this one stuck with me. As an 8th year Spanish teacher I will shamefully admit that I am teaching almost the exact same way I was when I started, with the addition of new activities and games to supplement the units that are in place. Even after receiving a Smart Board, many of the lessons that I had on the overhead projector are almost identical to the lessons on the Smart Board. They are just in a more interactive format. So I have made some changes but not nearly enough to accommodate the many changes that the students have endured as times change.

As one of the younger teachers in my building, I don’t feel like I am able to completely catch up with technology. I find myself wondering where I got lost. The article refers to digital immigrants having an accent. Examples that are given include printing out emails, printing documents for editing, and calling to make sure someone received an email. I find myself being tempted to print emails, I always print to edit a document, and I constantly worry about whether someone has received an important email if they don’t respond. As librarians it is our job to not only keep up with the digital natives, but also help those that we work with lose their accents!

Is Your Child on Drugs?

Our recent discussions about young people who turn to violence made me consider what sort of behaviors should be considered alarming; behaviors which parents should pay attention to and perhaps seek counseling for their child when these behaviors are displayed.  It's hard to think of obvious factors other than the severe ones, like a child's tendency to hurt animals or a history of physical or sexual abuse.  When it comes down to it, a lot of normal teen behaviors, taken to an extreme degree, are negative and cause for alarm, but it can be hard for many adults to note the difference between extreme behavior and normal, average behavior.

For example, a teen listening to the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem is not necessarily cause for alarm, but if that teen started to empathize with then and proclaim a desire to burn churches, then it's time to step in.

Or another example.  Take a look at my favorite person ever, Miley Cyrus.  She's being attacked in the media for having pictures where she slightly exposes a green bra/undershirt, and others where she is laying in a boy's lap and exposing her midriff.  Many people automatically jump compare these pictures to the infamous nude/scantily clad pictures of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, and fear that they may imply that she is sleeping with the boy in the pictures.

Miley is 15.  15 year olds have boyfriends and girlfriends.  They are developmentally and hormonally inclined to be sexually and physically attracted to those people.  It might be cause for concern if a 15 year old girl was sleeping with someone or taking nude pictures of herself.  However, pulling up one's shirt to bare their midriff is quite different from stripping and posing nude in front of a camera.  And as far as allegations that her sitting in the boy's lap is tantamount to her being sexually active with him, I can only say that having sex with someone and coming in flirtatious physical contact with them is far from similar.  To quote Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fuction, it "ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport."  But this sort of conclusion jumping is not uncommon amongst adults who are examining the behaviors of young people.  

Adults will often overinterpret a few perfectly normal teen behaviors and from there assume that the young person is at risk.  There's a fine line between normal teen behavior and scary seek-help behavior.

And that made me remember a feature by one of my favorite comic writers, Lore Sjoberg:
Is Your Child on Drugs?


All that said, I still think I'd rather have a parent be too attentive and worry over small insignificant things than have a parent be completely absent and pay no attention to possible signs that their child might be at risk for negative behavior and violence, though there is plenty of middle ground between the two extremes.


On a different note, while looking for Sjoberg's old work, I came across some of his new work, a vlog project on YouTube called Alt Text, and I thought some of them were relevant to our class discussions:

Regarding the state of online communication, social networking sites, especially Twitter.

Also, some of his previous comic writing work involved taking a bunch of items in a certain category and giving them an A, B, C, D, F rating.  He's apparantly revived his Ratings in his vlog. 
This one is a rating of First Level Dungeons and Dragons Spells

Allowance and Budget

I saw this article on MSN this morning about how kids spend their allowance and I thought it might be interesting from a media literacy perspective. From the girl who gets an allowance of $120 a week to the girl who gets $1 a week, the parents are making an attempt to teach their kids about financial planning and responsibility. I think understanding these things is a big part of teaching youth to be media literate. With the amount of advertising that is aimed at young people, the ability to scrutinize a product for the cost vs. value of the item in question is an important skill.

I wonder how much advice and education kids get about financial planning. I remember a single exercise in one elective class where we were given a bunch of classified ads and a yearly income and we had to choose an apartment and budget for food and expenses. I don't remember any real curriculum in school that taught about investing, loans, credit card management, or figuring out how much of one's income should be set aside for big expenses later. It's really up to the parents to teach their kids these things and I think a lot of young people miss this lesson at home.

I appreciate the lesson that both parents in the article are trying to teach, but I wonder how effective it is. Sure, the girl who gets $120 a week has to understand how to budget the money and use it effectively through the week and she even learns that she has to skimp and save sometimes to get bigger more expensive things she wants, but with the high amount of money she's getting (with no mention of any chores or special tasks she must complete in return, though they may have just cut that part out), it's hard to see that she's really learned the value of each dollar she gets. This is further brought into question when she shows us what she's saved to buy: an $80 gold necklace that says “superfluous” and $120 perfume.

In contrast, the girl who gets a mere dollar a week is learning about more than savings. While she may not be expected to use it to take care of all her expenses for the week, by giving her the motto that she should “save some for now, save some for later, and save some for the poor,” she's learning not just basic budgeting but she's also learning the importance of civic involvement and altruism. Also, by teaching her the benefits of using PayPal to keep her money instead of a savings account, she learns how to evaluate the benefits of one financial institution over another.

I'm curious about how my peers learned about these things growing up. Comment with your experiences if you feel like it.

Babyz and Vagina Guitars

On our class message board, we’ve been discussing Miss Bimbo. Klara Kim mentioned The Aberrant Gamer’s take on the game Miss Bimbo. Miss Bimbo seems like a pretty bad idea as something targeted at "tweens" (I agree with The Aberrant Gamer on the cringeworthiness of this word!). But as a social satire I think it's kind of fun.

In that article, The Aberrant Gamer mentions something that's been bothering me for a long time, that even when girls take interest in traditionally male hobbies, they are still being marketed to as Grrlz rather than young consumers.


Imagine™: Babyz

For instance, in The Aberrant Gamer’s previously mentioned column, she mentions a game called Imagine™: Babyz. Here's part of the description of the game from amazon.com:

"-As a babysitter, take care of up to six babies. Feed them, play with them, take them for walks in the garden, and keep them healthy.
-Spend your hard-earned money on new baby outfits, toys, or food, or on new furniture for your house.
-Customize and clean your house with fun mini-games: vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, and more."

At least Miss Bimbo strives to be over-the-top and satirical. I guess Imagine™ Babyz is just a new kind of more complex Betsy Wetsy for the DS generation, but it still bothers me that girls (girlz?) are so deeply encouraged at such a young age to regard reproduction (especially up to six kids!) as a fun play thing. Imagine™ also gives young girls (and let there be no mistake, they’re definitely aimed at girls. The covers of the game all have (mostly white) women on them, except for Babyz, which has three (white) babies on it) a digital look at four other careers “relevant to what girls in this age group have indicated they are most interested in”: Fashion Designer, Figure Skater, Master Chef, and Animal Doctor. I won’t even begin to comment on the limited scope of careers that Ubisoft seems to think young girls should be aspiring to or the fact that only the Veterinarian—erm, sorry, Animal Doctor path actually requires a college degree.


If Miss Bimbo is alarming because it encourages eating disorders and negative body images amongst a population already fraught with eating disorders and negative body images, isn’t Imagine™: Babyz just as guilty in a teen pregnancy sense? According to Planned Parenthood, one million teenagers (97 per 1,000 women aged 15–19) become pregnant each year. This is obviously not including women under 15 who become pregnant each year. Furthermore, “teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely than their peers who delay childbearing to live in poverty and to rely on welfare.” Lucky for them, not graduating high school only knocks out one potential Imagine™ career field.


Daisy Rock Guitars

I remember talking with one of my friends back in high school about girly guitars. Our local guitar seller had a few choice items in sparkly pink and purple, much like the Daisy Rock guitars. She told me about how almost every time she went to the store whether to buy a guitar or to just pass time while waiting for her (male) friends to finish perusing the store, the store clerks would try to push her to play one of these sparkly instruments. It was more amusing than offensive at the time and we joked about it; “Look, most of the people who know me already know I have a vagina, so I don’t really need to advertise it on my instrument.”
I just discovered Daisy Rock Guitars. They have a special line for younger girls called the Debutante line:
http://debutante.daisyrock.com/
These guitars come in a wide variety of colors ranging from Bubble Gum Pink to Atomic Pink with the occasional Princess Purple or Awesome Blue (only available in daisy-shape) thrown in for good measure. There is only one guitar that isn’t blatantly girly and that’s the Ruby Red Rock Candy Electric Guitar Pack, though the Ruby Red seems a little more like hot pink to me.
The guitars come in different shapes, as well. Four years ago, my friend and I were joking about the idea of a sparkly girly guitar being a musical declaration of vagina-ownership. Now they’re actually making girly guitars in shapes of classic vagina symbols. They make heart and star shaped ones too.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of encouraging young girls to learn an instrument. I just don’t see why they can only achieve this with pink sparkles.

Media Literacy & Teenage Entrepreneurs

Stories and interviews with 10 kids who've been blogging, starting internet companies, inventing new ways to do solar heating...

Meet the Whiz Kids: 10 Overachievers Under 21
by Dan Tynan, PC World (March 9, 2008)

These kids are all pretty awesome, but I love the last line, from Catherine Cook:

"When you're a teenager, it's virtually risk-free to start a business: You're still dependent on your parents, so really there are no major risks," says Cook. "Even if you fail, you'll still have a really really great college admissions essay, so just do it already."

Losing the Cool

So last night's class on rap and hip-hop got me thinking about when, exactly, we become uninformed about new music (or other cultural things like it). I mean, I was never the kind of person who was really into the underground scene, though being a teenager in Southern California I did manage to get into groups that were not mainstream (at the time, at least)--Oingo Boingo, Jane's Addiction, Smiths, etc. I mostly listened to what was on the radio or what my older sister was into until about the age of 16 or 17, and then I became aware of the idea that being into what was "popular" was not the same thing as being into what was "hip," hence my passion for Sinead O'Connor looooooong before anyone had ever heard of her. Anyway, that is all to say that I liked mainstream music, knew all the pop songs, but was also aware of this whole other scene while not really being into it.

Then I went to college, then graduate school, and somewhere along the way (I think when I was a TA in the mid-90s) I realized that I was not familiar with the names of groups and musicians my students were into. Granted, most of my students were "alternative" types (students majoring in art, film, new media, etc) and prided themselves on being on the fringes, but still . . . I was surprised and saddened to be so out of touch.

Now, in my mid-30s and with no students and only a one-year old child in the house, I feel *completely* out of touch. I mean, I know the names and music of people who manage to get airplay, but listening to Amy Winehouse is not exactly the same as listening to Ministry back in the day. So this got me to thinking about when it happens, this whole becoming uncool. Losing the cool ain’t cool, and not just because it makes you feel old. It is distressing because it becomes its own form of cultural illiteracy. Not listening to hip-hop, not knowing the different artists and slang and related connections all becomes a form of exclusion from a large part of a cultural movement. I may have the critical skills necessary to deconstruct a video for its misogyny or appropriation of blues standards, and I may be able to articulate an opinion about why we are fascinated with Kanye’s criticism of the President post-Katrina, but that does not make me fluent (literate) in the texts of this generation. And while this makes me sad, it also, in a weird way, is a huge relief—I no longer feel the need to keep up with everything and everyone, I no longer feel like an idiot when I don’t get a reference. I just feel like a stranger in a strange land, hoping someone will take me by the hand and teach me, but not worrying too much about it if they don’t. And *that* is the saddest, most uncool part of it all—the relieved resignation, surely the first sign of having lost the cool.

How young is too young?

As I re-read the Kaiser study on electronic media and young children for our first class, I kept thinking about a product I saw before the holidays: the Fisher-Price Easy-Link Internet Launch Pad. It's suggested for 3-5 year olds. Do 3-year olds need to surf the web? Should they? I haven't decided yet; what do you think?

Social Networking Sites, Teens & Government Deals

I just caught this story on techcrunch, my default source for all breaking news on techie stuff. Of course it's also on traditional news sources too, like the AP and Reuters.

MySpace just changed/upgraded several policies for younger teens using their site to try to protect them from contact with sexual predators and any other adults they don't know. Some of the new policies are aimed at giving parents more control, some are aimed at changing the visibility of younger teens' profiles and some are simply upgrading the response time for complaints.

It will be interesting to see how teens themselves respond to the policy changes. Will they mind having a separate high school section? Many teens already lie about their age to use the site, I wonder how these changes will affect that sort of behavior.

The teens I know on MySpace are pretty careful about the way they use it, using fictional locations and fictional names and posting pictures with multiple people in them so it's hard to tell who they are unless you know them. They've figured out the security settings for the most part but they still get unwanted messages from people sometimes (I do too, not necessarily age inappropriate people or "obscene" messages, just unwanted contact). I'm not sure how much their parents understand about the way they use the website but I know they share tips among their friends.

It seems like most of this legislation/tutoring stuff tends to come from a top-down perspective, but I wonder how much they try to take advantage of the "horizontal" relationships to spread information about the site and the best security tips. Besides updates from Tom, which are kind of annoying. Also I wonder how the new limitations about adult/teen interactions will affect libraries trying to make themselves available on MySpace. I don't have any experience with institutional use of MySpace- my younger sister got me to add a profile but I barely use it since facebook took off. Anyone else have more to add on that front?

[From Carol: There's even more about the MySpace story available at cNet.]

Just Right or Just Stretch?

I'm not much of a fan of readability guidelines, AR levels, Lexiles, the 5-finger rule, or any other sort of ways of corralling kids' reading. Would you want someone to tell you--at whatever age you are now--that the new Janet Evanovich book you wish to read is much too simple for you? Or perhaps you should pass on reading Proust and the Squid because it will--it's obvious, isn't it?--be too challenging for you?

In today's New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott makes what I view as a level-headed critique of the "just-right-book" approach to deciding what movies kids should be able to see. Read it and let me know what you think.