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Parents: where are your kids now?

By Nick Hodge | October 4, 2007

Par­ents have this little internal GPS that sorta– kinda– knows where their chil­dren are in phys­ical space.

Why should it be dif­fer­ent with online?

The excuse that “com­puters are too hard” and “the kids are far ahead of me” just doesn’t wash any­more. This is like put­ting your kids on an unmarked bus to nowhere and hop­ing they return phys­ic­ally and men­tally intact. You are abandon­ing your children.

Howard Rhein­gold, recently in Aus­tralia for edu­ca­tionau, and Heath at Catall­axy recenly com­men­ted on the wastage of tax­payer money on fil­ters and a fear-mongering piece of dead-trees.

A well writ­ten explan­a­tion of what is online, and how to explore the world together would have been bet­ter. Edu­ca­tion, not fear mon­ger­ing. The main­stream media has over­played the fear of the unknown and new. I’d like them to spend that time explain­ing Phish­ing and 419 scams.

Par­ents need to learn. In 10–20 years time, the best way of com­mu­nic­at­ing to their grandkids will be online.

Learn with your kids, par­ents. Know where they are online.

Topics: observation, technology | No Comments »

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