PTA Technology Corner

A University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth study of 453 college admissions departments found that 26 percent of colleges are actively researching students through search engines such as Google and 21 percent are checking out social networking profiles when reviewing applicants.
LINK: Online profiles a factor in college admissions

(PS: Future employers are looking as well! More Than One-Quarter of Recruiters Look at Social Networking Sites)

Looking for a computer for your young child at home? How does “for free” sound? Well, not exactly, but you’d be doing someone a favor by participating in the limited-time “Give one. Get One” campaign run by the “One Laptop per Child” effort.

The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

You may have seen the ads on TV:

The founder reminds us that the program is not all about laptops, but rather about education. However, it looks like a pretty cool laptop too!

To learn more about the one laptop per child program, go to http://www.laptop.org.

CNET - a popular technology news and review site - recently posted a review of the parental controls available on Microsoft Vista and Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard”.

While they point out that the Mac version is “cleaner and simpler”, they both have robust capabilities for managing what your children can see online and how long and when they can be online. I highly recommend reading the review if you plan on leaving your youngest children online without your guidance. In the end, they proclaim parents to be the winner, but I’d suggest it’s the children that win here.

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking and moderating a group of middle and high school parents in my town on the subject social networking. We had about 70 people attend in a packed library. I spoke for about 25 minutes (you can download my slides here) and then we had a panel of four students discuss their use of Facebook and answer parent’s questions.

Needless to say, parents had LOTS of questions. But there was a dominant discussion on who can see their children’s Facebook profiles and who can and can’t join Networks on Facebook. I found an excellent source on the Facebook help pages to further explain networks.

While we attempted to stay away from pushing any particular set of values in the discussion, I believe each family needs to consider what they are for them, where the line should be drawn on what is and isn’t appropriate for their kids to share online. On one slide I wrote “A Generational Lack of Understanding of Private vs. Public” and I visibly saw many parents shaking their heads in agreement. Perhaps this is a good time to have that discussion with your son’s and daughter’s about what they are posting online - especially those preparing to go to college or seeking employment.

I hope everyone found last night informative and not too stressful (as one parent put it at the end of the event, talking about kid’s and their behavior always creates anxiety, but being informed is better than not). And it doesn’t start in high school or even middle school - it’s starting in elementary schools with relatively harmless sites such as Webkinz and Club Penguin - a topic for another time!

Thanks to all who attended. See you on Facebook!

Note: for the two mom’s that were asking about Facebook advertising and the ability for advertisers now to target students based on almost any keyword, I went back and re-listened to the NPR story you also heard. This story was about the new abilities Facebook gives to advertisers that allows them to target ads based on keywords in your Facebook profile - much like Google serves up ads based on keywords you are searching for. Advertisers won’t be able to see your kid’s profiles just by advertising, but they can place ads on their Facebook page based on what is in their profile. Sound creepy? This has been standard practice on the Internet for over 10 years - you just didn’t notice it until now as we’re all talking about privacy and even the slightest bit of “data mining” by advertisers is of concern to many. But since Facebook is free, this is the tradeoff we must accept, or we shouldn’t use it.

You just signed up for Comcast Cable or Verizon FIOS and they are so nice to include an email address with your service. It may be tempting to use it, but I’m about to talk you out of it. First, there are hundreds of free email services available (about a half-a-dozen that are used by most folks). They come with spam filters, forwarding capabilities, can be used in almost any email application you have and are easy to use.

But the best part about using a free email service other than the one that came with your combined voice/TV/Internet service is that you can turn off or change your TV service without changing your email address! Lots of folks are looking at Verizon FIOS as an alternative to Comcast Cable or other options they might have (I switched last year and not only saved money, but got a great deal more than I was getting with Comcast). This week two people I was talking to for different reasons said they didn’t want to change their voice/TV/Internet service because they don’t want to change their email address.

Do yourself a favor - even if you’re not thinking about changing your cable TV or Internet access service at your house, start to migrate to a new email address that’s free and doesn’t depend on other services you may have.

My favorite? Gmail from Google. It’s easy to use, gives you a huge amount of storage space, and comes with probably the best spam filter available. After that you might look at Yahoo or even AOL (yes, they are still around and now you can get an email address for free!). MSN/Hotmail has been notorious for spam filter problems (sometimes working, sometimes catching things it shouldn’t - called a false positive) and at times being unreliable or down for maintenance when you need to access it. If you’re an Apple user, the .Mac service is wonderful because you get so much stuff with it like backup software, website hosting, calendar syncing, etc. that’s fully integrated into the Mac operating system. It does cost $99 per year though so do the 30 day trial to see if you like it first. All of these make your messages available via the web too so you can get your email from wherever you are!

No matter what you choose, make it one that isn’t tethered to anything else you subscribe to and someday you’ll be glad you did when it’s time to upgrade to a better TV, Internet or phone service at your home.