LearnMeter offers FREE Lifetime Membership on World Telecommunications & Information Society Day
Announcement posted by FIC Technology 13 May 2015
In celebration of World Telecommunications & Information Society Day, LearnMeter (www.learnmeter.com) is offering subscribers lifetime membership. World Telecommunications & Information Society Day is on 17 May and 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the International Telecommunication Union.
The purpose of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide.
LearnMeter is a new educational tool that has been developed to help parents and children improve online learning skills. For parents of younger children, it provides an assessment of their children’s digital habits and skills and information about their learning activities, gaming and websites that they are viewing. It can show them their children’s top on-line activities and time spent on them. For teenagers who have more independence and responsibility, LearnMeter gives teens the tools to learn how to self-manage and balance their screen time between productive and leisure activities.
LearnMeter works by analysing children’s computer use and study habits and providing instant feedback to children for self-improvement as well as reporting live activity and analysed historical data back to the children and the parents. This allows children to be better aware of how they use computers and parents to keep up with what's happening in their children’s online world without spying on them, looking over their shoulders or having to wade through logs of hundreds of activities.
"Digital devices are now a staple ingredient in many children's lives and instrumental in both leisure and learning. However, many kids have their own device and may be able to access it without limits so parents don't always know what activities kids are being undertaken online. This lack of information can have a negative impact on our learning, society and behaviour," says Jocelyn Brewer, a psychologist who has created the concept ‘Digital Nutrition’.LearnMeter also emails parents weekly reports on their children’s activity profile and learning skills, showing trends and ranking against good study techniques and their peers of the same age, area and country.
Jocelyn continues, “Information on key activities and time engaged in these activities creates an opportunity for parents to discuss their kid’s (and their own!) online patterns and habits. Having information that can be shared in a non-confrontational way is useful to start a process of change and improvement in the typology of what more healthy, balanced and ‘nutritional’ online habits might look like.”
LearnMeter is non-restrictive and non-censoring. Although parents can see summaries of where their children have visited, they can’t see any content. LearnMeter can however, display a history of children’s top activities, revealing not just inappropriate sites but also excessive gaming and social networking. Knowing that you can effectively supervise makes children more responsible and is a powerful protection.
As most children now have access to the internet, a second digital divide is opening up between advantaged children knowing how to leverage technology to succeed and the less advantaged, who lack the skills and get distracted by the endless available leisure. By measuring and informing parents of their children’s online learning skills, LearnMeter can help parents give their children the life-long advantage of the crucial digital learning skills needed for success in the 21st Century. For teenagers and even adults, LearnMeter can provide the much needed data and information for self-monitoring and improvement of the quality of their online time.
LearnMeter is available now at www.learnmeter.com. FREE Lifetime Membership is available to anyone who subscribes on 17 May 2015.
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Editor’s Notes:
LearnMeter is available from most browsers and as a free Android app. The IOS app will be available shortly.
LearnMeter is part of a philanthropic commercial project Next Parent, undertaken by FIC Technology a company founded by Dr Michael Cejnar, an Australian physician, software entrepreneur and father of two girls. Its primary goal is to make computers count in education. Computers should instruct and not distract.
Next Parent is a project focused on creating new methods that inspire school-age children to spend more time learning and discovering the world around them through innovative software applications.
A companion SchoolMeter product is currently being evaluated for use in schools in NSW and Singapore.