<div dir="ltr">On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Caryl Bigenho <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cbigenho@hotmail.com" target="_blank">cbigenho@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div>The "special offers" appear only on the startup screen, no where else. Not a big deal,<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br><div>Yes I agree for older students who've had media training, understanding (better) who is branding/manipulating them and why. But is commercial advertising appropriate in schools on startup screens exposed to very youngest kids seeking 21st century literacy ?<br><br></div><div>Does the Amazon Fire, a very worthy device in its domain of freemium (advertising-centric) entertainment, abide by <a href="http://studentdataprinciples.org">http://studentdataprinciples.org</a>, developed by some of the most thoughtful educators? How can we and our educational communities audit and trust these principles, via open source code or legally-binding procedures with teeth? This may be the 21st century, but has anything really changed from 50 years ago --- do we really want to delegate babysitting of our youngest citizens to de-facto TV commercial interests beyond our control? When do we move beyond blind trust to "Benign By Design" ?<br></div><div><br></div><div>Entirely separately, Amazon made a couple serious "mistakes" in the past 24 hours, loudly beating the drum hyping up its largest sales volume in history: (today, apparently, if all goes well for them)<br><ul><li>$34.99 Cyber Monday Amazon Tablet Fire offer was yanked (no doubt due to Christmas shortages, but there are laws about honoring promises pricing/dates/quantities). An apology goes a long way. Thanks to the several media outlets who communicated the apology.<br></li><li>Erroneously portraying a $15 "Special Offer" tablet savings in the attached screenshot, as if this is a Limited-Time-Offer $49.99 off of the regular $64.99 price, for delivery around Christmas Day: <a href="http://imgur.com/TwTUh0M.png" target="_blank">http://imgur.com/TwTUh0M.png</a></li></ul>While Limited-Time-Offers are illegal when they boil down to False Advertising, let's give Amazon the benefit of the doubt in both cases, assuming they are not jerking our chains with Bait-and-Switch. In the longer-term it will be democracy's interest in speaking with our Attorneys General (in each of the 50 US states, and other jurisdictions worldwide) to so this planet does not forget ICT4Entertainment and ICT4Education MAY often (increasingly?) overlap, but they have entirely different underlying assumptions as to where society is going and why. Be That Change !!<br><br>Thanks Sora for clarifying to me what Amazon really means by "Special Offers" -- they don't mean a Christmastime sale as I understood in the above screenshot -- they mean advertising-in-kids-faces whenever you pick up the tablet: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200671290" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200671290</a><br><br></div><div>Fine, Freemium has its place in the entertianment world. But we should not be blissfully unaware of how advertising targets our children:<br><a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/how-advertising-targets-our-children/">http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/how-advertising-targets-our-children/</a><br></div><div><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/marketing-advertising-children-issues-at-stake">http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/marketing-advertising-children-issues-at-stake</a><br></div><div><br>Let us hope that Amazon develops less "accidentally deceitful" offerings for schools in future, perhaps modeled on:<br><a href="http://ptac.ed.gov/document/protecting-student-privacy-while-using-online-educational-services-model-terms-service">http://ptac.ed.gov/document/protecting-student-privacy-while-using-online-educational-services-model-terms-service</a><br></div><a href="https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/action/child-rights">https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/action/child-rights</a><br><a href="http://childrenandbusiness.org">http://childrenandbusiness.org</a><br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div>Sent from my iPhone</div><span><div><br>On Nov 30, 2015, at 6:32 AM, Sora Edwards-Thro <<a href="mailto:sora@unleashkids.org" target="_blank">sora@unleashkids.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Adam Holt <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:holt@laptop.org" target="_blank">holt@laptop.org</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><p dir="ltr">FWIW "$64.99 Amazon Prime without special offers" is Amazon's very own language, an 86% rise over the price-for-everyone on many recent days.</p></blockquote><div>As far as I understand, that's <i>always </i>been the situation. When I bought tablets back in September, I had the option of paying $15 more per tablet to avoid ads, but I didn't consider that an essential feature so I didn't pay extra for it. Is there any reason it would be essential, especially in an offline situation where there's no potential to actually click-'n-'buy anything?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br></div></div> </div></blockquote></span><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>support-gang mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:support-gang@lists.laptop.org" target="_blank">support-gang@lists.laptop.org</a></span><br><span><a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div><div><div> <p></p> -- <br> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ <a href="http://unleashkids.org" target="_blank">http://unleashkids.org</a> !<br> --- <br> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Unleash Kids" group.<br> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to <a href="mailto:unleashkids+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">unleashkids+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com</a>.<br> For more options, visit <a href="https://groups.google.com/d/optout" target="_blank">https://groups.google.com/d/optout</a>.<br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ <a href="http://unleashkids.org" target="_blank">http://unleashkids.org</a> !</div></div> </div></div>