Originally posted at blog.zooloo.com
My three kids, ages 12 (twins) and 11 were raised with the Internet. They have built their own web sites, have their own (multiple!) blogs, created web videos before they were 10 and understand quite well how to efficiently research just about any topic their schools put on their plate. No one would argue that the internet hasn’t dramatically improved our children’s ability to complete quality homework assignments.
Given that increase in use, I’ve blogged recently about the importance of security and privacy controls and just how to limit time spent on the internet. And my precocious 11 year old daughter actually wrote a piece in a national magazine inferring parental restrictions on internet time were not necessary!
But since those posts, another interesting development seems to be swirling around about where our young people should be focusing their available (and often over-scheduled) time. Internet use has joined with all the other time-suckers our kids are faced with these days, so parents obviously play an important role in guiding them through tough choices and achieving some sort of balance in their complex lives, right?
That’s what I thought, at least until I was hit in the face with the new trend: parents are shying away from teachers and schools where a requirement is “too much homework!” It’s every students dream! Don’t we all remember coming home from school, having a quick snack (where you learned the right way to open an Oreo), followed by your homework, all before you could join the neighborhood gang for an exciting game of dodge ball or kick the can [Editor's Note: This was all before electricity was invented]?
Now, parents whine and complain that Johnny can’t get to soccer practice and Suzie has 2 hours of “competitive” dance practice. There simply is just “no time for homework” and the schools “really should understand and lighten up.” Huh?!? Anyone seen the competitive statistics of US educational performance on the global spectrum lately? Not pretty.
I’m all for the development of well-rounded and socially-adept kids, but given the ever growing list of events and activities impacting our children’s developmental years today, is school the one that should receive “less” emphasis so other activities can get equal or greater time? Or should other activities, like blogging, get the boot? Take the poll below and let me know what you think in the comments section.
For elementary and middle school kids in America today:
A. Homework loads are too heavy, not enough time to be a kid
B. Homework is a joke, there should be more meaningful homework assigned to complement classwork
C. My child’s homework load is just about right
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
It's My Life!
It’s My Life (Really)
Posted by: Rod on the Blog
Ready To ZooLoo? |
Originally posted at: BLOG.ZooLoo.com
Well, with props to my Jersey brethren, Jon Bon Jovi, whose track of the same name inspired the title of this blog… two recent articles about Facebook caused me to ask if it really is my life any longer in today’s social networking world?
A Fortune cover story was entitled, “How Facebook is Taking Over our Lives” and implied that if we really wanted to communicate with friends, share photos or even look for work, that particular venue would become the default option. Shortly after I got over that little treatise on world (social) domination, I stumbled upon (no pun intended) a piece in CNET news about “Giving up Facebook for Lent and Keeping Your Friends.” Oh please, spare me…
Okay, so I get the point that social networking has emerged as a hot topic and that the media loves to latch on to certain elements of the phenomenon and quickly label them as trends that define the space and with that perhaps even define our lives. But for me, the emergence of the vast array of social networking sites has simply provided many very cool choices that I want to be able to control myself. Seeing any one of them as “taking over my life” or leading to a presumed social faux pas if I abandon one of these tools for any period of time, seems ludicrous and at odds with the real values emerging in the social media spaces. I actually use a number of social networking services for everything from keeping in touch with friends, to seeing what’s culturally important in other parts of the world to providing an outlet for my own sarcastic, while not universally appreciated, sarcastic sense of humor. “What the heck does he mean in today’s “status”?
Once I get past the kind of human need for interaction and the “fun quotient” inherent in social networking, I still struggle a bit with the same concerns and challenges in the virtual online world that I do in the real world of existing by walking around. For example, I’m all about simplicity and efficiency but not at the sacrifice of variety. I don’t want to be limited in my options. I’m also not going to exchange safety, security, ownership of my content or privacy but I do want easy and consistent access to those things that make up my calendar of everyday events; news and information, entertainment, shopping both basic and discretionary as well as socialization with family, friends and co-workers.
As the market evolves, I’m excited about the possibilities to leverage a range of capabilities in a way that I can control, not have them control me. The potential is fantastic. Let’s just make sure that as our online lives become even more capable of satisfying more and more of our daily agendas, we can control and customize that experience to be unique, private and safe for each of us. As Bon Jovi proclaimed, “I just want to live while I’m alive, ’cause it’s my life…”
Tags: Bon Jovi, CNET, facebook, facebook applications, Facebook friends, Fortune, it's my life, Lent, New Jersey, Ready To ZooLoo?, Social Media, social networking, zooloo, zooloo.com
Posted by: Rod on the Blog
Ready To ZooLoo? |
Originally posted at: BLOG.ZooLoo.com
Well, with props to my Jersey brethren, Jon Bon Jovi, whose track of the same name inspired the title of this blog… two recent articles about Facebook caused me to ask if it really is my life any longer in today’s social networking world?
A Fortune cover story was entitled, “How Facebook is Taking Over our Lives” and implied that if we really wanted to communicate with friends, share photos or even look for work, that particular venue would become the default option. Shortly after I got over that little treatise on world (social) domination, I stumbled upon (no pun intended) a piece in CNET news about “Giving up Facebook for Lent and Keeping Your Friends.” Oh please, spare me…
Okay, so I get the point that social networking has emerged as a hot topic and that the media loves to latch on to certain elements of the phenomenon and quickly label them as trends that define the space and with that perhaps even define our lives. But for me, the emergence of the vast array of social networking sites has simply provided many very cool choices that I want to be able to control myself. Seeing any one of them as “taking over my life” or leading to a presumed social faux pas if I abandon one of these tools for any period of time, seems ludicrous and at odds with the real values emerging in the social media spaces. I actually use a number of social networking services for everything from keeping in touch with friends, to seeing what’s culturally important in other parts of the world to providing an outlet for my own sarcastic, while not universally appreciated, sarcastic sense of humor. “What the heck does he mean in today’s “status”?
Once I get past the kind of human need for interaction and the “fun quotient” inherent in social networking, I still struggle a bit with the same concerns and challenges in the virtual online world that I do in the real world of existing by walking around. For example, I’m all about simplicity and efficiency but not at the sacrifice of variety. I don’t want to be limited in my options. I’m also not going to exchange safety, security, ownership of my content or privacy but I do want easy and consistent access to those things that make up my calendar of everyday events; news and information, entertainment, shopping both basic and discretionary as well as socialization with family, friends and co-workers.
As the market evolves, I’m excited about the possibilities to leverage a range of capabilities in a way that I can control, not have them control me. The potential is fantastic. Let’s just make sure that as our online lives become even more capable of satisfying more and more of our daily agendas, we can control and customize that experience to be unique, private and safe for each of us. As Bon Jovi proclaimed, “I just want to live while I’m alive, ’cause it’s my life…”
Tags: Bon Jovi, CNET, facebook, facebook applications, Facebook friends, Fortune, it's my life, Lent, New Jersey, Ready To ZooLoo?, Social Media, social networking, zooloo, zooloo.com
Thursday, February 19, 2009
You've Got A Friend
Originally posted at blog.zooloo.com
You’ve Got A Friend… or 600.
Posted by: Rod on the Blog
Ready To ZooLoo? |
In today’s social networking world, the popularity of forums like Facebook have produced a rash of active participants who often list 500-600 “friends.” I read a study about a year ago stating that the “average” number of friends was 164. Wow, really?
Carole King made music history in the 70’s when she convinced forlorn lovers that “they had a friend.” Now you can boost your emotional barometer by sharing your innermost personal thoughts (not to mention pictures, and likes/dislikes, “25 things about you”, etc., etc.) with 600 of your “closest” friends. It makes me wonder what’s really going on here. Matthew Hutson writes in Brainstorm, “If you have too few “friends” on Facebook, people might think you’re a loser. Too many and people might think you’re a social slut. Is there an optimal number?” My thought is no, it’s how you define “friends” and use the forums.
If you work in a large company for instance, you may have associates and acquaintances in your own office, several other offices both in the U.S. or around the world. Lots of people you “know” and may want to stay in touch with, but how close a friend is each person really? Faced with a choice of letting someone into your circle of friends versus excluding them, my sense is we opt for inclusion; we look to have more friends and to be able to track more social activity across a bigger and more diverse network. It’s easy and you don’t have to be cool to make it happen. The problems start when you make decisions about what you are willing to share with this ever growing circle of friends.
Researchers at UC San Diego, James Fowler, Christopher Dawes and Nicholas Christakis hypothesize that, “Individuals with too many friends may appear to be focusing too much on Facebook, friending out of desperation rather than popularity, spending a great deal of time on their computers ostensibly trying to make connections in a computer-mediated environment where they feel more comfortable than in face-to-face social interaction.”
So, an interesting phenomenon is upon us. The whole social networking explosion, in a sense, provides a forum for people who, in reality, might not be very social at all in a face-to-face interactivity situation. They accumulate hundreds of “friends” online, but they can’t possibly imagine how their posts and comments will be perceived and interpreted by those hundred of diverse friends residing across multiple degrees of separation. An attempt to update or provide “inside humor” to a smaller group of actual close friends is broadcast to hundreds, where its true meaning may be lost or grossly misinterpreted, due to a lack of shared knowledge of customs and mores. And personal relationships are particularly at risk, for example, when the overly-zealous post information their fraternity brothers may find hilarious but their spouse deems appalling. Let the games begin!
Tags: brainstorm, carole king, Christopher Dawes, facebook, facebook applications, Facebook friends, James Fowler, matthew huston, Nicholas Christakis, Ready To ZooLoo?, smores, Social Media, social media slut, social networking, social slut, UC San Diego, zooloo, zooloo.com
You’ve Got A Friend… or 600.
Posted by: Rod on the Blog
Ready To ZooLoo? |
In today’s social networking world, the popularity of forums like Facebook have produced a rash of active participants who often list 500-600 “friends.” I read a study about a year ago stating that the “average” number of friends was 164. Wow, really?
Carole King made music history in the 70’s when she convinced forlorn lovers that “they had a friend.” Now you can boost your emotional barometer by sharing your innermost personal thoughts (not to mention pictures, and likes/dislikes, “25 things about you”, etc., etc.) with 600 of your “closest” friends. It makes me wonder what’s really going on here. Matthew Hutson writes in Brainstorm, “If you have too few “friends” on Facebook, people might think you’re a loser. Too many and people might think you’re a social slut. Is there an optimal number?” My thought is no, it’s how you define “friends” and use the forums.
If you work in a large company for instance, you may have associates and acquaintances in your own office, several other offices both in the U.S. or around the world. Lots of people you “know” and may want to stay in touch with, but how close a friend is each person really? Faced with a choice of letting someone into your circle of friends versus excluding them, my sense is we opt for inclusion; we look to have more friends and to be able to track more social activity across a bigger and more diverse network. It’s easy and you don’t have to be cool to make it happen. The problems start when you make decisions about what you are willing to share with this ever growing circle of friends.
Researchers at UC San Diego, James Fowler, Christopher Dawes and Nicholas Christakis hypothesize that, “Individuals with too many friends may appear to be focusing too much on Facebook, friending out of desperation rather than popularity, spending a great deal of time on their computers ostensibly trying to make connections in a computer-mediated environment where they feel more comfortable than in face-to-face social interaction.”
So, an interesting phenomenon is upon us. The whole social networking explosion, in a sense, provides a forum for people who, in reality, might not be very social at all in a face-to-face interactivity situation. They accumulate hundreds of “friends” online, but they can’t possibly imagine how their posts and comments will be perceived and interpreted by those hundred of diverse friends residing across multiple degrees of separation. An attempt to update or provide “inside humor” to a smaller group of actual close friends is broadcast to hundreds, where its true meaning may be lost or grossly misinterpreted, due to a lack of shared knowledge of customs and mores. And personal relationships are particularly at risk, for example, when the overly-zealous post information their fraternity brothers may find hilarious but their spouse deems appalling. Let the games begin!
Tags: brainstorm, carole king, Christopher Dawes, facebook, facebook applications, Facebook friends, James Fowler, matthew huston, Nicholas Christakis, Ready To ZooLoo?, smores, Social Media, social media slut, social networking, social slut, UC San Diego, zooloo, zooloo.com
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