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Cybersafety in a Web 2.0 World: What Parents & Policymakers Need To Know [PDF]

Interview with the Honorable Melissa Bean, Larry Magid, Nancy Willard and Sharon Miller Cindrich.

Are you planning a cybersafety program for parents when students return to school? These resources may help!

ID theft has become the crime this generation will deal with most of their lives.Kids just never think about Identity Theft. Most parents are not even aware that kids have identities to be stolen. A 2-minute, eye-opening news video.

Advice for teens from www.kidshealth.org. Here are some things to consider to safeguard your online identity and reputation:
1. Remember that nothing is temporary online
2. Mark your profile as private.
3. Safeguard your passwords and change them regularly.
4. Don't post inappropriate or sexually provocative pictures or comments.
5. Don't respond to inappropriate requests
6. Take a breather to avoid "flaming."
7. Learn about copyrights.
8. Check your digital footprint.
9. Take it offline.

Public schools have been equipped with video surveillance CCTV systems even before Columbine. The reasons include increased safety and security for students. Installing video surveillance cameras in schools is a costly project, and school districts must be sure that this is the right route to deter theft, property damage, and to prevent outsiders from entering the school's property. Even though most school districts that have implemented video surveillance systems have faced privacy concerns from parents, students and civil libertarian groups, school officials assert that cameras curb crime and are important sources of physical evidence when crimes do occur.

Children as young as eight are being attracted to social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, with a new study revealing more than 750,000 between the ages of 8 and 12 use one, despite minimum age restrictions of 13 or 14. Parents have admitted to spying on their children online in an attempt to safeguard them from the dangers of social networking websites.

One of the most dangerous, insidious aspects of the Internet is the targeting of children by online sexual predators. These criminals employ a series of clever, manipulative tactics to reach out to children in an effort to get them to meet in person. Any parent with children who use the Internet should be aware of the strategies employed by online predators.

From the folks at CommonSense Media. This would be a good video to show at a parent assembly. Click on the video itself and it enlarges to full screen.

Cyberbullying is the practice of posting or sending harmful images or text via the Internet or other digital communication tools, such as cell phones, email, instant messaging, chat rooms, video game spaces or social networking environments such as My Space and Facebook. Following are some tips for parents and educators to help keep kids safe.

AT&T announced it is returning to the classroom through online safety education developed by the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe) and presented by Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officers.The Nation's Largest Broadband Provider and 4,500 D.A.R.E. Officers will Provide Online Safety Lessons to Parents, Students and Communities Nationwide.

Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 6-12 is a curriculum that deals with attitudes and behaviors associated with cyber bullying. This eight-session curriculum is designed to:
1. Raise student and parent awareness of what cyberbullying is and why it is so harmful
2. Equip students with the skills and resources to treat eachother respectfully when using cybertechnologies
3. Give students information about how to get help if they, or others they know, are being cyber bullied
4. Teach students how to use cyber technologies in positive ways.

FACEBOOK, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia are considered valuable educational tools by some who embrace the learning potential of the internet; they are also seen as a massive distraction with no academic benefit by others. Research in Nottingham and Notts suggests split opinions over the internet in the classroom. Some 1,500 interviews with teachers, parents and students nationwide showed the 'net was an integral part of children's personal lives, with 57% of 13 to 18-year-olds in Notts using blogs in their spare time and 58% in Nottingham. More than 60% of Nottingham teens use social networking sites. They are a big feature of leisure time - but now the science version of You Tube, developed by academics at The University of Nottingham, has been honoured in the US this week. The showcase of science videos shares the work of engineers and students online. However just a quarter of teachers use social networking tools in the classroom and their teaching, preferring to leave children to investigate outside school.

Students and parents at Windsor High School are outraged after a Wyoming police officer doing a presentation on Internet safety scrutinized individual students' MySpace pages, calling the students' pictures "slutty" and saying their sites invited sexual predators. The officer, John F. Gay III of the Cheyenne Police Department, picked out six or seven Windsor High School students' MySpace pages and began to criticize photos, comments and other content until one student left the room crying.

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minnesota, took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents' bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell's school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was a "hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back." Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell's newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead.

With its evidence room overflowing with cell phones, the Richmond County school board is wanting to give away what it has taken 15 years to collect. The board decided to give the phones back to students when it changed its policy for cell phones in June. The policy replaces the often-criticized rule to seize phones for 365 calendar days when a pupil is caught with one. In 15 years, 5,725 phones were taken from students, according to the public safety department. Of those, 4,566 were still being held by the department this summer. Under the new rules, a parent has 10 days to claim a phone before it is turned in to public safety on the first offense. For a second offense and any phones not claimed at the school on the first offense, public safety takes the phone for 30 days.

2005 Report by Dr. Beth Manke, Associate Professor, Human Development, California State University, Long Beach. Often the most dramatic incidents of cyberbullying get the attention of educators, parents and the authority. Those incidents that involve threats, particularly death threats and those that result in school shootings and suicide attempts prompt intervention for both the perpetrators and victims. We must remember, however, that all cyberbullying, even the less dramatic incidents including the spreading of rumors and saying mean things online can be harmful as they can erode a child's self esteem and confidence and lead to later academic difficulties, interpersonal problems and psychological distress.

The use of filtering or blocking software to prevent teens from accessing social networking Web sites is another approach that schools and parents can utilize. The disadvantage with blocking software is that teens eventually find a way to circumvent the blocking software. "Given the propensity for youth to constantly update language by the use of new words and phrases and alterations to the meaning of existing words and phrases, it would appear a difficult task to keep filtering software fully updated."

Parents who worry that their children watch too much television can take heart: a bigger concern may be children spending too much time online. For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.

School districts student and Parent Internet & User Agreements for access to the district network.

The Pennyslvania Center for Safe Schools has released a new Internet safety video: Protecting Kids Online. This 22-minute Internet safety resource speaks to parents and caregivers on topics from understanding the serious repercussion of cyber-bullying to learning how to safeguard our children from online predators.