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Last week, we started this series of articles by exploring published best practices with a focus on creating content. This week we continue learning about

children spend substantial amounts of time with media including television, computers, and mobile devices and rather than focusing solely on child screen time, this survey sought to understand the role of the parents in creating the home media environment in which children are being raised today.

Three main findings from this study:

In contrast to the popular press image that mobile technology is the new pacifier used to calm and quiet down children, our survey shows that parents today have a range of tools at their disposal and other tools are used more often than mobile technologies.  Parents are more likely to use toys or activities (87%), books (79%), and TV (77%) when they need to keep children occupied than mobile media devices like smartphones or iPads (37% among those who have one).
Parents have encyclopedias full of information at their fingertips, storybooks on their kindles, and a selection of games in their pocket, yet for most parents media is not their number one concern, it is not something that they often have family conflict about, and most parents say new mobile devices do not make parenting easier. Fewer parents were concerned with the impact of media on their children especially compared to more global issues like health, nutrition, and social emotional skills.  Most parents (70%) say smartphones and tablets do not make parenting easier.  Also, media use does not cause family conflicts.
Yes, young children spend considerable amounts of time with screen media (see Common Sense Media, 2011), but so do their parents.  And it seems that parents of young children may be setting the stage for the home media environment that their young children will grow up in. About 27% of families were “media centric“ families.  These families have parents who themselves consume an average of 11 hours of screen media a day.  Most of these parents (81%) say they are “very” or “somewhat” likely to use TV to keep their child occupied when they need to get something done at home.  Many children in these families (48%) have TVs in their bedroom and children spend an average of almost 4.5 hours with screen media per day.  In contrast, “media light” families consist of parents who spend less than 2 hours per day with screen media.  These families are less likely to enjoy watching TV or movies together as a family “a lot” and are less likely to use TV when getting their child ready for bed.  Children in these families spend about an hour and a half with media each day.

Of course it’s not actually Twitter that does this; it’s the individuals I have connected with in those 6 year, from all corners of this wonderful world and from all walks of life and cultures. These people, who I’ve built my Personal Learning Network (PLN) around, have made me laugh, cry, think, reflect, criticise, critique, avoid, seek out, and generally strive to know more about myself.

The great thing is that you/they had no idea they were doing it, or even part of it. That’s because that’s what I use Twitter for. You might use Twitter for something else; running buddies, charity auctions, account complaints, celebrity stalking, coffee-shop cake comparisons. We each have our own version of the same system that offers our own unique answers or destinations. 

- See more at: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/social-network/how-twitter-can-be-used-for-informal-personal-learning/#sthash.pv4HyoqJ.dpuf

Every application in the Google Apps suite has it’s own deep feature set. Even when you think you have them all mastered, they surprise you with a few more hidden (…) Read more