There's been a definite uptick in the number of school districts that have adopted Internet-safety curricula, says Godlis, and because of a recent update to the federal Children's Internet Protection Act, which requires schools receiving money through the federal E-rate program to provide Internet-safety education to students, that number will surely rise.

Members of the research team at Project New Media Literacies discuss the social skills and cultural competencies needed to fully engage with today's participatory culture. Featuring Henry Jenkins, and produced by Anna Van Someren at Project New Media Literacies.

Learn how to implement the Common Sense Schools program in your school.

The folks at Dateline created this mock MYSPACE page to illustrate how information can become too much information. Roll your mouse over each part of the profile, to see why the information is potentially dangerous. This model could be used to open a great dialogue with students on cybersafety and privacy practices.

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there's a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives-often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false-will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look.

John Paulfrey (Berkman Center) provides a review of the book in his blog, here.

John Palfrey (Berkman Center) provides a review of the book on his blog, here.

Privacy Playground: The First Adventure of the Three Little CyberPigs was developed by the Media Awareness Network. In this game, designed for ages 8-10, the CyberPigs play on their favourite Web site and encounter marketing ploys, spam and a close encounter with a not-too-friendly wolf. The purpose of the game is to teach kids how to spot online marketing strategies, protect their personal information and avoid online predators. The accompanying Teacher's Guide explains how to play the game, gives background information on the issues of online marketing, spam and children's privacy and provides activities and handouts for classroom use.

Symantec partnered with One Economy to add Internet Security content to their online information portal, The Beehive. This resource ensures that low-income families and new broadband users have the tools and resources necessary to protect their families.

From Qwest Communications. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America with 18-29 year olds being the largest group of victims. Educating 13-18 year olds about how and why they are being targeted is critical in preventing new victims. Clean credit and a low level of identity theft awareness are two top reasons teens are targeted. A new survey from Qwest Communications Teen Council Program shows that an alarming number of teens are making it easier for thieves to steal their identity. With answers from more than 1,600 students about their online habits, the report identified the top 5 ways teens are compromising their identities.\n

Thirteen downloadable files from the Federal Trade Commission on protecting student privacy online.

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.

Flash video and activities for educators on topics related to cybersafetym predators, pornography, privacy, piracy and cyberbullying.

More evidence that kids do not understand what is private in a networked society.
Police have used a law intended to keep pornographic magazines away from children as the basis for arresting four middle-school students accused of using cell phone cameras to snap nude photos of themselves and exchanging the images. Your students should know that exchange of nude photos [another form of cyberbullying] falls under "child pornography" laws and if prosecuted to the full extent of the law, they could spend time in juvenile hall and be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of their life.

Police tried to stop the spread of pornographic video and photos of two U.S. high school girls, images that were transmitted by cell phone to dozens of the girls' classmates and then to the wider world.

Flash video tutorials from GetNetWise on family internet safety topics like turning on filtering, making social networks more private, using WiFi, monitoring cookie files, hiding browser history information, spyware and spam filtering.

It seems like you can't go a whole week lately without hearing about some major data security breach that has made national headlines. For businesses, these data leaks are bad enough-but for schools, they can be especially costly, as network security breaches can put schools in violation of several federal laws intended to protect students' privacy.

Students may lose their beloved phone for the rest of the school day. But they don't expect to lose their privacy. In a small town east of Stockton, that is what happened to a senior named Justin Tomek at Linden High School last October. Several months later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California weighed in.

How much are your friends worth? That is the question behind the big debate going on around social networks and data portability. In the last ten days, Facebook, Google, and MySpace have all announced ways to let people access their data (including friends lists) from other sites, except that what they are really trying to do is erect new walled gardens by positioning themselves as the primary repository of that personal and social data.

Learn all about phishing and spoof sites with this flash tutorial from ByteCrime.org and McAfee.

Another case of middle school students exchanging compromising photos, showing that kids do not understand that when you share something with one or two people elecronically, you are risking putting it out there for the world to see, nor are they aware that to engage in this practice is a felony.

[May 18, 2008] Most online Americans view online shopping as a way to save time and a convenient way to buy products. At the same time, most internet users express discomfort over a key step in online shopping -- sending personal or credit card information over the internet. Internet users like the convenience but worry about the security of their online information.