Veteran’s Day Snapshot: Kids Speak About Military Family Life

Nov 11, 2010 As a global citizen coming from a lifelong military family background, Veteran’s Day is a touchy topic with me, as I’ve written before, “it’s not about mattress sales” and it’s not … [Read more...]

Safety Expert Uses Media Literacy to Deconstruct McAfee Study

July 2, 2010 When I first saw this  note in my social media stream it raised my media literacy eyebrows to explore further. It said, “Interesting: McAfee has a very diff take on their own study  … [Read more...]

Green Hedgehogs in Virtual Worlds? Let Your Leprechauns Loose!

Mar. 17, 2010 This morning I changed my Firefox 3.6 "persona" to shamrocks for the day, eliciting a green with envy response from my not so lil’ leprechaun teen who delighted in a green apple sour … [Read more...]

Free Media Finds That Are Priceless Year-Round

Dec. 16, 2009 Got gifts? Not sure when we jumped from “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” to bold-type headlines of “last minute gifts!”---but I’m still holding my own on the ‘haven’t stepped in a mall’ … [Read more...]

Meaningful Manga: Graphic Novels and Growth

Update: May 21, 2014 Our friends at Reach and Teach have added another clever manga style illustrated book called "A is for Action" which merits an update! I love the seeding of social change in a fun … [Read more...]

CyberBullying Tragedies and Internet Safety: eModeration Part3

Dec. 3, 2009 Just visited the excellent Connect Safely forum to pose the industry question, is there ANYthing that digital moderators or online advocates could’ve done in the child safety realm to … [Read more...]

CyberSafety Online: Tips From The Inside Out Via eModeration (Part 2)

Nov. 26, 2009 Who’s minding the kids online? What’s ‘moderation’ got to do with it? It doesn’t take a retro flashback to know that “Kids say the darndest things,” but who is there to help them … [Read more...]

Internet Safety: Media Literacy Tips From Industry Insiders Pt 1

Nov. 24, 2009 As fall weather kicks in and families hunker indoors to ‘more screen time’ than summer time norms, I hear tales of media management missteps that would spin heads faster than a Linda … [Read more...]

MyVetwork: Connecting The Digital Dots For Veterans Globally

Nov. 11, 2009 With the outpouring of sadness regarding Fort Hood, the scary statistics surfacing on PTSD and women soliders under 'friendly fire' from missles of a different kind, and … [Read more...]

Disney XD: A Case Study on Packaging Boyhood

Nov. 3, 2009 In diving into media messages targeting boys for my weekly Tuesday Packaging Boyhood posts, my mind snap went to ‘gaming’ pronto. Is this a stereotype? Or did I just do a Malcolm … [Read more...]

Blog Action Day: Inspiring Kids As Stewards of the Planet

Oct. 15, 2009 Today is 'Blog Action Day' powered by Change.org, when over 12,000+ global writers turn their sites on one topic to reach millions of eyeballs one day to appeal to their own … [Read more...]

Virtual Reality Meets Health2.0 For Kids Wellness & Therapy

Oct. 9, 2009 Once upon a time in my former life as a creative director and copywriter, I was asked to create a compelling headline for a learning simulation  where young Stanford law students could … [Read more...]

Health2.0: Hunting Cryptic Cryptids in Cryptozoo!

Oct. 8, 2009 As we observe October as health month in multiple media iterations of kids' mental and physical well-being, it's fitting that I've been away covering the excitement at Health2.0 this … [Read more...]

Mindless Eating Goes Mobile: HealthGamers Unite!

Feb. 18, 2015 Interesting pairing of mindful eating with the ongoing distracted driving problems which I've written about often regarding what works to drive behavior change...in this MD's new … [Read more...]

Fun in the Forest Earns Dizzywood Online A NAPPA Gold Award!

Sept. 23, 2009 Ah, the first day of fall... An apt time to think about leaves, forests, colorful worlds and transitions into autumn when kids spend more time indoors and parents start hand-wringing … [Read more...]

Privo Privacy Vault: How Safe is Kids Digital Data? Part 2

July 14, 2009 Yesterday in my Part One preamble to the interview with Privo executives, I tried to give an overview of how 'kids online safety' is more than 'balancing safety and fun' it's politics, … [Read more...]

healthGAMERS Part Two: Interview With Melanie Lazarus, MPH

June 30, 2009 Today in my Twitter feed (yes, I finally joined, see sidebar badge!) I immediately benefited from the 'following' phenom to shortcut my research time when a new friend/follower in … [Read more...]

healthGAMERS: Newly Launched Hub For Serious Gaming

June 26, 2009 Just as some kids can sniff out an ‘educational’ experience and shut the learning light switch off (or dim it at best) others do the same with the phrase "Serious Games." Though it's … [Read more...]

SmartyCard: Summer Screen Time For The Quiz Whiz

June 2, 2009 Been at Ypulse all day with updates to come, so here's part two in the SmartyCard series! Message for summer study time? Save a tree, ditch the workbooks! Without fail, every year I … [Read more...]

HopeLab Launches “Sticky Notes” Blog To Make Their Thinking Visible

May 31, 2009 I know our friends at HopeLab have been active on Twitter and their own Facebook group and use SlideShare and all that, but as I’ve said many a time, microblogging and 140 character sound … [Read more...]