• 'Grand Theft Childhood'? The release this week of the latest version of Grand Theft Auto (IV) sparks a new flood of headlines about 1) how the hot videogame industry is headed for the stratosphere (USATODAY) and 2) videogame violence. Interestingly, a $1.5 million study by two Harvard Medical School professors funded by the US Justice Department found that the connection between violent videogame play and violent videogame players "may be more tenuous than previously thought," the Harvard Crimson reports. The study resulted in a new book by Profs. Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner, Grand Theft Childhood, which says "videogames do not affect all children equally." The Crimson adds that "Olson said that gaming - including playing 'M'-rated games - is such a widespread teenage phenomenon that it should not be considered abnormal." What is abnormal, the authors suggest, is excessive videogame play. They advise a balance of gaming and other activities. A thoughtful post about Kutner and Olson's research in the OpenEducation.net blog suggests that parents play with their kids as "a great way to keep the conversation going and help you navigate the game. Parents may initially find the skills and dexterity very challenging but abandonment is not the answer." Why? Well, for one thing, the study cites the view of Michael Jellinek, M.D., professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, "that a parent's awkwardness 'can be used to your advantage when it comes to strengthening relationships with your children'."
• Chat, Webcams used to trick teen girls. A Canadian man could get a life sentence for allegedly tricking or coercing at least 12 teenaged girls, one as young as 14, to pose nude for him in front of a Webcam, The Register reports. Daniel Lesiewicz, 27, of the Montreal area, "was arrested in March and charged with possession and production of child pornography, uttering threats and extortion." The Quebec police have since added further charges, "including multiple counts of luring a child, and unauthorized use of a computer." He reportedly created a profile of a fictional girl and used it to befriend other girls in chat rooms and persuade them to pose nude in front of Webcams on their computers. Once he had screen shots of those, apparently, he'd threaten the girls that he'd post them online if they didn't provide more. Further confirmation that warning bells should go off wherever Webcams and chatrooms, separately or together, are used by minors. On the former, maybe wait till they go off to college and hope they're used only for seeing and talking with family and offline friends. Many new computers have built in Webcams, so parents might consider disabling them. Also key, though, is teens' developing critical thinking, which will protect them better than any technological filter or "parental control," neither of which can possibly follow them around online or off. To help them develop that mental filter, talk about how people online aren't always who they say they are. A couple of other discussion aids might be "How social influencing works" and "How to recognize grooming".
• Second Life at school? Some high school teachers see virtual worlds more as virtual classrooms. "Second Life pioneer Peggy Sheehy, a New York teacher whose school district owns six islands on a private estate in Second Life, said virtual worlds should be seen as part of the repertoire of tools that can be used to engage this new generation of students," the Houston Chronicle reports. "Over the past two years, Sheehy's students have used Second Life avatars to examine body image issues, build amusement parks and re-enact Civil War battles." Using virtual worlds, students participate more freely because they do so as avatars they create. Students can "speak" (in little bubbles of text) more freely under that veil of anonymity and no one's more popular than anyone else. Of course, like the Internet, virtual worlds for everybody can have "places" inappropriate for students, so to win over a large number of teachers, schools, and districts, there may need to be online "worlds" designed specifically for school. Meanwhile, some researchers see virtual worlds as a way to learn more about how the real world works, as places where social scientists can do a bit of modeling, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
• Do you Twitter? Given that lots of kids are converting parents from talking to texting, Twitter may be around the corner for you. If you've heard people at your house use the word "twitter" in association with technology and think it's yet another frivolous temptation for chronic multitaskers (as I did when a friend said she was swamped by tweets at a conference), there's a mind-changing story in the San Jose Mercury News for you. In it the mere twittering (or "texting") of the word "Arrested" on his cellphone to "a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project" got a University of California, Berkeley, student out of an Egyptian jail within 24 hours. But there are more mundane reasons to use this technology that's like group texting on the fly or push micro-moblogging (broadcasting mini blog posts on your phone to your contact list): keeping in touch with your family during the odd free moment on a business trip, spontaneously sharing your reaction to (and getting fast feedback on) a comment in a conference, sending a link or new contact info to a bunch of friends all at once, etc., etc. It'd be interesting to get a bunch of teenagers in a room and ask them if they use it in addition to IM-ing and social networking. Here's "How Twitter Works" at howstuffworks.com and another Twitter primer that I was tipped off to by my friends at the California Technology Assistance Project.

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