Digital Literacy

Helping Parents Make Sense of their Kids’ Digital Lives through Internet Safety Education and Media Literacy

Overwhelmed is a word that easily describes how many parents feel today about the digital world’s effect on their children’s lives.  The technological gap between what parents know and what kids know is growing as kids keep better pace with digital gadgetry and social media.  Parents, however, have the life experience and maturity to help their kids use new technologies in a healthy and balanced way.  When parents close the gap on technological inexperience, they are better prepared to take part in their kids’ digital lives.  Through this blog, parents can create a more harmonious digital environment for their families by tackling cyber bullying challenges, following internet safety tips, passing along netiquette rules, and understanding the new world of social media, particularly with regard to Facebook safety.

Teaching Media Literacy to Kids through Stories

Literature has always helped children learn about the world in which they live.  In old fables, wisdom was passed from adult to child through wondrous stories that nurtured a young person’s sense of self in a world they did not yet fully understand.  The onset of the digital age, however, has added a significant new element to the modern child’s experience.  Increasingly, guides for parents and teachers, along with school workshops for students, are made available to fill that void.

However, kids need more than lectures and fear-tactics to instruct them about internet safety.  Kids can learn as much, if not more, about the digital experience and how it fits into their lives through the age-old method of storytelling.

Danielle Bileski strives to write engaging children’s books about the digital world that both entertain and enlighten young readers as to the role that the internet may have in their own lives.    Her first book, Danny in a Newfangled World, is a cautionary tale about the internet featuring a spunky 10 year old boy who gets sucked inside his computer.  It became available in October 2010.