Kids inevitably grow up to become adults. If adults are ill equipped to use the Internet safely, we’re going to suffer big-time in the world economy. Debate about who should be funding Internet safety education (hardware manufacturers, Congress, schools, the FBI, service providers) goes on and on. Some of the most aggressive education […]

No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The web is churning out some really interesting playplaces for young children. Places that find ways to keep them safe and keep them creative. It’s a renaissance of the early days of CD ROMs when good content for kids was abundant; the only difference is that the CD […]

Here’s a column that I wrote a few years ago. In light of the new Pew Internet Life study that shows the differences between boys and girls in terms of use of social media, I thought I’d look back at how we’ve mentored and helped girls while we’ve let boys flounder. I […]

There’s been quite a fuss made over the XO, developed by Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The OLPC vision was to design a low-cost, but powerful, connected PC in order to provide kids all over the world with Internet-power. OLCP wants to sell the XO in bulk to third world countries. After two […]

Have toys always been dangerous and we just didn’t know it? Salon author Katharine Mieszkowski recounted the summer’s toy fiascoes and it wasn’t a pretty read.

Whoever said, “parenting is done when the kids head off to college” obviously never lived with college-aged kids. They call to give you the gory details of their latest breakdown/calamity/bad day… whatever. You’ll spend a week fretting about it and they’ll forget it ever happened.

I spent Groundhog Day in Cisco’s New York offices with 70 students representing the cream of the crop of high schools that are a part of the Academy, a program designed to teach students how to build and maintain networks. The participating schools partner with Cisco to offer basic network administration certification. If it sounds […]