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Organized by ASPIRA of NY, a Latino youth services organization. This site is dedicated to promoting cyber awareness, particularly within the Latino community, and to helping parents protect themselves and their children against cyber predators, bullies and frauds. Information on cyberbullying, cybersafety, cyberfraud and cyberpredators is available in English & Spanish.

Christine, if you need more spanish resources for cybersafety, check this site.

Anne, this is also a great site. Thank you for these resources.

To reshape pedagogy, Tapscott says that we must consider eight norms for the Net Generation: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed, and innovation.

As students in Reading Workshop begin to build their blogs, post by post, the need for some structure in commenting is evident. Hopefully these guidelines will help students engage in meaningful dialogue, comment by comment. Here are seven rules for blog comments.

"In partnership with Topics Education, Microsoft is sponsoring an education initiative that supports teachers' needs for addressing digital citizenship and helping students understand how to handle and share digital content and respect for an authors/students intentions for sharing creative work. Topics Education developed a comprehensive turnkey, end-to-end curriculum that provides educators with teaching resources, an experiential student curriculum and tools to teach students about creative rights so that it is meaningful and relevant to their lives and achieving their potential."

Since social-media use is so multi-faceted, no single approach will apply to all situations. Some schools may opt to place an outright ban on social-media access at school as well as prohibit "friending" parents, students and other employees. Other schools may simply prohibit employees from identifying their school online. As the use of social-networking sites for educational and community communication purposes increases, schools may need to adapt to the mainstream use of such sites and recognize that a blanket prohibition simply isn't practical. Regardless, your school should take action now to safeguard against social media mishaps.

One of eight interactive case studies for kids (GR 4-8) from Cable In the Classroom: Power to Learn.
An understanding of the wonderful world of wireless will help the young people avoid any pitfalls that may arise from using laptops, smart phones, and PDAs. And if they are going to be using wireless technology it doesn't hurt if they understand how it works. This unit explains the importance of password protection and cybersecurity. The graphics are Nickelodeon style. A short quiz assesses understanding. For the entire series, check out: http://powertolearn.com/internet_smarts/interactive_case_studies/index.shtml

If the first decade of the 21st century was about data driven instruction and assessment, can we make the next decade about realizing potential of the student behind the data and publishing to authentic audience as part of student's school lives? Some great examples are given here of "Hand it In Teaching" vs. "Publish It Teaching"

Excellent 8-minute video from the UK's Thinkuknow education program that helps children to understand what constitutes personal information. The assembly enables children to understand that they need to be just as protective of their personal information online, as they are in the real world. It also directs where to go and what to do if children are worried about any of the issues covered.

Student government members at BTHS received an email saying a construction accident caused school to be closed the following day. From there, the message spread rapidly across social networks. Problem was there had been no accident, and the email, while appearing to come from an official school address, was a gag, which the student newspaper subsequently reported later that evening. "This looked believable, but it could not be corroborated from an official source," says Kevin Jarrett. That's critical, he says, and goes to the cornerstone of any lesson on Internet safety for students-make sure to know where information is coming from by developing a healthy skepticism. But administrators also need to learn how easily these kinds of pranks can be generated."

Parenting in the 21st century presents a new set of challenges that require new solutions. Like their parents before them, today's parents have to help their kids navigate school, friends, crushes, extracurricular activities and sexuality. But they also face a bewildering new world, driven by technology and media. In this excerpt from "What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know," Debra W. Haffner addresses what parents can do to help their kids navigate the Internet.

In response to new federal rules mandating organizations retain their electronic documents, districts are using outside providers to archive their in-house e-mails.

Story of a FaceBook account that was hijacked. The criminal promptly changed all of he log-in information, impersonated the account owner, and sent requests to all of his friends for money. He claimed he was in London and his wallet had been stolen so he needed people to wire him money, ASAP.

One in seven juveniles will be solicited online"-a number that got predictably huge media play when it came out in 2006, and a number David Finkelhor, (Crimes Against Children Research Center) stands by, with one enormous caveat: Most of those solicitations, he says, are the Internet equivalent of "wolf whistles."

Last year, Congress passed the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act,which called for yet another committee to study Internet safety. By statute, the Online Safety and Technology Working Group is made up of representatives of the business community, public interest groups and federal agencies.

Rumors had been flying at Freedom High School in South Riding, Virginia that students were distributing nude pictures of each other on their cell phones. It's a phenomenon, known as "sexting," that's become increasingly worrisome to educators across the country, and Ting-Yi Oei, a 60-year-old assistant principal at the school, was tasked with checking it out. The investigation was inconclusive, but led to a stunning aftermath: Oei himself was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes

Attendees at the 2009 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) will examine what it means to live in a digital world, and will discuss the best ways to prepare students to become global citizens.

Social media sites should provide simpler explanation and assistance to help school kids navigate cyber-safety issues. That is one of the initial points of advice given to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, by representatives of the Youth Advisory Group.