A Case Worth Studying

Digital Sweet Home came together because of a shared desire to learn and share how families can be strengthened through digital media use. And, as we've discovered this semester, there are many others who are making efforts toward the same goal.

Two of those individuals are professors here at BYU. One is Dr. Charles (Chuck) Knutson from the Computer Science department and the other is Dr. Sarah Coyne from the School of Family Life. Dr. Knutson founded the Internet Safety Project, a database dedicated to educating parents, teachers, and teens about the benefits and risks of technology. Dr. Coyne has participated in various studies researching media's impact on family relationships, including the effects of blogging, video games, and social media.

Dr. Knutson

Dr. Coyne

As we finalize our online family resource curating, video compilations, and project analysis, we plan to present our "case" to these professors. We are well aware of the limitations of our project and know that we've made just a small ripple of an impact with what we've done, so we are excited to share what we have and what we've learned as well as discuss what other efforts are being made - and what more we can each do individually - to promote family media use that strengthens and connects.

Audrey works for Dr. Knutson and he told her today that he'd love to meet with us and I'm waiting to hear back from Dr. Coyne about setting up a time for next week. We'll likely divide into two groups, with one or two going with Audrey and the other(s) with me. We've done a lot of "reflecting" on our learning process as a group and we're excited to do some more turning outward as we wrap things up...good practice for our interactions after this class, when we each take a part of Digital Sweet Home with us and continue to make small little ripples for good!