Internet Safety and Awareness

From Shifted Learning

"These tools are like crack for the teenage social mind." - Tim Wilson, http://www.technosavvy.org

Educators often underestimate the "social" role that our schools provide in the development of youngsters. While students still prefer face-to-face interactions, technology is increasingly a staple of the teenage social network. Getting adults to understand is like trying to explain rock and roll. It's complicated and abstract until you have experienced it for yourself. The majority of information we get comes from news reports touting the negatives. Sexual predators, identity theft, and child abduction.

In the spring of 2006, the television news program Dateline aired a story about how pedophiles use information gleaned from the social networking site MySpace to locate and abduct children. The story set off a storm of reactions in schools and communities around the nation so strong that even federal legislation was proposed to address the perceived threat to children. Parents learned overnight that their children were leading two lives - the one they knew about and the one they didn't - online. And if television news was to be believed, it was a certainty that their children's online activities put them at risk in the physical world.

1 Technology Protection Measures
2 Growing Up Online
3 What is the "Social Web"?
4 Educating Students and Ourselves
5 Further Online Resources

[edit] Technology Protection Measures

The Childhood Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2001 requires that school districts use "technology protection measures" (Internet filtering) to minimize chances students will encounter "child pornography, obscenity, and material harmful to minors" on the Internet. When used properly these tools do an excellent job.

The social web, however, is creating a new set of concerns about safe and ethical behaviors on the Internet by students - ones less easily controlled by mechanical solutions such as Internet filters. These include:

Image:Tongue Stuck.jpg

Protecting Children from Predators
Pedophiles using the information gleaned from sites like MySpace and FaceBook is arguably the area of greatest concern to parents and educators.

Protecting Children from Themselves
Social networks easily allow people to make inappropriate and personal information public. Posting and inappropriate image or message can easily portray an individual in a negative light for teachers, coaches, relatives, public, and potential employers. Few understand the "permanence" of materials online or their ability to "go viral" quickly.

Protecting Children from Each Other (Cyberbullying)
Nationally recognized safety expert Nancy Willard defines cyberbullying as "sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the Internet or other digital communications devices," and she documents instances when such activities have resulted in psychological damage to their victims.

[edit] Growing Up Online

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Growing Up Online PBS Frontline Special

Tips on Keeping Kids Safe

[edit] What is the "Social Web"?

MySpace and Facebook are the two most popular services for people to be a part of online. MySpace is popular among the teenage crowd and is used by many musicians to create communities. Facebook began as a community specific to college students. You initially needed an "invite" from somebody already in the community. In 2007 Facebook opened to the rest of the world and gave a clean, more professional environment for people to establish online connections.

Tim, 20, Fennimore, MySpace
John, 33, Platteville, Facebook

Blogs began as personal journals and have developed into a popular form of journalism. In it's most generic sense, a blog is a website that allows users to post text, images, audio, and video on a regular basis. Entries occur in reverse chronological order (newest first), and allow for readers to comment on the post.

Jeff Utecht - The Thinking Stick

Wikis are online websites with an edit button. The format encourages group/community participation. The most popular wiki is Wikipedia, a user-edited encyclopedia with the goal of making all the information known to mankind available to everybody for free.

Simple Wikipedia - Cuban Missile Crisis

Flickr allows people to share photos. The Library of Congress recently began adding photos to Flickr. Flickr Library of Congress

YouTube shared video. Think YouTube is just about funny videos? The current writers strike is all about the Internet disrupting business models on the current media landscape.

3D virtual environments like Second Life allow users to create avatars and explore worlds, converse with others, participate in economies, and attend events.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG's) are games that combine social networking with game objectives. World of Warcraft is among the popular examples, currently with 10 million accounts worldwide.

Online communities such as Webkinz, Club Penguin are growing extremely fast among elementary students.

A comprehensive list of sites for social networking and user created information appears in The Horizon Report - 2007 published by The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE.

[edit] Educating Students and Ourselves

In education we must work proactively to these real dangers that students face while using the "social web". Unfortunately our reaction as been to use the mechanical "technology protection measures" to block all social networking resources including blogs, wikis, YouTube, Flickr, and virtual worlds. Students quickly seek strategies for circumventing the filtering systems inside of school, turning a real issue into a cat-and-mouse game for educators. Preventing access between 8:00am-4:00pm M-F does little as students simply participate online from home, often in less supervised circumstances.

Even if social networking sites are blocked in schools, most students will get access to them.

"Teens often use the Internet in several locales, especially home and school. This survey shows that teenagers' use of social network sites relates to the place where he or she uses the internet most often. Teens who go onlien most often from home are more like to report using social network sites than are teens who go onlien most often from school (42%). Home users are more likely to have profiles posted online (59% compared with 38%) and ar emore liekly to visit social networks once a day or more frequently than are those who go online from school." Pew Internet and American Life Project

Thinking simple Internet filters will eliminate or even minimize the real risks associated with social networking is a dangerous misconception. It will take educating students about the appropriate use of the Internet to genuinely protect them.