Essence And AT&T Bridging the Gap

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	community/events Essence And AT&T Join Forces To Bridge Digital Divide by Sheresa Jenkins Photos by Jason Taylor
	On April 25, Essence and AT&T hosted a panel discussion titled: "Bridging The Gap: A Tech Savvy Generation". The point of the talk was to educate both students and parents from East Harlem School at Exodus House, P.S. 16 in Jersey City and Girl Scouts of Jersey City about the pros and cons of the Internet. About 200 to 250 people attended the debate featuring Robin Stone, Executive Editor of Essence magazine; Hans Hagerman, Executive Director of East Harlem School at Exodus House; Joan Fenwick, National Director of AT&T Learning Network; and Omar Wasow, Executive Director of BlackPlanet.com. HarlemLive was also in attendance and was represented with class and style by the talented Danya Steele.
	The panelists were each given 15 minutes to speak about the Internet, how it can be used to your advantage and also how it can take advantage of you. First up was Stone, whose speech dealt with how young people use the Internet and how it's important for parents to be involved so that they know what their child is viewing online. Stone also talked about what television shows are educational and which ones really don't offer any real lessons to be learned. Among the shows on Stone's non-educational list was "Rugrats". At the close of her presentation she left the parents with a little advice: "It's about knowing what's right for your kids."	Parenting A Tech Savvy Generation by Danya Steele On Wednesday, April 25th, 2001, Essence Magazine and At&T partnered up for an open-panel discussion titled "Bridging the Gap: Parenting a Tech Savvy Generation". To read more click here.
	Hagerman, an educator, spoke about good web sites children could use do research as well as great game sites. On his list were: Kidsdomain.com, refdesk.com, cnet.com, and epinions.com. He also shared some of the good web sites to buy computer software from like :Allstarreview.com, Schoolhousereview.com, and gazette.com. He also gave his opinion on good software like Reader Blaster, One on One with SAT, Word Smart, Where In The World is Carmen San Diego, The Sims, Reading Coach, Clue Finder, and Jump Start. As his closing advice he told the audience, "Look for the sites that leave things up to your imagination." Next, Fenwick explained how ATT.com could be used for research as well as geocities.com, yahoo.com, and tripod.com. Fenwick presented a lot of statistics, for example :65% of all jobs will require information technology skills, and it took 2 years for the Internet to reach 50million people. HarlemLive's Danya Steele spoke about HarlemLive and all the great resources she's gained from it. Steele showed the site and a number of her articles and explained to the audience how much could be learned from a web site powered strictly by teens like herself. The last speaker of the evening was Omar Wasow, Executive Director of BlackPlanet.com. Wasow mentioned that he was impressed by HarlemLive because they are taking the same steps he did to get where he is now. He spoke about how BlackPlanet.com was a positive web site for communications because it's all about a safe way to meet new people. He also touched on how he learned to design his own video games and eventually learned to design a web site using such programs as Flash and HTML. Wasow explained how playing these games could be useful later in life and concluded by telling the children in the audience to pay attention when playing video games because they are instructional and can be used to design your own software and create your own Web Pages.
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