Explaining negative correlations

A negative correlation:

And in case you are wondering, it has nothing to do with carbon footprints...

-24F (-31C) this morning in south central Minnesota, not even factoring in the windchill. School is cancelled.

Just one more report - online safety

NetFamilyNews, Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies: Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force just came out at the end of December.

The executive summary does a nice job of summarizing the threats to minors online, acknowledges that most of the studies done were undertaken prior to the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, and recommends not just a technological solution to safety issues, but a broad based approach to help keep kids safe and savvy. (I am thinking the group may have learned a lot from Anne Collier and dayna boyd who served on it.)

Read this report, but also read Anne Collier's NetFamilyNews post "Key crossroads for Net safety: ISTTF report released." She writes about how this report might change the too common, fear-based approach to Internet safety to one that is "fact-base." Yeah!

She also writes:

One of the researchers' most important findings - information really helpful to parents, finally - is that a child's psychosocial makeup and the conditions surrounding him are more important predictors of online risk than the technology he uses. Not every child is equally at risk of anything online, including predation. The research shows 1) only a tiny minority of online youth are at risk of sexual exploitation resulting from Net activity, and these are at-risk kids in "real life," and 2) online risk of all forms - inappropriate behavior, content or contact, by peers or adults - has been present through all phases of the Web and all interactive technologies kids use; it doesn't show up only in social-network sites. It's rooted in user behavior, not in crime.

As one local police officer lecturing on Internet safety once said rather bluntly, "I tell parents that if they don't tell their kids that they love them, their kids will find somebody online who will."

I am sharing both Anne's blog post and the executive summary of this report at a parents' Internet safety night our library media department is hosting tomorrow evening. I am hoping, but not expecting, the parents of those children who might be most at risk will attend.

Mobile devices and more reading - two reports

A couple of interesting reports I've stumbled across yesterday...

Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning by Carley Shuler was published this month by the same folks who bring us Sesame Street. The executive summary does a good job of summarizing research and the state of using mobile devices in education. I liked this:

The report highlights five opportunities to seize mobile learning’s unique attributes to improve education:

1. Encourage “anywhere, anytime” learning Mobile devices allow students to gather, access, and process information outside the classroom. They can encourage learning in a real-world context, and help bridge school, afterschool, and home environments.
2. Reach underserved children Because of their relatively low cost and accessibility in low-income communities, handheld devices can help advance digital equity, reaching and inspiring populations “at the edges” — children from economically disadvantaged communities and those from developing countries.
3. Improve 21st-century social interactions Mobile technologies have the power to promote and foster collaboration and communication, which are deemed essential for 21st-century success.
4. Fit with learning environments Mobile devices can help overcome many of the challenges associated with larger technologies, as they fit more naturally within various learning environments.
5. Enable a personalized learning experience Not all children are alike; instruction should be adaptable to individual and diverse learners. There are significant opportunities for genuinely supporting differentiated, autonomous, and individualized learning through mobile devices.

I am particularly excited by the last observation. Education has simply not tapped the huge potential for individualizing instruction for all students - every child needs the same attention paid to an IEP that our special needs children now have. Isn't every child a special needs child?

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As the old joke and the just released NEA study Reading on the Rise goes, "I have some good news and I have some bad news." I'm guessing you want to hear the good news first.

Yes, for the first time in years, the percentage of Americans reading "literary" materials is going up. Now slightly more than half of us read fiction, poetry, plays, etc. This slight upward trend is evident among nearly all demographic groups and the NEA takes credit for the rise since it alerted the public to declining reading rates and society has promoted reading.

The report credits materials being read on electronic devices as well as in print. (So reading on my Kindle and iPod now "count."

What the NEA Report buries, but an AP article pulls out, is that there is less voluntary reading being done:

But the preface does not mention a countertrend: a drop among people not obligated to read. Adults who read books of any kind — fiction or nonfiction, online or on paper — that were not assigned by a teacher or employer dropped from 56.6 percent of adults in 2002 to 54.3 percent last year. The fall was greatest among those younger than 55.

And while the number of adults who say they read a non-required book is 3.5 million higher than in 2002, the report notes that that the total adult population increased by 19 million, meaning an increase in the number of people who didn't voluntarily read books of 15.5 million, a huge disparity confirmed by NEA research director Sunil Iyengar.

Gioia [outgoing NEA chair] believes the NEA report is essentially positive — if only because good news about reading is so rare — but says that "we're still in a culture in which all kinds of reading are under pressure" from other forms of leisure and entertainment.

OK, readers, Johnson's definition of postliteracy again?

...the postliterate as those who can read, but chose to meet their primary information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming.

Are our schools and especially our libraries preparing for a postliterate society?