Reading NetFamilyNews? You should be

I've been reading and recommending Ann Collier's NetFamilyNews blog for some time. If you're not follwing it, you should be. I don't know a source for more balanced and informative information on making kids comptetent online. This ought to be on every parent's reading list too. (Parents are the primary target audience.)

In a recent post School libraries: Vital filter developers, Anne writes:

Actually, the library is both a filter and a developer of the most effective filter there is: the software between students' ears (as my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid first put it years ago). It's a great filter as school's nerve center of media competency and literacy (hopefully including new media as well as the traditional kind).

As for the filter the library helps develop in students' heads: If properly developed, it can guide and empower them the rest of their lives. Its other pluses:

Comes universally pre-installed, free of charge

Has no socio-economic barriers to "adoption"

Is automatically customized in micro detail as it's used

Works at the "operating system" level

Not only doesn't conflict with, but supports and enhances, all other "applications"

Improves with use

Is the No. 1 online-safety tool.

Now is that a great POV or what?

Comments

[Anne Collier]

OMG, thank you so much, Doug. Huge compliment coming from you.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Anne,

You, Larry and Nancy WIllard are the voices of reason in this whole important discussion. As both an educator, parent, and grandparent, I deeply appreciate your work.

BTW, are you and Larry planning to up date your parent's guide book on social networking?

All the best,

Doug