Facebook requires that to have an account you must be at least 13 years of age or older. It is obvious that many kids are ignoring that rule, but how many of them are being helped by their parents to lie?
A national study published this month in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday, by Danah Boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz and John Palfrey, shows that the parents are either misinterpreting the federally-mandated age restriction or helping their children break the law. The study included over 1,000 U.S. parents whose children are between the ages of 10 and 14.
The study found that, on average, most children joined Facebook at age 12. Thirty-six percent of these parents in the study knew that their child was joining before the legal age, and an astounding 68 percent of these parents helped their children lie in order to join the social-networking site.
The National Institute of Mental Health has granted NYU Steinhardt and the University of Arizona’s researches $2.8 million to conduct a thorough study on the risk of suicide for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.
The study will be done over three years and will assess over 1,000 LGBT youth from the ages of 15 to 21. The co-investigator of the study, Stephen Russell, said, “Our emphasis will be comparing LGBT youth who do and do not experience any suicidal behaviors, which can include suicidal thoughts, threats, and even attempts.”
The study hopefully will have a positive effect on this population because it will enable LGBT youth to “feel more hopeful about the future, and reduce risk factors,” Russell said.
With over 2,700 tutorial videos on the Khan Academy Web site, Salam Khan has created one of the world’s largest free educational online library. Khan, who has four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, posted math videos on YouTube for his young cousins to learn from. After word spread of his videos, Khan created the Khan Academy, which now has videos covering algebra all the way to college-level calculus and chemistry.
Khan, who quit his job as a hedge fund manager, is now dedicating his time to the Khan Academy. However, the popularity of Khan’s videos has led to millions of dollars in donations including $1.5 million from Bill Gates’ foundation, which Khan uses to pay himself a salary.
According to Tech Crunch, Khan’s videos have been viewed over 82 million times on YouTube. Khan’s plans for the site include expanding the subject areas, adding more faculty members, and translating the videos to widely used languages.
Nearly 25,000 participants marched in today’s 82nd annual Veterans Day Parade, which included officers, veterans, their families, bands and students. The parade marched up Fifth Avenue, as the veterans were cheered by crowds of pedestrians for their courage and strength in defending our nation.
The parade started at 11 a.m. on Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, and by 12:30 p.m. it had made its way to 56th Street, pictured here.
The 2011 National Assessment of Education Progress scores were released this past week on the center’s Web site.
In the math section, 40 percent of fourth-graders and 35 percent of eighth-graders in our nation’s public schools scored proficient or advanced, the highest percentage seen since NAEP started over 20 years ago. In New York state, however, the public school students scored lower than the national average in math for the first time since the tests began.
In the reading section, 34 percent of eighth-graders in the nation’s public schools scored either proficient or advanced, a slight improvement from the previous year’s scores. The reading scores for fourth-graders remained the same as 2009, with 34 percent scoring proficient or advanced. In New York State, fourth-graders scored higher than the national average in reading, and eighth-graders didn’t score significantly different from the rest of the country.
On November 4 BELL Academy Principal Cheryl Quatrano-Hatzidimitriou received the NAGC/Ball State University Administrator's Award from John E. Jacobson, Ball State Dean. The award was presented at the National Association for Gifted Children Conference in New Orleans. BELL staff members Justine Roseblum, Robin Russell and parent coordinator Connie Scalici participated in a workshop on gifted education with Quatrano-Hatzidimitriou.
