Facebook for kids

A social networking site for children as young as 7 launches soon. Is this really a good idea?

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Videogames By Land And Sea With Disney

Videogames have become mainstream entertainment thanks in large part to Nintendo’s Wii and Nintendo DS. Gaming is now influencing Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) as they craft new experiences for Disneyland, Walt Disney World and the Disney Cruise Line ships.

“Our audience is ever-changing and the more videogames become popular, the more visitors to our theme parks expect to interact in their world and also in their entertainment,” said Sue Byran, senior show producer and director, WDI. “When we were working on DisneyQuest 12 years ago, our audience was mostly frightened by the idea of interactivty, we now have an audience that’s excited about it.”

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George Sampson gets online series

Bebo will go behind the scenes with Britain’s Got Talent winner George Sampson in a special online series following the young street dancer.

Follow My Lead, is a collaboration between Bebo and Simon Cowell’s Syco Music which will get up close and personal with Sampson while teaches viewers his signature moves.

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Guilty Verdict in Cyberbullying Case Provokes Many Questions Over Online Identity

Is lying about one’s identity on the Internet now a crime?

The verdict Wednesday in the MySpace cyberbullying case raised a variety of questions about the terms that users agree to when they log on to Web sites.  The defendant in the case, a Missouri woman, was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles on three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud for having misrepresented herself on the popular social network MySpace. The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teenage boy in using the account to send first friendly and then menacing messages to Megan Meier, 13, who killed herself shortly after receiving a message in October 2006 that said in part, “The world would be a better place without you.”

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Schools minister shifts focus to parents

The schools minister, Jim Knight, shifted the onus for improving children‘s educational and life chances on to parents today.

Speaking at the Special Schools and Academies Trust conference, Knight said: “If we’re really serious about narrowing attainment gaps, we’ve got to put more of our focus on parents.”

He urged schools to do more to engage parents, saying they were “our best ally”, a “hugely untapped resource” and “one of the most important influences on a child’s educational attainment”.

The shift in emphasis will come as a relief for schools and teachers, who have been bombarded with government initiatives that put the responsibility for improving children’s prospects on them.

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