[kids online: new publication]

"Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks for Children", edited by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon (Bristol: Policy Press). 

The book provides an up to date account of how children use the internet in Europe, including such topical issues as social networking, risky contacts, parental mediation, media literacy and many more.


Ordering information is available here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EUKidsOnline/KidsOnlineflyer.pdf

As Professor Tanya Byron, author of the influential Byron Review into Safer Children in a Digital World says, "Professor Livingstone and colleagues provide extensive evidence-based findings which enable academics, educationalists, policy makers, parents and young people to think beyond anxieties generated by new technologies and make informed decisions about maximizing digital opportunities while managing risks. An impressive and essential book, central to the child digital safety debate."


Expected Results:

• Core findings regarding children’s and parents’ experiences of online technologies, focused on comparisons of children’s and parents’ perceptions of and practices regarding online risk and safety.
  
• Patterns of risk and safety online to be identified following top-down hypothesis testing and bottom-up exploration of relationships among different variables, conducted on a cross-national basis.
  
• Evidence-based policy and research recommendations.
  

Read more here.






Note: top image from Kids Online book site and second image from Teenagers Today site.

I found this super article via Gerry McKiernan at Reference Notes. Have a read:

New York Times / August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm / Updated: 1:29 pm / Steve Lohr

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion:

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.

Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.

That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.

This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools. The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

[snip]

“We are at an inflection point in online education,” said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program. Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. [snip]

“The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways,” Mr. Regier said. “People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

Source

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/]

Full Text Available At

[http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf]

[social media analytics]

Great post from Ben Parr on Mashable on how to track social media stats:

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Understand what you want to track

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As with most things in life, you can’t conquer what you don’t understand, or at least what you haven’t really though about.

What is your goal? Do you want to track how people are sharing your website? Do you want to track a specific social media campaign? Or maybe you’re just interested in trends related to a specific meme or social media phenomenon? Each one requires different tools and different focus.

You’re going to focus on traffic statistics if you’re tracking social media website engagement, while if you’re tracking a wider campaign, TwitterTwitter reviews response and positive comments might be a more appropriate metric.

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Optimize your existing analytics software

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Most of us use analytics software like Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics reviews, Woopra, or Omniture to track website data like traffic, visitors, pages per visitor, and traffic sources. Most of these analytics tools can track a wealth of data, but they are not designed to track social media data. Luckily, there are a few ways to beef up your analytics software for social media. Some quick tools and suggestions:

Social Media Metrics Plugin: Social Media Metrics is a greasemonkey extension that adds a social media information layer to Google Analytics, providing information on Diggs, stumbles, delicious bookmarks, and more for each individual page. Be aware - it’s not perfect.

Set up specific campaigns and events for social media: Most analytics software has custom campaigns to make it easy to track specific events. You can track a specific Twitter traffic campaign or DiggBar URL with campaigns.

Reorganize dashboards and set up email reports: To get specific information on social media, have traffic stats from top social media websites (i.e. Digg, FacebookFacebook reviews, Twitter, etc.) emailed to you so you can see it all in one place. In addition, reorganize any dashboards you have to show this information for easy access.

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Add new analytics tools

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Even with web analytics tools, you don’t have all the tools necessary to get started tracking analytics related to social media. Why not add some more tools to your inventory that track detailed social metrics? Some suggestions:

Bit.ly: When you use a URL shortener, it’s always a smart idea to use one that has analytics information, like Bit.ly. This will track information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.

Xinureturns: Despite the funny Scientology-inspired name, xinureturns provides a great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.

PostRank: Formerly known as AideRSS, PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeedFriendFeed reviews all in one place. It’s best for blogs and websites with a lot of content.

SocialToo: SocialToo is a comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social stats. It also will send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter.

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Aggregate your analytics

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There are a lot of tools for gathering social media information, but no one place has everything you need. You don’t have time to look at all of the tools, so aggregate your analytics information.

There is no single tool that will bring this information together, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Export data into excel, pdf, or email and record all of the information to one area, whichever works best for you. Building a spreadsheet may be best for playing with the numbers. Make it easily accessible.

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Analyze and engage

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The last step is always the most important one - the actual analysis. It takes years of dedication to the art of web analytics to really understand how each variable affects website traffic and user engagement, but by looking at this data in one place and comparing the information, you will hopefully be able to pick up on trends.

This guide is only how to get started with social media analytics. Take the time to find great tools and to understand how each of the social media levers affects traffic and analytics data. But most of all, use the data to engage your audience. You can figure out what they’re looking for using social media analytics, so be sure to act upon the data once you’ve analyzed it.

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Read the post here: http://mashable.com/2009/04/19/social-media-analytics/

[social networks and adult usage - stats]

From the Pew Internet Report by Amanda Lenhart

The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from 8% in 2005 to 35% now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35% number represents a larger number of users than the 65% of online teens who also use online social networks.

Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75% of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.

Overall, personal use of social networks seems to be more prevalent than professional use of networks, both in the orientation of the networks that adults choose to use as well as the reasons they give for using the applications. Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks to connect with people they already know.

When users do use social networks for professional and personal reasons, they will often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60% of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it, and 58% of adult social network users restrict access to certain content within their profile.

View PDF of Report

Other Online Activities & Pursuits Resources

Memo | Adults and Video Games

Memo | Search Engine Use

Report | The Internet and Consumer Choice

Report | Online Shopping

Memo | Increased Use of Video-sharing Sites

Related Topic Areas

Technology & Media Use

[literate cities]

Six key elements are analysed in this study to dechipher which city is the most literate (American cities only) in 2008. These include: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources and are then compared to the population rate (but only in cities greater than 250,000).

Somewhat oddly, the study does NOT include "reading test scores or how often people read, but what kinds of literary resources are available and used."

"Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers."

The author of the study, Dr. John Miller, makes a very interesting observation:

"While it is too early in this study to draw conclusions, it is nevertheless striking that newspaper readership rates in the US’s global economic competitors are significantly higher than in the US. Since literacy is generally regarded as a barometer of a nation’s social, cultural, and economic health, perhaps these findings are cause for national concern."

According to the USA Today report, "Preliminary results of a related study examining international literacy paint a less optimistic outlook for the USA. It notes that in per-capita paid newspaper circulation, the USA ranks only 31st in the world, far behind other countries, including Aruba, Liechtenstein and Japan."

[breathing earth]

During my presentation yesterday for the Creative Writing & New Media Online Master's students (who met in Leicester f2f for one week) I referred to some interesting narratives that are merging story with geographic information and/or maps. Two projects I referred to were The 21 Steps and a school trip project by Emerson College. In line with my developing interest on the role of geographic information (and the like) in narratives, the following project fits right in - linking cultural narratives (of co2 emissions, births and deaths) with countries. Thanks to a tweet today by @fromthehip aka Ingrid Kopp, I found The Breathing Earth Simulation:


The countries in red (at the time of this screen capture) - US, China and Saudi Arabia - are "currently emmitting 1000 tonnes of CO2." It's also interesting to see how the birth/death rates compare:
Someone dies/is born every:
China: 3.5 seconds/1.8 seconds
Saudi Arabi: 8 minutes/42.7 seconds
US: 12.8 seconds/7.3 seconds

In Canada: 2.1 minutes/1.5 minutes
In the UK: 51.8 seconds/ 48.9 seconds - so in the UK deaths and births seem to be pretty balanced. While Greenland seems to be the country with the slowest death and birth rates: 20 hours/9.8 hours


The project is created by David Bleja.

[blogging around the world]

I came across this excellent graphic that puts blogging in geographical perspective:




Interesting but not sure if the stats add up, especially given this recent article suggesting Japan as leading blog readers...

[google algorithm]

There's an interesting article on Google's ranking algorithm and the "master" behind it, Amit Singhal, in yesterday's New York Times.

"Google often finds what users want, but it doesn’t always.

That’s why Amit Singhal and hundreds of other Google engineers are constantly tweaking the company’s search engine in an elusive quest to close the gap between often and always.

Mr. Singhal is the master of what Google calls its “ranking algorithm” — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user’s question. It is a crucial part of Google’s inner sanctum, a department called “search quality” that the company treats like a state secret.

[...]

“The fundamental value created by Google is the ranking,” says John Battelle, the chief executive of Federated Media, a blog ad network, and author of “The Search,” a book about Google.

[...]

“Google has become the lifeblood of the Internet,” Mr. Battelle says. “You have to be in it.”

Good news for bloggers:

"Freshness, which describes how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search result, is at the center of a constant debate in search: Is it better to provide new information or to display pages that have stood the test of time and are more likely to be of higher quality? Until now, Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them."

Enter a new algorithm called QDF (Quality Deserves Freshness!).

"THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot.” If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information."

[google ≠ privacy]

Google's Data-Storing Feature Fuels Privacy Fears
By Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writer
April 21, 2007

"Facing worries about its tracking Web surfers' every move, Google Inc. is now offering a feature to track Web surfers' every move.

Its free Web History service is strictly voluntary — Google users can sign up to have the Internet giant keep detailed records of every website they visit so they can easily find them again later.

The feature is similar to that offered by Web browsers, except the data are stored on Google's servers instead of users' computers and there's no set time after which it is erased.

Web History's quiet debut this week came as privacy advocates continued to raise alarms about the prospect of Google combining its collection of information on individuals with that of DoubleClick Inc. Google has agreed to acquire the New York-based company, which distributes Web ads and tracks where the majority of people go on the Internet, for $3.1 billion.

Three consumer groups filed a complaint over Google's privacy practices with the Federal Trade Commission on Friday, asking it to investigate before approving the DoubleClick deal.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and two allied groups make a novel argument: Although Google discloses how it retains data in its privacy policy, the search engine goliath is engaging in deceptive practices because most Google users don't know that their search queries can be tied to them, the groups say.

The complaint to the FTC cites a 2006 poll by the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based research group that studies privacy issues. When Google users were asked whether they believed that the company captured data that could be used to identify them, 77% said no.

In fact, Google ties search queries to the Internet address associated with a specific computer. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said last month that it would "anonymize" the data by stripping those addresses from its records after 18 to 24 months.

"Polling information can be persuasive in establishing a reasonable belief that the data aren't identifiable," said privacy attorney Chris Hoofnagle, who worked at the Electronic Privacy Information Center and is now at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. "They've got a shot, but it's still a stretch."

In a statement, Google said the electronic privacy group's complaint was "unsupported by the facts and the law." It said that the trust of its users was essential, that its privacy policies were clear and that its users were given choices about what would be done with their information.

Google says the personal data it collects allow it to customize its search and other services, making them more useful for consumers.

Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner agreed that Google users benefited from the practice but said it was a trade-off most people were uncomfortable with. Still, he said, Google continues to push the boundaries because "in order to continue to evolve its product, it truly needs for some of these things to be overcome."

Privacy concerns also have arisen over DoubleClick. A public outcry in 2000 ended the ad company's efforts to use people's names and Internet addresses in tracking online habits. In 2002, it settled lawsuits by state attorneys general and consumers over its privacy practices and promised to tell consumers more about their ability to block tracking software.

Google and DoubleClick took pains this week to explain that because only DoubleClick's advertising clients own the data about where Web surfers go, Google cannot simply merge that information with the profiles it has.

But Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security researcher, said Google could instead give its data to DoubleClick's clients.

"It doesn't matter if it is in one big database," Smith said. "It will go the other way."

DoubleClick referred questions on that theory to Google, which declined to make an executive available for comment.

As for the new Web History offering, Smith notes that Google already collects lists of websites visited when people use its Toolbar and PageRank functions.

Web History, Smith said, "illustrates to people directly how much information Google is capable of collecting."

['net gender stats]

So, in the US it seems women outnumber men in terms of online use:
"eMarketer estimates that there will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million US females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population."



The University of Southern California's Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future reported that in 2006 the percentage of females who went online had, for the first time in the six years the center has conducted the survey, surpassed males. It reported that 78.4% of the female population ages 12 and older go online, vs. 76.7% of males.

However, from the CBC, "women don't appear to be as enamoured of online video as their male counterparts, the study found. Only 66 per cent of the estimated 97.2 million females online watch videos, compared with 78 per cent of the 90.9 million men."

"A Statistics Canada study of adults conducted in 2005 found a minuscule difference in usage between the sexes, with 68 per cent of men versus 67.8 per cent of women counting as internet users" (CBC).


Links from Slashdot.