Category — Public Policy

Across the pond, Dr. Tanya Byron, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, recently released an important set of E-safety recommendations for children. Her report, “Safer Children in a Digital World,” was commissioned by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007 in response to growing concerns about the dangers of the Internet.
Ms. Byron’s recommendations appear, dare we say [...]

[Read more →]

According to Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, the authors of Grand Theft Childhood, those people examining violent video game play may in fact be asking the wrong questions and making incorrect assumptions. As but one example, the authors note that “instead of looking for a simple, direct relationship between video game violence and violent [...]

[Read more →]

An interview with Dr. Cheryl Olson,
author of Grand Theft Childhood
In my previous post, I acknowledged a long-standing personal concern regarding the potential detrimental effects of playing violent video games, especially the impact such play might have on teens. That stated, in our prior piece we referenced the latest research from two Harvard professors, research that [...]

[Read more →]

If you are a parent of a teen today you are no doubt concerned about what you hear regarding violent video games. Generally speaking, there appears to be a wide-spread consensus that such games are the bane of society and the source of growing anti-social and risk-taking behavior in teens.
At the same time, if [...]

[Read more →]

A 2006 article from RethinkingSchools.org should become mandatory reading for anyone in early childhood education, particularly those teaching in public schools. The post is titled “Why We Banned Legos” and carries the most interesting of subtitles, “Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom.”
Banning Legos
The article by Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin [...]

[Read more →]

The Internet has been abuzz since the release of “What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?” by Ellen Gamerman of the Wall Street Journal. In essence, Finland teens are able to deliver the goods on international tests and now American educators have begun researching the Finnish system to see what tidbits they can glean.
According to [...]

[Read more →]

For the first time in American history, one out of every 100 American adults is in jail or prison according to a report released by the Pew Center on the States. With roughly 1.5 million in state and federal prisons and 700,000+ in local jails, the United States now has 2.3 million adults incarcerated. As [...]

[Read more →]

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has enjoyed immense popularity thus far but as the state struggles with an enormous budget shortfall, the Governor appears to have unknowingly unearthed a flawed legislative proposal that was actually defeated by the Florida Legislature two years back. As one segment of a three prong attack to address the budget problems, [...]

[Read more →]

We found that trying to concoct one list of the digital commons success stories was simply beyond the scope of our small site. The number of truly noteworthy developments is large and growing more substantial by the day, each new venture seemingly offering yet additional opportunities for further growth.
In fact, it is precisely as [...]

[Read more →]

In our last post we expressed our strong support for a free and open web. To try to get to the heart of the Creative Commons movement, we were fortunate to be able to interview Ahrash N. Bissell, Ph.D., the Executive Director of ccLearn (the educational division within the Creative Commons).
Dr. Bissell previously served [...]

[Read more →]