360PR Blog

I got a sneak-peek at Frontline’s Digital Nation:  Life on the Virtual Frontier the other night at WGBH-TV.  There were about 30 or so of us in the audience – a collection of mom and dad bloggers, including MommyBytes, MoreThanMommy, Bostonmamas, ManicMommies and DigitalDads, and educators from Boston Public Schools and beyond.

I think a better title might be Digital World, but “Nation” seems to fit since the documentary is being produced in a city that thinks of itself as a nation, e.g., Red Sox Nation, Patriot Nation, etc.  Back to the preview…

Digital Nation, set to debut in Winter 2010 on PBS, aims to be “a multiplatform exploration of what it means to be human in a wired world.”  Producer Rachel Dretzin, whose credits include the PBS series “Growing Up Online,” which covered cyber-bullying among other topics, started the preview by pointing to Digital Nation’s web site and blog.  One of the cool things about Digital Nation is getting to see it as work in progress. Chapter 2 is currently up online and focuses on the military’s use of digital  media – very cool indeed.  You can also upload your own digital story on Digital Nation’s blog.

But the night’s discussion centered on the use of technology in the classroom and, more specifically, a Bronx high school featured in Digital Nation that has improved math scores by 30% in just two years since employing a one laptop per student model – and math scores were just one measure of success.  “Kids struggling to focus and learn are now flourishing with laptops,” commented one teacher at the Bronx school.

The case spurred a discussion of the digital divide and techno-status – cell phones and iPods are the Chuck Taylors and Nike Air sneakers we grew up with, as MoreThanMommy pointed out.  Kids gotta have ‘em, but parents need to maintain control.  Still, as one member of Boston Public Schools pointed out, there’s a real access issue poor families can’t get beyond.  So true, and all the more reason for communities to applaud schools’ efforts to bring technology into the classroom.  The Internet is a real equalizer, especially with more and more free, high-quality content each day.

What I get excited about is kids who are using free online tools to write their own life story – literally.  They’re creating their own content – stories, music, pictures, movies.  That kind of screen time enriches kids’ learning by leaps and bounds.

When my daughter started preschool a couple of years ago I asked, where are the computers?  The director looked at me like I had three heads.  No, worse, like I was a bad parent.  Then she went back to her office and began typing away on her computer.  Hmmm.

At home, my husband is a big reader, and I love that my daughter sees him reading.  So much of learning and wanting to learn is steeped in modeling.  But when my daughter sees my husband reading, he’s not flipping through pages of a book, he’s on his Kindle.  These [screen] times, they are a changin’.

Filed under: Internet, Media and Press, Parenting |