Commonsense Media Website

Hello,

This week I want to let you know about a great website that will help you in numerous ways. Do you want to teach digital citizenship? Review digital citizenship? Learn if a book or movie or video game is appropriate for your child or students? You can do all this at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/. There is a place to click if you are a parent or an educator. Lesson plans along with activities are available. This week I have had my students working on the Digital Citizenship site. For us, it is a review over some of the lessons we have learned this quarter. It looks like just fun and games, but there is still some learning that can happen.

Another thing I like about this website is that there are book reviews available. If you see that a student of yours is reading a book that appears to be inappropriate for school, you can type the title in and usually a review will come up that gives a lot of information about the content. The books are rated for educational value, positive messages, positive role models and representations, violence, sex, language, consumerism, and drinking/drugs/ and smoking. An age level that the book would be appropriate for is also given. There is a summary of the book and usually reviews from parents who have read the book and also kids who have read the book. Parents can give an age recommendation and kids can give age recommendations, too. Another section gives subjects that families can talk about with their kids regarding the book.

I have been hearing a lot about the game Fortnite, so I looked it up on Commonsense. The age level that Commonsense gives for this game is 13+. Parents say age 11+ and kids say 10+. Here are the other scores for that particular game.

Educational Value 2/5
Positive messages 3/5
Postivie role models 2/5
Ease of Play 3/5
Violence 3/5
Sex not present
Language 1/5
Consumerism 3/5
Drinking/drugs not present

The “What Parents Need to Know’ section has a nice long paragraph telling about the game and the players.

Reviews of the game by one parent says that the game is ‘gun violence sugar-coated’ and give the age for the game as 18+. One 12 year old student reviews the game and grades it as age 6+. It is interesting to read the reviews and see what different opinions people have. It also helps someone who is having questions or issues about a game to know more about it without having to play it for hours personally.
This website also gives articles to read such as “!0 Most Violent Video Games of 2014 (and What to Play Instead).

All in all, I really like this website. It is full of great advice and information. I recommend that you let parents know about this site so they have the opportunity to make better choices for their children.

Have a great week,
Audrey