Mod phone, old-fashioned chic. (Kids & phone)

Today, advice columnist Ask Amy printed a letter from a middle school secretary complaining that kids don't know how to use land line phones.  I read her column outloud at breakfast and my son's first question was "What's a land line phone?"

The donut phone

Good question, I thought, as no one really uses that term, but everyone talks about cell phones. We have one land line phone that's not wireless. It is popular in our house because it has the best reception.  And kids love it because it's such an unusual and mod shape for a phone.  Even though our house has lots of things in it, they often find it among the first objects they want to inspect.  They ooh and awe over it.  When they need to call their parents, they frequently say, "Hi Mom, I'm calling you from the donut phone!" I can't quite figure out why the kind of phone they're using is so curious to them, but it is.  It's charming, in an old fashioned, mod way.

As Amy and the middle school secretary observe, talking on any phone takes skill and practice.  Maybe some middle schoolers are not as high tech as they think if they are just figuring out how to politely dial and talk on the phone.

Back again: Thoughts on email accounts for kids

Well, I decided I must get back to blogging after more than a year of being away.  I have been spending too much webtime over at Ghost of the Talking Cricket.

But onto high tech parent things.  Our household gadgets have changed over the last year to two iTouches which DS and I love.  The iTouch has nearly replaced his Nintendo DS.  Just last month, I finally acquiecsed and signed him up for a regular email account.  Since it's an Apple/me.com account, he can easily send and receive email through his iTouch, which I had not considered.  Suddenly, email is much more fun and convenient for him. 

He has had an email account on zoobuh.com but we were beginning to have technical difficulties with that.  My mom, whose technical expertise is very low, even complained about his account.  She also thought the name was a little immature -- I don't know what she thinks about Yahoo.  Personally, I must admit don't like using Yahoo just because of its  low-rent, silly name.  It also turned out with zoobuh that all the controls were preventing him from getting photos and few other things that made email less fun and almost annoying.  I like that everyone email that he receives on zoobuh also comes to me, but I think I can figure out something along those lines with me.com or I can figure out something.

Do kids need email accounts?  Maybe.  I am not sure how many kids that he knows actually have email accounts, or if they do, if they use them.  More kids seem to have cell phones.  And the cell phone conundrum will probably be the next post.

Being neutral on virtual realities

Children hanging out in virtual reality would sound like science fiction only a few years ago, and yet today it's becoming a hot topic. The way that academics and media watchers are discussing the topic seems, in a way, to only be scratching the surface. My sense is that there's a sense of more optimism than pessimism among those grabbing the spotlight on discussing this emerging world. Check out Doug Thomas' statement in relation to the MacArthur Foundation's forum last week "What are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds: The Wonders and the Worries."

Within virtual worlds, kids are learning what it means to be members of a community, a community they are building and in many ways defining. The values they create and the rules and norms they develop are teaching them lessons in citizenship and community. In many cases that is a good thing, one which helps kids understand what makes for a healthy community and what makes for a dysfunctional one. At the same time, however, we need to be mindful of spaces which conflate citizenship with consumption or community with collection.

...Virtual worlds teach the skills to navigate the new information economy by allowing kids to learn how to find information, often times in an environment that changes rapidly. Taken together, virtual worlds can prepare our kids for the next generation of learning. If only our schools could move as quickly.

In the cnet.com article covering the forum, Thomas acknowledges the inherent problems with commercialism (meaning mainly collecting stuff
and exposure to ads) in today's virtual realities for children. But then, the article quotes him say:

"Knowledge is changing. It (used to be that it) was a set of facts, now it's not so much a 'what' but a 'where,' in which kids learn how to find information," Thomas said. "That's going to be the single most important skill--the ability to adapt to change."

He added: "I wouldn't be worried if they're engaged and playing these games, I'd be more worried if they're not."

But most kids are not playing virtual reality games and many are not precisely because of capitalism, commercialism -- or in other words because most parents aren't rich enough to get their kids high speed internet connections and their own dedicated computer to go along with it. If you remember that 50% or more of children in the southern U.S. live in families at or below the poverty line, then you know what I'm talking about. The digital divide is becoming a digital chasm.

Even if your parents have money, it is still difficult to convince them to spend money on something intangible -- virtual pets and their related clothes. Most adults aren't even spending money for their own intangibles. True, there's a large group of people that play Warcraft, but those people also have dedicated an enormous amount of time to that world. The new virtual realities are going to have to be more fluid, allowing adults and children to enter easily.

In a recent New York Times article, "Pay Up Kid, or Your Igloo Melts," even parents who have the money to spend (burn?) are somewhat confused about why they're paying for some things in virtual reality. Paying $6 a month isn't too bad, but $19.95 for a virtual dragon is too much.

In essence, I'm trying to say that being more neutral on virtual realities might be better. I've been through this before when academic consultants jump up and down about how great the new technology is. But they don't always think out all of the ramifications. And one of the ramifications here is: Who's going to pay, how much, and why?

well, more later.

Analyzing Virtual Worlds for Kids

Through CommonSenseMedia.org, I learned about yesterday's conference (Nov. 15) about the experiences of online virtual networks for children, specifically focusing on Club Penguin and Webkinz, it seems. Here's a link to Cnet's article "What kids learn in virtual reality." This is a fascinating quote from Doug Thomas, associate professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communication:

"I wouldn't be worried if they're engaged and playing these games, I'd be more worried if they're not."

Well, that doesn't seem to be the reaction of most parents I know. They're terrified of their kids playing on the computer beyond 15 minutes. Maybe I'm just hanging around with conservative parents in Illinois' heartland. But these parents are well educated and most have a high speed internet connection at home. Many use computers as an important part of their job. So why are they reluctant to let their kids online, communicate with their friends online, or even have online 'jobs' to earn money to 'buy' things?

If they're worried about commercialism, as the cnet article indicates, isn't what they're describing more like 'why it's important to have a job so you can buy things you need: food, shelter, clothing?' True, the kids are buying fun things, but they are learning about the connection between earning money/points to buy something that you want and then using it. Or they find out that maybe they didn't want what they bought, like a boy getting a pink tutu for his penguin. Webkinz, in particular, doesn't let you earn points unless you can pass certain tests, some of which are difficult for me to pass on the first time. So the 'jobs' are not easy-peasy, but require some skill and effort.

Other parents are reluctant to pay the cost of Club Penguin. But it's $5 to $6 a month, depending on the plan. That's less than two McDonald's happy meals. Or less than most Lego sets. Or about the same as seeing one movie in a theater a month, without popcorn. More parents seem to be allowing their kids to have a Webkinz, which cost from $8 to $15 (I think that's right) because that's the only entry fee. Well, at first that's the only cost. But there's more! Kids are begging parents in stores to buy them another Webkinz. I met a mother whose children each had 10. And then there are clothes, trading cards, etc., with special codes to unlock more stuff online. This may cost me more than $6 a month if I keep going to the stores that are easily noted on the web by our Webkinz fan.

Or, is it the obsessiveness that these virtual worlds generate? Okay, this is troubling. Adults get obsessed about being online, so it's not surprising that kids do too. I wish that the academics had responded to this problem.

What about the weirdness of making friends online, and then not being able to make friends, and then being shunned by friends? I sometimes think this is rather overblown by parents. Kids' friendships are often fluid, especially on playgrounds, which is what I think is a good analogy for Club Penguin, in particular. Maybe it's okay to learn how to be friends quickly, to learn how to let go, to not get too jealous of friends. That might be a good life lesson.

For an added perspective, here's a link to a recent poll that says "Parents and Video Games don't mix." The following quote from a parent, who here is talking more about fantasy and violent games not really Club Penguin and Webkinz, still seems to present another position of parents

"It's just such a waste of time," said Lackman, 47, a power plant operator from Center, North Dakota, "I tell him, 'Do something that has some lasting value."'

But maybe learning how to negotiate in virtual worlds is going to continue to be an important skill for this new generation. My mom always wanted me to 'go outside.' I ended up bringing a typewriter outside and learning how to type in a tree with fingers that were freezing because I had to be outside during spring break in March. I was using my mom's old Royal typewriter with the hard-to-hit keys.

Perhaps that's why I particularly like that kids have to type to communicate. That's why I'm okay with Club Penguin in our house. I like that we have lots of excitement for Thursday's newspaper on Club Penguin, as I've mentioned before here.

The one parent that I know that regularly lets her daughter on Club Penguin does so because her best friend moved to Texas. This way they can talk to each other for a long time without tying up the home phone.

But the panelists in California seemed less concerned than many of the parents that I know. Yasmin Kafai, associate professor of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, suggested that

parents become a member in the virtual world that their kids belong to and play with them. "Go into the world with them," she said.

So, looks like there's a big divide between many parents, kids who like virtual reality and will be involved in it probably for the rest of their lives, and academics on the west coast.