A Turnabout

Everyone is probably sick of the Digital Youth Summit notes, so I've prepared a short book review to provide the refreshing lime wedge to the notes' eye-watering tequila shot.
In what appears to be a series of the Misadventures of Millicent Madding, Brian Tacang (above), a former fashion designer, offers us Bully-Be-Gone. The titular character of the series, an unrepentant inventor named Millicent, devises a formula to fend off the middle-school bullies that make her life, and that of the rest of the smartypants crowd of multi-culturals, a living heck. She calls this formula ... well, "Bully-Be-Gone," but it unfortunately backfires by making the bullies romantically interested in their former victims which, at least for middle-schoolers, is even worse than bullying. I must say that I find the group of kids with mult-cultural backgrounds in children's books to be utterly unrealistic, but this isn't a realistic story, so I'm going to let Tacang get away with it.
Although it's my opinion that Tacang is trying a bit too hard to be funny, especially with the names (such as Uncle Phineas Baldernot), some of this is actually amusing. One could only hope for a librarian with Shakespeare and Toni Morrison tattooed on her well-developed biceps, and I was particularly taken with the cross-dressing English teacher. Oh, sure, it was the monthly Greats Of Literature class and Mr. Templeton was dressed in period costume (big skirt and hat - this must be where the fashion designer bit comes in), but ... Oh, never mind. I just love a man in a dress. What a great middle-school this must be! If only I had children, I'd send them there.

Digital Youth: Part III, Tweens

Again, if my notes here are too much for you, the podcast for this portion of the summit is here. I don't blame you at all - it's taking me three, no, four days to transcribe my notes!

Anastasia Goodstein came back at us in the afternoon, tonsils blazing. I don't know how she does it. The topic was the same, but skewed to the Tweens age group.
We are immigrants and they were born into this internet/tech world. They work intuitively (banging away until it works). We might delicately consult a manual [yeah, I used to do that - now I just bang away]. We might dig for more information and they don't bother. "Privacy Settings? What are those?" They don't look for settings to tweak.
1. Phone.
35% of Tweens own a cell phone because they want what their older siblings have and they get it because parents are afraid since 9/11 and want to be in contact. There are companies and services just for Tweens, with parental controls, such as the Firefly Phone. They view the phone as an extension of themselves, as a new kind of watch or alarm clock.
2. Computer/Internet
They use them for games, memory games. The digital divide still exists, but it has narrowed. It's a good thing to have some blocking for younger kids and Tweens, but keep the social sites open.
3. Portable Gaming Device
Tweens are still looking at their parents for cues. The desire to stay connected with friends is strong and universal. We had our landline friends after school. They text and call their crushes continuously. IM is more important to Tweens than Teens.
They're into WebKins Mail and MySpace (yeah, they aren't supposed to be on this, but they are). They use e-mail to communicate with adults. Tween e-mail addresses and handles are often wildly inappropriate (hotchicksexy44). Make sure they fix those handles if they want to communicate with adults for babysitting jobs, teachers, etc.
Gosh, do they ever talk to each other in person? Yes, but texting is just as meaningful. And it's easier to share digitally, can say more, can say things you can't say to a face.
Younger kids are online, but not as much as we think. Heavens, they're even reading books! Girls and multi-cultural types more likely to be reading non-textbooks.
They time is more planned out, less time to hang out and be kids.
More than 1/4 of age 13 kids have social site profiles. There's a law that companies/sites can't save info on users age 13 and under. Easy to lie about one's age and create multiple profiles. They want what the older kids have.
They're on MySpace and message boards.
Beinggirl.com - a commerical Tampax site - hang out and chat!
Virtual Worlds: There has been an explosion in the population here. 100+ live or in beta. Some are independent communities and some are commercial, such as: Disney, Nickelodeon, other tv-related virtual worlds (half of the most popular sites are these), Lego, Barbie Girls, Brats, Webkins, Club Penguin ... and more coming because these are really effective with the tween demographic. They are playing games on them and not socializing as much as teens and adults. Same idea as our paperdolls: penguins or Barbies, you put clothes and things on them. [Same with my avatar in Second Life, but I can radically change her look to almost anything: man, dinosaur, something teensy, something huge.]
The language on these sites is filtered and often moderated. You can only use certain words. But tweens are ingenious at getting around this.
Projected population of 8 million to 20 million 2007-2011 in virtual worlds.
Being a tween is about experimenting with identity. Most tweens go online pretending to be someone else. They customize the technology to reflect their identities. Celebrities play a big role, as well as special ringtones for their phones, wallpaper, icons, and twinkly fonts. Tweens really care about the environment, and this will show up as well. [Programming idea?] They lard up their MySpace profiles, shocking our sensibilities by the way they express how they see themselves ... today. Tomorrow, I guess, they can find All New Ways to shock us.
They love to use widgets and comment on blogs. Boys mostly like to upload video. Tween boys like videos that gross out or are about falling down. Girls prefer performance videos: nailing that perfect handstand. YouTube is a favorite site; Kidsbop hosts videos as well.
Validation, Fame, and Fortune:
Tweens have a gap in their sense of privacy and what is for public consumption.
This again, is blamed on the advent of reality tv, which they grew up on and are the biggest consumers of these programs, even if they are aimed at adults. They are used to a public confessional booth, baring souls and sharing frustrations. They now have their own tools to do this themselves. We used to write our deepest feelings in a diary we kept locked; they put theirs in a blog. What they share takes our breath away.
They don't think how this will affect future employment (as babysitters or even farther in the future), but if employers start eliminating applicants based on their blog content, they will soon run out of employable applicants.
Everyone has their own person brand. They are creating media that is successful with their peers (because we are horrified).
One speaker started designing websites for her friends, next she had to hire her friends to help her. At age 17 she was a sponsor for Anastasia's speaking engagement.
There's a successful 15 year old podcaster. [Granted, they aren't tweens now, but they were when they started out.] These kids who are really driven are exceptions.
Validation comes swiftly, if not that coherent.
The Dark Side:
Cyberbullying is a problem. It's just so easy to be more cruel in the anonymity of being online. This happens most with middle-schoolers, just like offline bullying. They are afraid to tell their parents or other adults because they might lose their computer privileges. 30% report online bullying; 54% report offline bullying. 16% of that 30% report that someone intentionally posted something mean about them online. The only positive note is that the tools are their to block online bullies.
Tweens are entirely too trusting and share passwords. This makes it easy to flame ex-friends (dropping friends happens all the time at that age). Other tweens can get into their ex-friends' sites and spend all their virtual money or destroy their virtual weapons, etc. They can create an "Anastasia's A Slut" page; stuff like this spreads faster than offline cruelty, making it a much bigger deal.
This online cruelty between peers is a more frequent threat than predators. It's not just in the hallway anymore.
Librarians can lead the assault on this by teaching digital ethics. Teachers are overworked, having to teach to tests, the sites are blocked in schools.
Tweens are the most marketed-to generation. Anastasia is a Gen-Xer and she doesn't remember anything like this from her youth. After the clamp down on ads for sodas, cereals, and candy on tv, these have been moved to the internet sites where kids play games.
Kids are used to googling for schoolwork. They excel at finding, but not at evaluating credibility. Library databases are not keyworded the way Google is and it's harder for them to learn (so they don't bother). They don't know how to evaluate what is credible information. So, if you teach them to edit a Wikipedia article, they will learn that any dufus can do this. You can show them Wikiscanner, and make another teachable moment.
While they can't drive real cars, they can go online and outfit a Scion on Whyville. And, if they miss clam payments on it, their virtual car is virtually repo'd. [Cool! An important lesson!]
Ask them what sites they go to, why they go, why they are fun. There are more and more all the time. Have them show you how to do it. They will laugh at you, but will be glad to show off their expertise. You can use that for another teachable moment - asking about privacy and ethics.
Tweens are continuously text messaging. They only use e-mail with the dinosaur adults. Have to point out that IM/text messaging shortcuts are fine for that, but don't look good on an English paper. Teach them active reputation management.
Tweens are more comfortable screwing up online. [Perhaps they'll make teflon presidential candidates.] They need to know that their real names should go on thoughtful comments and intelligent blogs for future employers to find.
As librarians in the avant garde, we need to talk to the Luddites among us and stop dropping names like Pownce, Twitter, etc. [Second Life] and making them dizzy and resentful [and giving them headaches].
We should take more time to educate than to legislate.
Question period:
Question about putting out TMI (Too Much Information). Answer: Well, sometimes when you put personal stuff out, it helps someone.
Tweens as 9 to 14 year olds? Yes, they run the gamut on maturity levels. However, children under the age of 8 do not understand what advertising is - they can't recognize it.
Sharing in previous generations was keeping diaries and journals, but not really "shared" outside of that. We took photos all the time, but didn't put them up for all the world to see. Kids now will undress and take pictures of themselves. Their peers call that being a "camwhore." Pornography is becoming a part of mainstream culture. Witness the "Pussycat Dolls" [Wha-at?! I looked this up and it's apparently some sluttier version of the Spice Girls?]. Girls like to look sexy and pose sexy. [Note: There was a photo of Shirley Temple as a child posed like Betty Grable from a 3/4 rear. This is not terribly new, but more widespread. The writer Charles Dodson (Lewis Carroll) took nude photographs of children, which was apparently common in Victorian times and allegedly innocent of sexual content.] These photos are taken for boyfriends, not the creepy pedophiles. They get out virally, though, which Anastasia finds disturbing.
Kids find ways to get access to the internet from their mobile phones,not laptops.
They need to learn to manage their online reputations, use sources appropriately, to help them get in the workforce. From celebrity culture they've learned how to virally promote themselves, a valuable skill, sought after by marketers.
There was a kid in Oregon, who was totally unpopular. He started a t-shirt company and studied what made people buy them. He figured out that kids liked cool party pictures of themselves, so he went to parties (lord knows how someone so unpopular got invited), took high quality pictures that the kids couldn't do for themselves [at this point I realized that this is, OMG!, what I do in Second Life.], and created a brand around "Pretty Ugly." Once he'd established himself and his "brand" this way, he used that to sell tees. He is now the "cool" kid.
Different carriers/agreements/plans make mobile social network difficult. Some kids are using the "Sidekick" with friends, but not having that system cuts other kids out, creates a barrier. The cost is coming down. What kids really want is the iPhone and smartphones in general. This wave is coming. Europe and Asia already have this.
Parents get all bent out of shape over technology because they don't hear about it until the news has a story about someone getting into trouble. They don't see the value. Should have programs for parents to see what is good about the technology. It's hard to get parents to come out at night, so Anastasia points out that her book is "really easy to read - ha ha!"

After this, Charlotte-Mecklenberg had a presentation on things they have done in this area that they are proud of. They brought up the "Boys Read" blog and then my feed got cut off. Bummer! This Digital Youth summit had a lot of great and useful information, that may have been more useful if I had been able to see the slideshows. Then again, maybe, being so busy taking notes, I may not have had the time to appreciate the slides anyway.

Digital Youth, Part II: Megan Deana

The second speaker in the morning was Megan Deana from Global Kids. Megan started out with a degree in computer science and then moseyed to education (presumably because she'd be making too much money in computer science) and got a job through LinkedIn that led her to the non-profit group, Global Kids, whose mission is to transform urban youth into successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Ninety percent of their students graduate from high school. Digital media is just a part of this.
Megan works with the Online Leadership Program, a student-centered program, which leads the kids to things they need to know in order to be successful, collaborating with different kinds of people. They learn about global issues by building and playing socially conscious video games. They spend the 1/3 of the first semester discussing what topic they want to cover. They learn what goes into making a game by partnering with a game designer professional [Don't think our library can manage that].
One group created "Ayiti: The cost of life" where players help a Haitian family living in poverty make decisions in work, education, etc. to better their situation. [Far cry from the 1960s board game about living in a ghetto, eh? I remember going straight into prostitution on that game.]
Another program is the Virtual Video Project. They do a machinima video on a topic of they're interested in. They meet twice a week, lured in with subway tickets and snacks. They learn storyboarding, scriptwriting, character development, and set designing (digitally, of course, because this is machinima). Example is "A Child's War" - where they interviewed experts and put together a fictionalized account using Second Life. They learned presentation skills, pitching their ideas to Ashoka Youth Ventures.
Global Kids guides the kids, facilitating not teaching.
They learn how to create a "safe space" in which to interact, and decide their own rules on this, defining respect as no cursing, no put-downs, no weapons [well, duh!].
Use a technique called the human barometer, where spaces are set out (say, on different levels) for "for," "against," and "undecided." And they have to explain why they are moving from one level to another.
There is a Ning for educators interested at RezEd: the hub for learning and virtual worlds.

Digital Youth Conference Part I

BlueWings uses her voice chat to stream the audio from the Digital Youth summit into SL. I type notes madly trying to keep up.

If you don't want to bother with my notes, the podcast for this part of the summit is here.

Today I attended the Second Life (I know, I know) herniation of the Digital Youth summit at ImaginOn in Charlotte. The keynote speaker was Anastasia Goodstein. Goodstein is the author of Totally Wired: what teens and tweens are really doing online http://www.totallywiredbook.com/. Her blog, YPulse http://www.ypulse.com/, is a leading media, technology and youth development information source, and School Library Journal recently published Goodstein's article What Would Madison Avenue Do? Marketing to Teens. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6555544.html

[Cribbed from Deborah Hotchkiss's promotional e-mail]

We had some technical hiccups to begin with, but then got the stream of Anastasia's speech fairly clearly. I took notes like mad, but I wasn't always able to keep up. Anastasia gave a presentation on Teens in the morning and one tailored more about Tweens in the afternoon. Also speaking in the morning was Megan Deana of Global Kids, a non-profit group working with urban youth and digital media.

Megan Deana of Global Kids

Anastasia began by describing SL to the attendees, who, if they were familiar with SL, would be listening to the conference in the comfort of their own homes wearing sweatpants and petting their kitties. Ahem. She was describing the Teen SL as a teaching tool. She went on to talk about social sites (such as MySpace and Facebook). Teens are too savvy to talk with creepy over 50s that could be either librarians [got me nailed there] or predators. They don't want to hang around authority figures of any sort. They want to interact with other teens, preferably ones they already know. But their lives are not constructed to hang out with friends, like our were. Teens lead highly structured lives where they have more lessons scheduled outside of school or sports activities. The places where they used to hang out, such as the malls, are becoming more restrictive. The bad behavior of a few teens has eliminated a real world space for them to meet. One of the few ways left to hang out with their peers is through social sites or mobile devices. And these are becoming increasingly popular.

Picture youself as a teen and recall the music you listened to. [I know I listened to the radio while doing my homework. There are certain songs that can whip me back to particular times of my life faster than an SL teleport ... when it's working.] Music is something very important to teens and young people. Choosing favorite songs and artists helps give them identity. MySpace started as a place for 20-somethings in the arts to display their wares. Teens are always interested in what the 20s are doing (the way that Tweens are interested in what the Teens have), and they were lured in by their favorite musicians. Then the Teens co-opted it for their own use, making contact with each other and displaying their individuality (personalizing their profiles).

Most teens (about 55%) use social sites like this. They are starting to migrate from MySpace to Facebook because of the rampant spamming and commercialism in the former (partially from being snapped up by Fox and forced to generate real revenue). Facebook started as a place for Harvard students to connect. Then they grudgingly opened it up to other Ivy League schools. It was meant for college students, but their teen siblings saw them using it and wanted in. Besides, authority-types (such as the police and parents) had cottoned on to the party bulletins that were sent out on MySpace. Many parties were being busted. Now even us common folk can join to make contact with old and new friends. Facebook tends to attract the more upwardly mobile, "college type" people while the Other Folk tend to stick to MySpace. Facebook was meant for people who already knew each other [although recently I've been receiving messages acquainting me with people I might know, based on the friends lists of people I do know whom I can add to my list of friends. That is still pending on their approval, though.] Despite the influx of teens, the over 40s are the largest growing segment of the population on these sites. Most teens have profiles on at least 2 sites.

Other social sites that are growing quickly: myyearbook.com, Beebo, skonex (??) tagged.com.

Teens are also all over the virtual worlds. Teen SL is one, but it's not the most popular and tends to be more for the nerdy types who enjoy scripting, etc. They are predominantly male and mostly have parents in the SL maingrid. Other, more popular worlds: gaia online, zwinktopia, hammahotel [don't quote me on this stuff - I didn't have a powerpoint in front of me], virtualhills (and MTV virtual world that eventually moved to gaia because that's where the teens were). The virtual worlds are the new chatrooms. MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft are too much crowded with content to be places to chat. You're busy helping your team achieve some goal to talk about the latest music. [And this is why Linden Labs and IBM have been working on allowing avatars to cross platforms, so that you can slay dragons in WoW and then cross into SL, which is rubbish for gaming apparently, to a bar and boast to your buddies, possibly bring the head of the victim with you.] 24% of children/teens will use virtual worlds monthly, making them not nearly as popular as the social sites.

Identity: It's all about who am I and how am I different from my wretched parents. And they have no taste, most of them, at this age. Their profiles are littered (or perhaps glittered) with these expressions of individuality. The way we had individualized our lockers [those of us who bothered - can't say I did], they find crazy fonts and widgets for their profiles and special ringtones and wallpaper for their mobile phones.

While some kids just use sites for socializing, others make them altars to their interests. They make mash-ups, and Anastasia used as an example the craze last year for making your own video for SoulJa Boy [video on this link explains it all]. If you go to YouTube, you'll find hundreds of versions where kids do the dance themselves or they set Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob video to the song. Crank that! [Apparently the new In Thing is to make a parody of Katie Perry's "I Kissed a Girl."]

Validation, Fame, and Fortune: Today's teens feel differently about privacy that we did and do now. Anastasia blames, I mean, traces this back to reality tv shows. They are used to seeing real people using the camera as a confessional. They share their most personal thoughts and feelings in blogs and on video. Using Paris Hilton and her sex tape as a paradigm, they feel such exposure only makes someone more famous, more notable, and they don't see it as the end of the world. Anastasia opines that if employers start eliminating hires based on their Facebook pages, they would soon run out of viable candidates. The emphasis today is on celebrity (Top Model, etc.) and not so much on how you achieve it. They seek instant validation, which the technology can provide. How many views on YouTube this past hour? [Erm, or who's looking at my blog through lijit.com.] She gave examples of teen entrepreneurs becoming famous behind the scenes, so it's not all just for notoriety.

Education and School: Nickelodeon proposed taking the internet away from kids for a week and asked what they missed most. They claimed they were unable to do their homework. [A likely story!] When the computers go down in offices, the Babyboomers say, "Go get a pencil and do some brainstorming," and the GenYer's say, "We can't do anything - let's go to Starbuck's." Teens are great at getting information, they just don't have the patience to sift through the first five hits. They're great finders, but not memorizers [Now they keep their memories outside of their skulls?]. They depend too much on Wikipedia without thinking about any editing going on there. Corporations can edit Wikipedia to suit themselves. This can be tracked on Wikiscanner. Teens don't realize they can be manipulated.

Anastasia considers the blocking of social sites at schools (and some public libraries) to be a travesty. This means that there is no way for teachers to show them how they can be used better, safer. Teens are on their own, like in Lord of the Flies.

Teens are media multi-taskers; they'll have everything going at once. Homework, four browser windows open, music playing, IM popping in and out. The tv networks are terrified. They still read what's left of the teen magazines. They want shorter, bite-sized entertainment, like the webisodes. Prom Queen was a story in segments less than one minute long. They are the most-marketed to generation. They totally "get" brands. They brand themselves.

Things to do:
1. Survey your teens. [We are told over and over and over to ask people what they want, but do we do it? No. We decide what they should have and then get all frustrated that they aren't grateful and don't show up in droves. Again and again this happens. We know this, we've been told this by experts, and we never never never ever do it!]
2. Teach them reputation management
3. Teach them to recognize ID product placement, when something is not a straight-forward ad, but is sneaked into content.
4. The trailblazers need to evangelize - reach out beyond your trailblazing peers.
5. Support efforts to unblock social media in schools (and public libraries where it occurs)

Questions:
We weren't able to hear the questions asked (next time let's instruct the speakers to repeat them because I'm sure even all the people on location were able to hear the questions). There was a question about inappropriate relationships with the teens. Anastasia suggests you be available to teens, but not friends. Have your own friends and professional contacts, not teen friends.
Webblogged [couldn't find] has lists of books on using social networks and tech for education, also extensive blogrolls for online reference.
Kids want more and better cellphones because they want the internet available on their cellsphones. [OMG]