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If you're a small business owner, family member, student or just someone with a laptop who loves shopping online and is addicted to your online banking, you might think that you're not a big target for identity thieves, hackers or viruses. The truth is that no one is really safe from prying eyes when they're online, so turn to this list of 100 tips, tutorials and resources that will help you beef up your own network security.

Children may be net savvy but their critical reading and research skills are not finely honed. They don't understand that they shouldn't believe everything they read. To kids, WIKIPEDIA is still the gospel.

Young people today born into a digital world are experiencing a far different environment of information-gathering and access to knowledge than a generation ago. Who are these "digital natives" and what are they thinking? How are they using the technology, and are IT experts adequately responding to them? These questions will be addressed in a new Library of Congress series titled "Digital Natives." The four-lecture series will examine the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, with emphasis on the young people currently in schools and colleges today. The series will seek to understand the practices and culture of these digital natives, the cultural implications of the phenomenon and the implications for education -- schools, universities and libraries.

17-minute parent presentation on cybersafety developed by IKeepSafe and Comcast with Bob McDonnell, Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia. The video is available free for all Comcast Digital Cable customers via Comcast's signature On Demand service. It explores the risks associated with the Internet, and teaches parents and guardians how to become involved and take action to protect their children from these risks. It can also be downloaded online.

Interesting perspective from a Berkman researcher on how our "memories" of events an are changing with use of the Internet and collaborative participation. Even rote memory of significant dates in History has changed because digital natives know they can find the info on the Internet so easily. Would be an interesting discussion to have with high school students.

This book was written by three school psychologists, all certified in Olweus Bullying Prevention training. They have applied their knowledge in that area to "cyberbullying." If you are an educator or a parent of an adolescent, this book is a must read. As the authors have stated, the impact of students using computers, etc. has had not only a positive but also a negative impact on the learning environment and safety issues within our schools. Cyberbullying in its infancy is creating an epidemic of problems. Awareness of the problem, what schools and parents should do to address cyberbullying, how the different states and schools systems view cyberbullying, and current resources are discussed by the authors. It is a compilation of the most current research.

In this activity, students become international traders from one of six continents: Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America or South America. They negotiate prices with buyers and sellers from the other continents. Sometimes they are thwarted from trading by barriers, and they come to understand how the IMF, by fostering free trade, enhances the flow of goods and services worldwide. [Grades 5-8]

Digital Technology 101 offers guidance and advice on how to monitor some of the most popular communication tools used by teens today: social networking, cell phones, instant messaging,

Teach copyright from the point of view of the producer, as well as the consumer. [Doug Johnson]

Fighting cyberbullying isn't just a technical problem. We need to educate children and young people to anticipate, recognize and deal with risks and problems as and when they arise. Children and young people will continue to give out their personal details so they need to be taught more about the management of personal information, both their own and other people's. More importantly they must be encouraged to become emotionally resilient in all areas of their daily lives.

Amy Jussel, founder of the Shaping Youth blog, examines how media and marketing influence children in this quick-paced and lively blog.

How to handle cyberbullying

The popularity of Facebook, MySpace, IM, and email with youth in developed countries demonstrates how second nature the online world has become for youth.

MISSING, from Web Wise Kids, is designed to SHOW rather than TELL children about online safety. It's a fun and positive way to teach children how to avoid danger on the Internet. The interactive software adventure tells the story of Zack, a kid in Vancouver, Canada who forms an online friendship with Fantasma. This guy is so cool - he has an online magazine about beach life in California and he sends Zack great stuff, like graphic arts and software. Little does Zack know that he is a predator. After Zach agrees to go to San Diego to be with Fantasma, players work with a detective to find and rescue Zack and arrest Fantasma. Available both as a home edition and a school edition. [Windows and Mac OSX versions available]. Note: Local middle school science teachers have successfully worked this program into their science curriculum since solving the game involves researching and collecting clues.

Teacher's idea on how to make bullying awareness important and exciting for third-and fourth-grade students by having them create comic strips using Comic Life, one of the new programs available for Macs. With the aid of ready-made templates, word bubbles, pictures, etc., users easily create a comic strip.

These flash video tutorials will show you how to adjust privacy settings on major social networking sites to restrict who can access and post on your child's website.

Britannica is now free for bloggers. Another endorsements for the increasing importance of bloggers.

Encyclopedia Britannica is now free for bloggers from an article on 4/18/08 -- yet another reason for our students to blog. (I have students blogging publicly under pseudonyms.) This is fascinating, but also interesting to see how Britannica is playing catch up to Wikipedia in the market it once owned. I wonder, which would be more authoriative to you, a wikipedia quote updated daily, or Brittanica updated less often that doesn't display the authors of its content?

Learning how to safely use e-commerce websites is important, but also, people need to be aware to protect their credit card numbers and identities as can be seen in this horrific case study. When websites are not safe about their use of credit card numbers, it can have horrible impacts such as this man losing his $250,000 a year job and becoming estranged from his family, when they thought he bought child pornography.

[NYT Magazine, 5/25/08]. Examination of why people "overshare" their personal information on the internet through the eyes of a 20-something woman who compulsively blogs. This is a fruitful article to seed a discussion of how teens express themselves digitally and the importance of privacy and self-regulation. It could also be paired nicely with the Youth Privacy site ( previously bookmarked by another group member) for discussion in a digital citizenship class.

Pictures allegedly were uploaded to her MySpace profile, and then apparently leaked by the type of friends who make it unnecessary to have enemies. They've since made the rounds to all the typical tabloid style blogs out there, and of course all the folks posting them have made the appropriate amount of dismay and analysis on how this is going to ruin her career.