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Kidsmart Seminar
- 1. HELPING CHILDREN USE THE INTERNET POSITIVELY & SAFELY < INSERT SCHOOL/ORGANISATION & Date >
- 2. THIS PRESENTATION TAKING A BALANCED APPROACH ! Why is this issue important? What can you do now? What are the dangers for Children? What is so positive for Children? Practical resources + Questions
- 3. WHAT IS CHILDNET? A charity working to help make the internet a great and safe place for all children.
- 4. Connects you to the world Like bringing a city into the home or classroom The good & The bad Let’s make sure the good outweighs the bad! WHAT IS THE INTERNET LIKE FOR CHILDREN?
- 5. A bit about you…. How many of you have internet access at home ? What sort of things do your children like doing on the internet ? What sort of concerns do you have about your children’s use of the internet ?
- 6. WHY IS THIS PART I IMPORTANT
- 8. PARENTS Mostly e-mail and web for research DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR CHILD USES THE NET? WE NEED TO BE INVOLVED IN OUR CHILDREN’S ONLINE ACTIVITY, VALIDATE THEIR SKILLS & LEARN FROM THEM YOUNG PEOPLE Interactive chat, IM, Music, Games, 2) ADULTS + CHILDREN USE THE NET IN DIFFERENT WAYS PART I
- 9. KNOWLEDGE Many children pick up technology quicker ! HELP YOUR CHILDREN TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT TECHNOLOGY IS THROWING UP NEW IMPORTANT SAFETY ISSUES WHICH CHILDREN MAY NOT SEE WISDOM Understanding how to behave in a virtual world 3) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE + WISDOM PART I
- 10. IN SCHOOL Generally supervised, protected and monitored WE NEED TO DO MORE THAN SUPERVISE- WE NEED TO HELP EDUCATE CHALLENGE = to ensure that children are safe wherever they use the internet OUT OF SCHOOL Often no filtering, supervision or monitoring 4) SUPERVISED/UNSUPERVISED ACCESS POINTS PART I
- 11. PART II WHAT’S SO POSITIVE
- 13. WHAT WE DID WITH THE PUPILS THIS AFTERNOON
- 14. Three examples which shows the power of the Net for children to … Discover Connect Create
- 19. PART III WHAT ARE THE DANGERS
- 37. ONE FAMILY’S STORY.. My daughter was contacted starting in February this year by a pedophile whilst using a chat room. He quickly moved to e-mail and shortly afterwards sent her pornography, purporting to be pictures of himself. My daughter was just 12 at this time. After grooming her for some weeks, he made telephone contact and eventually persuaded her to miss school and meet him. In total, he met her five times and took her back to his flat where she was sexually abused… … I have worked in the computer industry for 18 years, latterly with the Internet, and had no idea what went on in these chat rooms. Surely there is some regulatory body that can make the ISPs monitor at least the teenage chat rooms to make sure kids aren’t in danger…. Perhaps you can offer some guidance?”
- 42. PART IV SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW
- 43. 2) Support the school – Sign the Acceptable Use Policy and take an active interest in what your children are doing in ICT at school. 1) Get involved in your children’s online activity at home. Check you know what applications they are using, especially chat rooms and games played with others online. Ask who their “e-pals” are. Get them to teach you about how things work. 3) Encourage internet use that builds on offline activities . It helps to keep the computer in a family room not tucked away in a child’s bedroom. Help your children to use the Internet for home work and leisure interests. SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW ? 4) Use some of the tools on the computer to help you.
- 46. 6 ) REINFORCE THE “SMART” RULES WITH YOUR CHILDREN SAFE – Staying safe online involves being careful and thinking about whether it is safe to give out personal information
- 47. SAFE – Staying safe online involves being careful and thinking about whether it is safe to give out personal information MEETING – Meeting up with someone you have contacted in cyberspace can be dangerous. Only do so with your parent’s/ carer’s permission and then when they can be present.
- 48. SAFE – Staying safe online involves being careful and thinking about whether it is safe to give out personal information MEETING – Meeting up with someone you have contacted in cyberspace can be dangerous. Only do so with your parent’s/carer’s permission and then when they can be present. ACCEPT – Accepting e-mails or opening files from people you don’t know can be dangerous. – they may contain viruses or nasty messages.
- 49. SAFE – Staying safe online involves being careful and thinking about whether it is safe to give out personal information MEETING – Meeting up with someone you have contacted in cyberspace can be dangerous. Only do so with your parent’s/carer’s permission and then when they can be present. ACCEPT – Accepting e-mails or opening files from people you don’t know can be dangerous. – they may contain viruses or nasty messages. RELIABLE – Anyone can put anything on the net and remember people can lie and not be who they say they are in chat rooms.
- 50. SAFE – Staying safe online involves being careful and thinking about whether it is safe to give out personal information MEETING – Meeting up with someone you have contacted in cyberspace can be dangerous. Only do so with your parent’s/carer’s permission and then when they can be present. ACCEPT – Accepting e-mails or opening files from people you don’t know can be dangerous. – they may contain viruses or nasty messages. RELIABLE – Anyone can put anything on the net and remember people can lie and not be who they say they are in chat rooms. TELL – Tell your parent/carer or teacher if someone or something makes you feel uncomfortable or worried.
- 51. See www.kidsmart.org.uk/smart for more info.
- 52. KIDSMART LEAFLETS FOR YOUR SCHOOL AND PARENTS ! "The internet is great fun and a brilliant way to keep in contact with friends. However, it is really important that we all use the Net safely and always remember these SMART rules to stay safe online." Ant and Dec
- 53. By learning together, taking care and supporting our children we can help our children get the benefit, avoid danger and use the internet to fully Discover Connect Create
- 54. www.chatdanger.com www.kidsmart.org.uk www.childnet-int.org Produced by Childnet International. Copyright 2003 QUESTIONS?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Insert your school’s name and the venue and date for this presentation. Welcome slide – have this up as you are introduced. Opening remark about the balanced approach we are taking emphasise the “Positive” as well as the “Safely” in the title.
- Very important to start positively and stress that this seminar is not going to be full of scare stories ! Indeed this cartoon perhaps helps illustrate the need to keep this in balance. Stress from the outset that the internet is a wonderful resource and include a few examples of how this school is using the Internet in teaching to help children discover, connect and create their own work. Go through what you will be covering in this 40 minute presentation – this slide helps give an overview of the parts to the presentation. Say you will give a little background to why your school is running this session. If the audience is small suggest you ask a few people to share what they hope to get out of the session. Say you will be giving practical examples as you go through. Although you will try and keep things simple, encourage the audience to ask any questions if they don’t understand anything – and say there will be opportunity for more general questions later. Good to stress to that this is the Parent’s time –there will be no quiz ! No awkward questions and you don’t have to write anything down because these slides are available after along with a series of leaflets – all backed up by the Kidsmart website.
- Keep this section short because it is simply to put the Kidsmart resource into context – written over many years by staff who work for the children’s Internet charity Childnet International. If this presentation is being done by someone other than a Childnet staff member this slide can simply be cut – there is reference to wider Childnet resources at the end of the presentation along with the main website address should anyone want further information on Childnet – www.childnet-int.org
- It’ a good question to ask “what is the Internet like for children?” After all only 10 years ago none of us had heard of it! This picture is of Tommi. Tommi is originally from Nigeria but now lives in Peckham in London. Tommi is deaf. But as you can see he is holding the world in his hands. That is what the Internet can be like for children – it connects you to the world, and certainly Tommi has found it of real help in his education and to link to other deaf children. But if you are connected to the world – then you are open to the world – not just the wild and beautiful places but also the big cities, like New York or London. That means you are bringing all the good that such cities have for children – the parks, the sports grounds, the museums – as well as the bad – the busy roads, the places that aren’t safe – lots of places you wouldn’t be happy to take children. Being connected to the Internet, all the good and the bad will be coming into your home or classroom –so we have to ask, if you take all the pluses and minuses, what is the net benefit (excuse pun!) This is what we will be looking at in this seminar.
- Important before you start on PART 1 to ask the audience a few questions – if it is a big crowd then it may be best to ask the audience to quietly reflect on questions 2 and 3. A good show of hands to start with will help you understand what your audience’s experience is of accessing the net at home with their children. If you have a small turn out it might really help to get a few people to share their answers to point 2 and 3. If you find they have concerns you can encourage them by telling them that they are not alone. Indeed a recent survey conducted for Reader’s Digest highlighted that 51% of parents believed that they would not let their children access the computer unsupervised.
- Image –Again this illustrates how the Internet puts the whole world in the hands of children – we are giving them access to this world through the Internet – awesome responsibility but wonderful opportunity. – I suppose the question is do you know what world they are accessing ? This photo was taken of a real parent’s hand and child (friends of Childnet).
- This slide speaks for itself. Advance the 3 C’s by clicking the mouse and you can illustrate these points. Allow the three dangers to emerge and speak them out emphasizing the first letter C. This will help people remember them. Go through each danger individually. Content – the most searched for word on the internet is Sex. It is now estimated that at least 200,000 US citizens are addicted to pornography on the Internet. But there are other problems – the issue of inaccurate information could be very serious if your child took bad advice on a health problem. Contact – a parent’s worst fear is that another adult might try and contact their child and then meet them offline – this is very rare but sadly it has happened. Commerce – the increasing commercial nature of the Internet means your children may be tempted to fill in their personal details in all sorts of places on the web and end up getting marketing information you wouldn’t want them to see. Currently it is estimated that 25% of all e-mails sent contain SPAM (junk mail). Those who have hotmail accounts will be very familiar with this !
- A lot of adults use the net for e-mail, research and purchasing things, while most young people see simply “surfing” as passé and want to use the interactive features such as games, and chat building online communities and develop their own space. Do you as a parent know really know what your child is doing online ? Because of new Internet applications such as Chat, IM, peer-to-peer networks etc, it is increasingly important that children understand the online safety issues and know how to respond to the potential dangers whatever application they are using on the Internet. Very important for us to validate the skills which young people are using in accessing the Internet.
- It’s good to start by looking at why this is important, and get a general picture of how our children approach technology. There is no doubt that kids are very quick to gain the basic technical skills – if you like the knowledge – about how to find their way around computers and the net. They are much quicker than adults, as anyone who has taken their 10 year old on at a computer game will know. BUT, and it is a big BUT that is not the same as wisdom. Knowing how to drive a car does not make you a safe driver. Looking old enough to get into a nightclub doesn’t mean you will handle the situation well. If the Internet is like letting a city into your home, then your children need to learn how to handle that city, how to behave online and get the best from the Net. This gap between wisdom and knowledge needs to be bridged. Put at it’s simplest it is about good parenting. You may not be the greatest technical whiz but you are a parent, and you help your child through adolescence on many other issues. So we need to get alongside our kids, especially from their first ventures online. That will help us all as technology is changing rapidly and we can all learn together. Don’t be afraid to learn technical tips from your kids – and then maybe they will pick up some life skills tips from you!
- This point is very simple but helps to highlight the challenge. You could ask for a show of hands as to how many parents use a filtering product on their computer at home. A similar analogy for showing why schools are concerned about this subject is smoking. – Many years ago a school might have said we don’t have a problem with smoking because children are banned from smoking on the premises ! – clearly it is a huge health and safety issue which children need to understand – similarly with the Internet – even aspects of the Internet which we don’t use in school.
- Link to this section by saying that part of the challenge is that when you hear scare stories and hear about how the Internet has been used to harm children it is vital to remind ourselves just why this medium is so valuable to schools and families as they support and teach young children. We hope that this next section will really inspire you and excite you as to how Children themselves are making the best out of the net.
- Call out the words Discover, Connect and Create as they appear and then go through each one individually. Discover – give an example of a useful piece of information you can find online that would be very difficult to get offline eg the temperature today in London, headlines in an Australian Newspaper Connect – other media can provide information but the Internet also puts children in direct touch with each other. Much cheaper than phoning, much quicker than writing using the post. Create – now anyone with access to the net can publish. – very exciting for schools – have a look at Bonjour.org a wonderful French language teaching resource written by an individual French teacher working here in the UK ! – (a Childnet award winning projects)
- The Staying SMART online module introduction at www.kidsmart.org.uk is very good at illustrating 8 key things which young people love about using the Internet. – you could ALT TAB to this website if you have internet connection or you can order it from Childnet on a CD rom. When Childnet staff run the session in the school we introduce this section as explaining what we did in the classroom earlier in the day. – (And what we learnt about the children about their parent’s use of the Internet !!! )
- You will need to decide which sites to go directly too but this one www.froguts.com has a wonderful free demo which shows how you can dissect a frog online Most people are blown away by this and illustrates how the new interactive technologies are making learning fun and bringing important subjects to life (to say nothing of frogs! (re-cycled and this means that not so many are used for dissection !!! – This is a previous Childnet awards winning project. Childnet has this on CD if you would like to use it.
- Amazing website (childnet award winner) which was written by one school after a pupil in their school was shot by someone who had himself been bullied and wanted revenge ! – show the amazing range of content from Artwork, poems, songs, films etc all written by children around the world on the theme of Bulling.
- The reason for including www.whitehouse.gov is that later in the presentation you will be referring to www.whitehouse.com You can ask parent’s who the child on the right is ? – answer – Amy Carter (show their age !) Point out that the site is very regularly updated, and has a special kids area.
- This composite of the Childnet Awards site demonstrates that there are many projects which do wonderful things using the Net. The featured site – Bandaides and Blackboards was put together by a nurse in the USA to link together chronically sick children. The strap line for this Childnet programme is “the dot hope effect of the Net” – this is a nice opposite to the dot com !
- Say that it would be great if we could just stop the presentation at that point and all go home. But sadly there are dangers on the Internet for children and this next section helps us look carefully at some of these dangers.
- Allow the three dangers to emerge and speak them out emphasizing the first letter C. This will help people remember them. Go through each danger individually reminding people of the city image. Content – the most searched for word on the internet is Sex. It is now estimated that at least 200,000 US citizens are addicted to pornography on the Internet. But there are other problems – the issue of inaccurate information could be very serious if your child took bad advice on a health problem. Contact – a parent’s worst fear is that another adult might try and contact their child and then meet them offline – this is very rare but sadly it has happened. Commerce – the increasing commercial nature of the Internet means your children may be tempted to fill in their personal details in all sorts of places on the web and end up getting marketing information you wouldn’t want them to see.
- Pornography has been available for many years, but the Internet has made it much more available.Indeed the porn industry has led the way in internet technology – (credit card purchasing, streaming and webcams, pop ups and “toaster adverts” etc. Reality is that people can now access more pornography – without leaving their own homes; without paying for it; and they can keep pictures stored in a place others may not find it. Say that the two examples are www.whitehouse.com - remind people how close this is to the www.whitehouse.gov site they looked at earlier. Just three letters difference. Shows how children can access it by mistake. The other example is of a bizarre site called www.nakednews.com on which news readers read serious news but take their clothes off as they are doing it. Many parents can be shocked when they first go on the Internet because they think that some material such as pornography should be illegal. Because the Internet is an international medium, and in many countries pornography is openly allowed, most of the material is perfectly legal in the country where it originates. But that does mean that it doesn’t cause harm and that it is accessible by children. But why should we be concerned if our children see pornography: Porn is not about beauty or seeing women or men as a whole – just about the physical vital statistics. Therefore it encourages a false and unachievable fantasy about sex with women or men at any time, in any place, in the way you want it. Porn can be used by pedophiles to make young children think that they too should undress and engage in sex. And porn can be addictive. The SMART tip here illustrates that a good filtering package can help block a great deal, but important to stress that lots of porn can come as attachments in hotmail accounts and that some children can get around filtering packages. Also be careful to use favorites files and type in correct website address !
- Pornography is not the only kind of problem on the web. There also many sites which promote racism and hatred. We should not be surprised by this… the Internet is a fantastic tool for bringing together people with a very specialist interest, enabling them to find each other and then communicate. That can of course have a very positive value, but it is also true of extreme minority political groups. And on the web, it is easy to pose as something that appears acceptable – eg the graphic relates to the worldwide church of the Creator. Some of these groups sadly target children – point to web capture on screen. Smart tip is that if you want to see a complete list and further information on sites of concern look at the Anti Defamation League site – www.adl.com
- As well as racist sites some sites can also be misleading or include blatant inaccurate content. For example: Spoof sites are those that pretend to be the real thing but in fact are mere imitations, often taking positions that are the opposite of those that the real site supports. Then there are URL mimickers who register a URL that is slightly different to one that attracts a lot of traffic eg dinsey.com and most famous of all whitehouse.com rather than whitehouse.gov. A local example is class95.com – a porn site rather than the Singapore radio station. Web sites can offer inaccurate material that rewrites history – the illustrated site – www.martinlutherking.org provides a very inaccurate view of the great man’s life. Such inaccuracies can be very important if they concern topics that impact on personal safety and well being e.g. health information. Kids should be advised to be very careful about medical information online. Smart tips suggests that ways of checking out sites are to look for who published them – the source; when they were last updated (in case the information is out of date); who is linked to the site – you can search for this in google with link: and then the URL. Links provide evidence of third party endorsement; and finally any references on the site – corroborating information and its source.
- Many adults think of the Internet primarily as either a tool for e-mail or for finding information on the web. Children are huge users of a third Internet application – interactive services. The difference with these forms of service is that they are in real time i.e. you are in touch with people who are online at the same time as you are. Under this heading I want to talk about CHAT – for having a conversation with a large number of people - very widely used sometimes from well known web sites (eg singnet) and sometimes using software you can download called IRC – Internet Relay Chat. Instant Messaging – this is for talking one to one usually to people you know. Like Chat there are commercial programmes from companies like Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft and also more general software called ICQ – which stands for I Seek You . Games – with wonderful acronyms like MOO, MUD and MUSH, use chat as a means of allowing interaction between players Mobile phones – SMS text messages are very popular with teenagers and now you can chat using your handphone as well Cybersex – this is a particular use of interactive services, especially messaging, to fantasize about sex
- Its worth taking a closer look at Instant messaging since this is one of the most popular Internet applications currently. Instant Messenger is commonly described as a combination of chat and email. Like chat, Instant Messaging is live and instantaneous, where email messages take time to deliver. IM can be a very private form of communication between known friends where the user builds up a list of contacts or ‘buddies’ and is alerted when they are online. However IM can also be a public open environment where the user is encouraged to find and make new contacts online. There are several providers of IM software, most of them are free, providing the user registers a certain amount of personal information: Names to look out for are as follows: Original IM was Internet Relay Chat (IRC) ICQ Yahoo Messenger AOL Instant Messenger MSN Messenger The most popular products with teenagers are AOL, Yahoo, and MSN . Each of these products have different features and security settings. It is important to familiarize yourself with these settings.
- Although most people use IM for chatting with text, IM products can also offer a range of other communication tools, voice chat, webcams, and file and picture exchange. IM can be accessed not only on computers but also on mobile phones and personal digital assistants.
- IM can act like a pager system to let you know when others are online, or when you have an email.
- A report carried out in America by Pew Internet called Teenage Life Online, in 2001 revealed that IM isn’t just an extension for young people’s social lives, but is a place where they can reveal their deepest most personal thoughts. In fact, IM is fundamentally changing the way some teens conduct romantic relationships and friendships. The fact that you can’t be seen means that you are free from, racial, regional, ethnic and gender differences and stereotypes. Teens cite this as one of the primary draws of instant messaging. Online, they say, you’re free to be your &quot;true self&quot; since no one knows what you look like or subjects you to real-world stereotypes. In the US nearly three quarters of teenagers between 12 and 17 (nearly 13 million) use IM.
- IM gives young people a feeling of protection because they cannot see the recipient’s reaction to what they say. Teens use IM to start and end relationships, discuss difficult issues, express complex ideas and opinions, in ways they may not have off-line. When filling out details required for registration IM companies sometimes transfer the personal details of users to a member directory, or public profile, this can be visible to other users and is sometimes shared with chat systems. A profile is a page which contains information about the user so that others can access it and find out if they have similar interests. Sexual predators have recognised that these profiles are a way of gathering more information about children so that they can gain their confidence and develop an emotional attachment, with the aim of progressing the contact onto mobile phones and then ultimately to sexual contact.
- IM is largely unmoderated and therefore affords a greater level of security for people who want to exploit others. It has played an important role in the grooming process for sexual predators trying to make contact with children. A typical scenario for a sexual predator might be as follows: Following the initial contact in a chat room, the predator could invite the child into a private area of the Chat Room to get to know them better. Next in the grooming sequence comes private chat via an instant messaging service, and then e-mail, phone conversations (often on mobile phones) and finally a face-to-face meeting. The grooming process can go on for weeks and months, as it may take this long for the child to feel truly comfortable. The patience of the predator may also be explained partly by the fact that it is not uncommon for them to be grooming several children at the same time.
- A good IM product will have clear instructions about how to adjust settings to increase or decrease privacy, and will contain clear guidelines about what information will be made public. For example you can set some IM products to only receive messages from friends or buddies. Be involved in setting up your IM product and don’t assume that the default installation will be the best settings for you and your children. Some IM products emphasize the risks of receiving files from others by alerting you if someone has sent a file, and only allowing the transfer if you agree to it. This is good practise, as is not allowing your own children to transfer files/photographs without your permission. You should always have the option to not receive incoming messages from people unless they are on your buddy list. Equally you should be able to block messages from certain individuals if someone has been abusive.
- So what are the main dangers in chat.. Anonymity – this of course can have plus points for some internet uses eg getting counseling, but in chat it means you have to be very careful. There is a huge amount of boasting, fantasy and lying within chat. Where this is very important is if adults pretend to be children, and children pretend to be older than they are. Adults can be very sophisticated in manipulating children – flattery, professions of love, and great interest being shown in a child’s hobbies – all make it very difficult for children to refuse approaches Determined adults can therefore develop relationships entirely for their own sexual purposes. It is important to realize that a contact within a chat room can shift very quickly to other internet communication methods – messaging and e-mail, and indeed to mobile text messages or conversations. This is serious because children can take mobiles with them to very private places Say you are going to give an example of how easy it is to get inappropriate chat.
- This is the Yahoo home page – very familiar to many Internet users. One click on the word Health takes you to…
- The sexuality part of the directory – for some parents this will begin to have topics on screen that sound risqué.. but one click on chats and forums – just six lines down on the left, takes you to…
- The sexuality part of the directory – for some parents this will begin to have topics on screen that sound risqué.. but one click on chats and forums – just six lines down on the left, takes you to….
- A set of chat rooms you really would not want to be part of…
- This is what happened to one family as result of contact between an adult and a child. What you see on the screen is an extract from an e-mail that was sent by the victim’s father to an organization called Childnet. These events happened in the UK but there have been similar issues arising elsewhere and many cases in the USA. Notice that the father was in the computer industry – this was not a parent who did not understand the issues of safety online. However, what he was not aware of was what actually happened in chat rooms. Sadly in this case the girl had sex with the man who contacted her on three occasions. He is now serving 5 years in prison (reduced to 2.5 years on appeal). While he was awaiting trial he actually tried to meet a second girl and the police arrested him again as she was about to get in to his car.
- Note the CHAT banner will not work unless you have Flash installed on your computer. If you want to know more about chat and its dangers there is a special web site that you can go to called chatdanger.com, which is aimed at both chat users (teenagers) and parents. The site has been put together by Childnet International and it has resources that get across the safety messages in a very simple non-technical way Childnet decided to summarize the key safety messages into a simple mnemonic CHAT . You can see on the screen that this is written in the way that teenagers write to each other on the net – abbreviated text language. C stands for: Careful H stands for: hold on to your personal information A stands for: arranging to meet is dangerous T stands for: tell someone if something makes you feel uncomfortable. This CHAT safety message has been designed as a banner which anyone can put on their web site. The code is available from the chat danger site.
- This slide talks about the subtle pressure that companies can put on children through their web sites. The most important point to make is that companies can collect information from children without their parents knowing. A Smart tip is to be very careful about filling in online forms. The information may be used in a way that you do not expect. You can also change your computer setting to increase the privacy, and not allow your computer to accept ‘cookies’.
- We should not be surprised that for some people the Internet becomes like drugs or gambling – another form of addiction. Even in our work many of us will know that we can become addicted to the use of e-mail, and having to empty our inboxes. But in children and teenagers, we should watch out for tell tale signs that indicate things are getting out of proportion. If your child: Will not leave the computer, eg for meal times, or other activities and complains about interruptions. Is spending very long hours at the computer, especially late in the evening Is using the computer secretively and reducing the screen if you come near Then, you may have a problem. Moreover, if you think your child is engaging in risky activities like chat for very long periods you should be concerned and should think about acting.
- Important to stress how if we are pro-active and get our children to teach us we can avoid some of the problems later. – Make sure that if your children are using Chat that you discuss the importance of using moderated and age-appropriate chat rooms. Again a chance to highlight how you need parents to support you in the task of using ICT in the school. 3) Parents have a real role to play in making sure that the Internet builds on offline interest (including homework). Keeping the computer in a family room is important to stress.
- There are some very useful tools on the computer which can help you. Internet favourite folders. – Sometimes it is possible to access inappropriate sites through mis-spelling website addresses. – A very powerful example here is www.whitehouse.gov (Home of US president) and www.whitehouse.com – (porn site). Encourage your children to store the websites which they regularly use in their “favourites” folder or bookmark. For very young children you might want to restrict the sites they visit to those you have pre-selected and put in their favourites folders. – You can personalise these folders so different children have different sites. You can look at the History or Temp folder on the computer to check what sites have been accessed. This is a sensitive point because you may feel it not appropriate to monitor your children’s online use and check in this way – however simply informing your children that you can check might help them to be more careful as to what they access. Hotmail accounts (those e-mail accounts which you can access on the web) are notorious for junk and SPAM. Talk to your children about what e-mail systems they use and consider signing them up for one from a respected ISP. Consider using a filtering tool for your machine at home but remember although they may block out a lot of inappropriate content they are no substitute for good parental involvement. A smart kid can often disable the filtering product and other computers which your children may access (such as in an Internet café or friend’s home) may not have filtering enabled.
- Important to cover this issue carefully. Some parents want a simple solution and think that by installing a filtering product on their computer that their children are safe from inappropriate content and contact. However whilst filters can block a lot of inappropriate material they are not 100% effective and are no substitute for good parental involvement. Furthermore a lot of children access computers which are not filtered - eg in Internet cafes, libraries, friends house etc. It is therefore important to help your children be SMART online. One of the most comprehensive tests of filtering products was recently carried out by the Australian Broadcasting Authority and Australian Internet safety organisation Net Alert. The report is available to read from this site and includes the results from the 14 different filtering products that were tested.
- The important point here is that the SMART rules are positive (not “never, never never”) and help children ask “why” “What” and “who” to all of these 5 points. – Have a look at the SMART area of the Kidsmart website and make sure you can give an example to back up these points. Really important to get parents to “own” these 5 rules and stress the importance of them teaching their children the importance of not giving out too much personal information on line and never meeting up with someone whom they have met in cyberspace without your permission Further clarification and background is up on www.kidsmart.org.uk/smart – for example on the S rule Childnet says. The reason why you shouldn't give out your personal information to those you don't know is that you can't be sure where it will end up, what it will be used for and who may contact you. There are times when you have to give your personal information online - for example in registering for new products or to friends who you can trust. The important thing is to remember that this information can then be passed on to other people or organisations. Often companies will ask you to register with them online because they are interested in selling you something. Don't be fooled by some of the online quizzes or raffles! It's best not to give out too much personal information on forms or quizzes - especially those which ask for personal details of those of other members in your home. Always ask for an adult's opinion if you are unsure. Be careful when filling out &quot;profiles&quot; in clubs of communities. These are public areas of the Internet which people can search on and then contact you. When entering a chat room you are often asked to give out your AGE, SEX, & LOCATION (ASL). Stick to your nickname and don't be too specific about your location.
- Sadly some young people have met up with people they thought they knew on the Internet and have ended up being hurt - see for example www.chatdanger.com . So remember the old &quot;stranger = danger&quot; rule, even if you've been chatting to someone for a long time who doesn't feel like a stranger. There are lots of stories about how people have made real friends through the Internet and this has obviously involved meeting up face to face after chatting on line. However, it is important to remember that people may not be who they say they are and both young people and adults can be fooled into meeting someone who they might not wish to meet. Take a trusted adult with you for support. There are a number of excellent safe website resources which allow you to connect to others in a protected environment which is moderated. See for example www.gridclub.com
- You can download viruses which damage your computer and some e-mail attachments can include unpleasant pictures or links to websites. If you do give out a lot of personal information about yourself when you sign up for a new product or when you enter a competition you may find that you are then bombarded with SPAM or Junk mail. If you have a web mail account you are more likely to get junk mail. Being SMART online means making sure that you are careful about knowing how to filter junk e-mail and block individual senders in your e-mail software programme. Be very careful not to open attachments from people or organisations which you don't know and make sure you have a anti-virus software protection system on your computer which is updated. This is not only to protect you from receiving viruses but also to stop your machine from passing viruses onto others by mistake.
- It's important to remember that you are in charge when your online and can choose the people you want to talk to. Whenever you sign on in a chat room you have to give yourself an alias or nickname. Pretending to be someone else is part of the fun and just like you can play the part of someone else on the stage in a play, or take on a role in a game, so it is possible to take on another role online. However, be careful as it is difficult to know when someone is pretending and having fun or lying and wanting to be cruel. So it is always best to stay on the side of caution and if you feel uncomfortable with the way a conversation is going you have several options: Stop and leave the Chat room Block the person who is making you uncomfortable so they can no longer contact you If it is really serious, then you can report them to the Chat host If someone is pestering you to meet up or hassling you it may be that they aren't the nice person they say they are and may be lying about their age, interests, and even their sex. Just like individuals can lie on line, so organisations and companies can also mislead you. Just because someone has put something up on a website doesn't mean it is true. Also many advertising banners pop-ups and links can be misleading. Being SMART online means you need to ask questions and check whether information on websites is true. See www.quick.org.uk for a good set of tests you can judge a good website by.
- It can feel really upsetting to get something by e-mail which you didn't want and lots of times it can be through no fault of your own. Similarly it can be really creepy if you trusted someone you were chatting with, and then weren't sure. Everyone makes mistakes and so it is always best to talk to a friend, teacher or parent if someone, or something you see or receive on line makes you feel uncomfortable. In the UK, the charity Childline runs a 24 hour service for young people (ring 0800 1111) and you can also report anything you think is illegal to the Internet Watch Foundation Hotline which works with the police to get illegal material removed from the Internet. There are other Hotlines in other countries see www.inhope.org for a full list. Make sure you look out for your friends and family and realise that we - adults and young people alike - all need to learn to use the Internet in a SMART way.
- This summary slide animates the SMART rules again - share with the parent’s how it is important to discuss issues with children BEFORE they become an issue. This requires care and you know your children best – you will know what age is appropriate for what issues.
- Important to now pass out the leaflets for each of the parents along with the one they can give immediately to their children. – There is also a another leaflet which reminds parents about the tools to help on their browsers.
- This is the final summarizing slide. Say that at the beginning of the presentation you posed a question as to whether there was a Net Benefit in using the Internet. Stress that the answer is positive, but it does mean that parents have to be involved with their children and learn together with them. End on a positive note – reminding the audience of the positive power of the Internet to help children like Tommi discover, connect and create.
- Final slide to end with as you announce that you are now happy to take questions from what you have shared. Important to make sure that you include other members of staff who are responsible for School ICT policies if you are running this seminar in your school.