1. “THE WEB: NOT A LIBRARY, BUT A SHOPPING MALL” Nicole McMillan November 3, 2009

3. A bit about Ellen Seiter  Media scholar and professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego.  Two previous books:  Television and New Media Audiences (2001)  Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (1993)

4. Children’s Access – Is it a good thing?  Children generally thoroughly enjoy using computers.  There is always more information on the Internet than in a school’s library.  Personal and socially meaningful goals.

5. On the other hand…  Reliability of information.  Web browsing not easily monitored.  Profit motives of websites can be hidden.  Bias of information on Internet towards popular culture subjects.

6. Clearview  Well-funded school with middle class population.  Technology is top spending priority.  Computers in every classroom, plus a computer lab.  High standardized test scores.

7. Washington  Students from lower income families.  Computer access is extremely limited.  Few computers in every classroom, generally not working.  Lower scores on standardized tests.

8. “Children’s use of computers at home and at school”  Up-to-date programs on each computer.  Time spent in computer classroom each week.  Most students have computers at home.  Broken computers, different programs.  Limited time on computers during school hours.  Generally, do not have access to computers at home. ClearviewWashington

9. “Success-Maker” “shocked by the unimaginative and deeply traditional methods of learning SuccessMaker promoted. The program seemed to have achieved a nearly exact replication of the boring and conservative content, artwork, and questions found in the routine worksheets distributed for decades to U.S. students”. (p. 5)

10. How children learn…  Reverse Heritage  Children becoming more computer savvy than parents.  Hole in the Wall  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzPCYCI M8DU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzPCYCI M8DU

11. “Children, Politics, and the Internet: Stories from the Journalism Classroom.”  Clearview children knew more about reasonable stories.  Had less trouble navigating the Internet.  Turned to the community to look for stories.  Had trouble differentiating between informational sites and profit driven sites. ClearviewWashington

12. “Gender and Computer Affinity: Typing versus Gaming”  Gaming, visiting celebrity fan sites.  Lacked advantage of having been raised with technology.  “Tech-gods”  Greater interest in typing, and more academically focused.  Need to find ways to encourage girls to become more involved. Males (at Washington)Females (at Washington)

13. “Wrestling with the Web”  Students spend time on Internet looking up sites of personal interest.  The WWE dominated for Latino boys at Washington.  How can this be turned into an educational tool?

14. “Virtual Pets: Devouring the Children’s Market”  Based around virtual pets that live in the virtual world of Neopia.  Visitors create accounts and take care of up to four pets.  Earn NeoPoints through games, advertisements, etc.

15. Immersive Advertising “…the development of online role-playing game Neopets, which took advertising to children to an entirely new level.” (Seiter, p.84)

16. A Virtual World  Children under the age of 10 not capable of understanding marketing tactics.  Encouraging children to spend hours in front of the screen.  Recruiting children into consumer culture.

17. Seiter’s Conclusions  The Internet promised to be a tremendous new opportunity for education.  Deepens the divide between technologically rich and poor.  Don’t forget about the basics.  Children need to possess basic degree of information literacy.  Children need to be taught to be critical thinkers about cyberspace.

18. Questions?