I have created a new group on Linkedin : "Digital and Screen Literacy for Children"

The purpose of the "Digital and Screen Literacy for Children" network on Linkedin is to link together all people around the world wanting to share information in order to improve the Digital and Screen Literacy of children.

Digital and Screen Literacy is the ability to use new technologies (computer, mobile phone, the Internet, video games, virtual worlds…) to locate, organize, understand, evaluate or create information and videos.

Digital and Screen literate children will be able to communicate and work more efficiently on the Internet and in a world of screens.

I was drawn to digital and screen literacy from watching children: when they use a search engine to find information on the Web, the first results they look at are the links containing videos, then the ones with pictures; the ones which are text only are looked at last. And when they are as young as eight or nine years old, they make videos, which they upload on Youtube.

That's just the beginning. Everywhere we look, we see screens. Digital-display manufacturers produce one new screen each year for every human on earth. With the advent of electronic ink, screens will be on any flat surface. The tools (cameras, softwares...) for screen fluency will be built directly into these ubiquitous screens.

Our children need to be prepared for a new culture: new distribution-and-display technologies are pushing books aside and catapulting images to the center of the culture.

Digital and screen literacy should be defined as teaching children to communicate visually but also to be skeptical about sources of information online. The goal is no less than defining education in the digital and screen age.

Children will have to be screen fluent. They will communicate not just with words, but also visually. They need to master the tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie), which are quickly reducing the effort needed to create moving images. The ease of making video now approaches the ease of writing.

Children will have to view media critically, in order to defend themselves against the powers of advertising, manipulation, and political persuasion… In an increasingly visual world, anyone with a laptop, Web connection and camera can be a producer of media. As moving images become easier to create, easier to store, easier to annotate and easier to combine into complex narratives, they also become easier to be manipulated by the audience. Children need to understand how what they see and watch is created (and can be manipulated) as much as they need to understand plain old reading, writing and arithmetic.

Web site : http://www.digital-literacy.info

Group Profile on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1849602&trk=anet_ug_grppro

What is the "Kids Safety in the Digital Worlds" Network?

The purpose of this network is to link together all people around the world wanting to share information in order to improve the safety of our children in the Digital Worlds (the Internet -accessed either through a computer or a mobile phone-, video games, virtual worlds…).

Keeping kids safe in the Digital Worlds is a very ambitious task -- bigger than any single government, company or family can achieve alone.

All children in the world are affected by these dangers.

That's why all positive and productive input from around the world is welcome: medias, educators, national governments, law enforcement authorities worldwide, global or regional organizations, child safety organizations and technology companies.

The Digital Worlds can bring content of great value to the lives of our kids. For example, the Internet provides immense quantities of useful information.

But the Digital Worlds, as the reflects of human activities in the real world, can be the places of unwanted encounters. A child, who isn't seeking objectionable content, can come across it inadvertently or someone may deliberately force such content on him.

Keeping kids safe involves at least four levels of action:

• education for families to increase their awareness about online child safety and to teach best practices for safe surfing.

• education for children to help them get the media literacy skills they need to use the Digital Worlds responsibly.

• support for law enforcement.

• empowering technology tools that allow parents to limit what digital content their children can discover. Internet, video game and mobile phone companies need to continue to empower parents and kids with tools and resources that help put them in control of their digital experiences and make web surfing, instant messaging, video gaming and mobile phoning safer.