Well, this seemed to work with the superintendents session I did last week, so I figure, what the heck. Monday I get a chance to address two groups of New York City parents on the topic of “Internet Safety and Your Children” at Staten Island College. I’ve got some ideas about what I want to say to them in terms of the whole MySpace issue, the need for a more expansive view on literacy, and some general suggestions on how to help teach their kids (and themselves) acceptable use. But I’m wondering, if you had 90 minutes with this group, what one thing would you bring up/point to/challenge them with? What would be your most important message?
The internet is a world wide marketplace where people go to buy and sell, to meet other people and to have conversations.
There are open public places where you can make a fool of yourself and there are back alleys where other people can make a fool of you. You need experience to be able to deal with other people, especially because everyone is treated as an adult.
Are your kids able to visit the mall by themselves without any supervision? How often have you been there with them before you even considered you could trust them on there own?
Children need to gain experience under the supervision of their parents with the internet. This internet isn’t going away, so it’s the parents job to learn their children how to use the internet and to guide their children to make the right choices.
Filter a website, and you protect a student for a day. Educate students about online safety in a real world environment, and you protect your child for a lifetime.
http://schoolof.info/infomancy/?p=212
I really enjoyed your workshop yesterday. Very interesting , i was surprised to see how many educators were not well versed on the whole blog, podcast, wiki front. I guess if you don’t utilize these resources in your everyday life than you would not be in the “know”. It just goes to show how many educators seek their news, information, and entertainment from the ” usual suspects” ie: the tv, newspapers. I really do believe that its a cultural thing that separates. Its the”wired’ culture vs the “old school” if you will excuse my street jargon . It proves that more educators need to tap in to the enormous wealth of uncensored knowledge that it avail to all.
Also have you ever heard of Pandora.com? Create custom internet radio stations based on your musical taste. Its the music genome project , absolutely brilliant .
Best Regards
Desiree
All parents should create a MySpace account. I did: http://www.myspace.com/KenLeebow
Desiree,
Thanks for that link – absolutely LOVE it and didn’t know about it!!
Karen
I agree with many of the comments concerning supervision. Parent’s are not as learned in the technology as their children. And, though children are savvy with the technology itself, they do not understand the more far reaching aspects. So in answer to your question, I would suggest the one thing be education. Educate both the parents and children about what is out there and how to use common sense posting on the social tools offered by myspace, etc.
The internet is forever and we need to educate our children with web ethics and teach them media literacy. We have to arm them with the proper skills to digest and create content because their mistakes can live on the web forever.
I hate to blame the lack of technology on economics but that is a sad truth. Teachers do not see any point in learning the technology if they do not have the equipment to use with their classes.
This past year is the first time in about 5 years we are not trying to find more things to cut from our budget. We have some money to provide equipment and inservices and our teachers are signing up to learn. I am hopeful for big changes this next year for our students.
I did some classes for private school teachers on net use back in the early days of the web. The school was in the middle of developing an “internet policy”… And I thought then, and still think, that parents and schools overreact to kids and teenagers’ use of the net.
Whether anyone likes it or not, kids are going to hang out in back alleys engaging in minor delinquency, and maybe even talking to adults that their parents don’t know and would not approve of. Public spaces for teenagers to be social aren’t common, and the net is filling that need. What do they need? Well, the things they *do* want to do online seem to be the very things that school or parents forbid: play multi-player games, talk to other people, show off, be visible… and becoming a political being (Look at the positive effect Myspace had on the immigration rallies!) I’ve seen schools punish teenagers for enaging in all these activities, when they should be *encouraging* them. They are part of developing literacy & part of growing up and finding an adult voice.
As for being cautious & careful about creating content, I have the opposite view from Dave LaMorte. We should instead encourage adults to learn something from teenagers & be less paranoid about the public documentation of their “mistakes”. When today’s myspace kids are getting jobs, the people hiring them will *also* have had a 10-year history of the evolution of their public presence… In other words, in 10 years it will be a lot weirder *not* to have had an embarrassingly juvenile myspace that it will be to have had one.
The teachers should ask their students to appoint a panel of students, who could educate them about student internet use. In this case, they have experts right under their noses, and might take the opportunity to listen.
– Liz Henry
I’m not sure I can reduce to one thing.. Here are three.
1. Internet safety is the same issue parents have always faced in a new form. Healthy parent involvement in a child’s life is the best protection. Know your child. Keep open lines of communication.Create reasonable guidelines and expectations (not too lenient and not too strict). Participate and be involved with the child’s life. Arm the child with information and tools for those times when they have to make decisions on their own.
2. It’s easier to avoid the worst uses when you have access to the best. Get your child involved with technology as a creative and inventive tool. Seek out classes and opportunities to be involved in robotics, animation, programming, blogging, video, videogame creation, sound production, interactive design.
3. Unplug your child. Be sure your child gets access to interesting activities off of the computer,MP3 player, videogame console, TV. If they have legitimate outlets for their sense of adventure, need for social interaction, and curiosity… all day interacting online won’t be the default location for those natural drives.
If I had to boil it down to one thing, it’d be that their children’s actions on the web could have long term consequences that they probably aren’t even considering.
It’s easy to just pass it off as kids at play, or something that some kids are doing. But ALL students are interacting on the internet, and most are leaving a trail behind them that doesn’t portray them in a very positive light.
Warning parents about the dangers of the internet doesn’t seem to hold any shock value anymore. Letting them know that they may not get into Stanford because of their MySpace account generally hits them like a faceful of icewater.
In a recent PTA article to parents, I wrote the following (goes along with what many have said already):
There is a lot of scary information about what could (and has) happened to kids because of their behavior on the Internet. There is only one tried and true way to really help your child stay safe on the Internet, and it is…
communication.
Talk to your kids about what they do online. Talk about how “off-line†rules applies online, also. They know not to talk to strangers when outside – the same applies to online. They know that bullying is not appropriate in school, on the playground, or anywhere else. It is not appropriate online either. Explain to them
that you do not feel technologically proficient, but that you want (need) them to show you what they do.
The rules for appropriate behavior have not changed – what has changed is the medium. The world has been brought into your home via the Internet. It is an awesome communication tool that is changing every facet of our everyday lives. What kids don’t always get is that that the safety of being in their own home (even bedroom) no longer protects them from the dangers of the world.
Take time to talk to your children and be involved in their digital life.
It is important to separate concerns about safety from concerns about misbehavior. I think the list of truly dangerous behaviors is short. All the anedotal evidence I’ve seen indicates that MySpace is dangerous insofar as it is a means of initiating chat. For safety, I would stress two rules. 1) Never, ever, ever, ever meet someone alone who you met through the internet. 2) Don’t chat privately with people you don’t know.
This situation reminds me of how I raised my daughter which many may be able to relate to their experiences. When my daughter was a toddler, we did not need the lock I spent hours putting on the cabinets. We did not need to baby proof the house. We would let Meagan explore her environment and try things out for herself. Of course someone was always watching and was ready to intervene if she got herself into a dangerous spot. Today she surprises my wife and I with all the new things she is taking on without our encouragement. Likewise, we as parents and educators need to let our charges explore this new internet, always watching and ready to intervene when needed. If we do not make them aware of the dangers, they will not know how to handle them.
What Christopher Harris said.
I would add that this applies to parents too. Ask your school to run after work classes for parents on how to create a family web 2.0 portal to:
(1) Learn about the tools and environments your children are using/participating in.
(2) Learn what happened in school each day.
(3) Participate in your child’s education. (Ties in with Michael Russo’s comments.)
Cheers,
Darren
Will, you gotta talk about the girl who tricked her parents into getting a passport and flew to Jordan to meet her MySpace guy. Where were her parents anyway? Michael is right, parents must be aware of what there children are doing through communication. I also like Darren’s idea.
I’m torn on this one. Who should I be most concerned with? An online predator or one (actually ALL) of the 25 registered sex offenders (blog post at http://barrydahl.blogspot.com/2006/03/imagine-my-delight.html ) who live within one mile of my house? I believe that my children are in far more danger from walking in the neighborhood than surfing through the net.
However, the answer to my own question is: I should be EQUALLY concerned with the online predator and the neighborhood sex offender. In both cases it only takes one lapse of judgment by me or by one of my kids to end up with a horrible result.
I need to know what my kids are doing and we have to communicate in an open, non-judgmental basis every day. They have to learn how to protect themselves on the net just like they need to know about the bad people in the neighborhood.
No one has ever been killed, raped, or physically abused while they were chatting with someone on the net. All of the bad things happen in the F2F environment. We have to make sure that our kids know what is acceptable behavior for when they get up and walk away from the computer….even more so than when they are sitting in front of it.
I am thrilled that you will be attending our Region 7 tech forum (www.region7online.com/techforum) to speak with parents about cybersafety. Everyone knows how the web is a great resource, but can also be a dangerous place. It is my hope that after your keynote tomorrow parents will be aware of the benefits and dangers of the web. More importantly it is my hope that parents will understand thier “digital native.”
See you tommorrow!
Explain the value of Web 2.0 applications and educational technology in general and then remind them:
Paper and pencils can be used to draw inappropriate, hate filled, pictures messages and ideas – and you could poke someone’s eye out. They could even be used to lure your child into a dangerous situation. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut off access to keep our children safe? No, because they are everywhere and too valuable in so many ways – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
Over 200,000 children are injured using playground equipment each year – some are killed. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut access to playground equipment to keep our children safe? No, because they’re eventually going to find play equipment and playing is too valuable an experience – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
50,000 people die or are injured in swimming accidents each year. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut access to swimming to keep our children safe? No, because pools and lakes and ponds are everywhere and it would be dangerous if they fell in and it is too valuable and healthy a skill – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
30,000 people a year are killed and thousands more injured in auto crashes each year. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut access to cars and driving to keep our children safe? No, cars are everywhere and driving is too valuable – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
Phones are used for criminal activities, even luring kids away from home. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut off access to phones to keep our children safe? No, phones are everywhere and they are too valuable – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
There are some churches and religions out there that don’t have the same beliefs as yours – and some even preach ideas that you would consider blasphemous and hateful. Should we (and could we if we tried?) cut off access to religion to keep our children safe? No, religion is everywhere and it is too valuable – so as parents and educators we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
There are applications of technology that can expose your child to inappropriate, hate filled, pictures, messages and ideas. Technology and the internet are everywhere. Do we cut off access? (and could we if we tried?) Or are these applications too valuable? – As parents and educators maybe it would be better if we monitor and teach ethical, appropriate, safe use.
Otherwise who will teach them about these things and where will they learn about them?
Learning is messy!
Diane P Says:
> I hate to blame the lack of technology on economics but that is a sad truth. Teachers do not see any point in learning the technology if they do not have the equipment to use with their classes.
I agree that teachers would be foolish to spend time learning stuff that they can’t use in their classrooms. I disagree that it’s an issue of economics. The computers that schools are getting rid of now make excellent thin clients that, with a slight learning curve are easier to maintain than the single Windows machine that they replace. In the places I’ve thrown these machines, with much less training than I thought was the minimum good sense dictated, kids and teachers have used computers in the ways that this conversation seems to be promoting.
A computer should not be in a child/teenager’s bedroom, hidden away in a cave. The family’s computer(s) should be in open areas, with the screen facing the center of the room.
Along with all the wise advice from others here, this is one concrete step that can/should be taken to keep our kids safe, and train them in how to handle themselves online…
A teenage needs it own privacy, and you won’t protect your child just checking on him at every move, you will protect him teaching values and respect for himself and other people. That is the only way to have some chances to save your kid from the possible dangers of the Internet and the life in general. If you trust only a strict supervision what will it happen as soon as you won’t be able of supervising, when he goes to the college or when you are not home etc.?
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