Internet Safety Program News

Please note that the following article was taken directly from the Dover-Sherborn Press located online @: www.dover-sherbornpress.com

Do you know where (online) your kids are?
By Bev Wax/ Correspondent - Thursday, May 25, 2006

By now, most parents are savvy enough to realize that it’s a good idea to have any computer meant for their children that is connected to the Internet in a common area at home.

    While this piece of advice was reiterated to Dover-Sherborn parents attending an Internet Safety Program last Thursday, it was only one of many to help moms and dads figure out what their kids and teenagers are really doing on the computer. Held in Mudge Auditorium, the evening was geared towards sharing information and covering some of the ways kids fool their parents.

    The presentation featured a panel of experts who focused on how to prevent children from unknowingly discovering unacceptable sites, releasing personal information and attracting online predators. Encompassing a wide range of computer use issues, the evening was broken up into three sections: computer use during school hours; real-time demonstrations on computer use at home showing the "ins and outs" of Instant Messaging and MySpace; and a question-and-answer period.

    K-12 parent group associations at the Chickering and Pine Hill elementary schools, along with the regional schools, sponsored the program. Joanne Kenney, director of guidance at the high school, said the evening was put together by a subcommittee of three members of the Guidance Advisory Committee "to give parents a better understanding of the world our children live in."

    Technology Manager Ken Corning began by going over the school protocols that most parents already became familiar with as their child moved from elementary to high school. He reviewed the Acceptable Use Policy, a federal protection act mandating school filters, day-to-day oversight and teacher supervision.

    "We use these as the rules of the road; it is not a free-for-all where we say here’s a computer with a filter on it," Corning said.

    He went on to describe the technical safeguards such as the installation of a firewall, a manual ability to block sites and sharing knowledge with other districts. Corning said he believes because of this communication, "We know how kids are getting around things in other schools. ... school is a fairly safe environment; the home becomes an open environment. That’s why most of you are here, to learn about the cat-and-mouse games your kids play."

    He introduced Barbara Gaskin, a Sherborn parent of two teenage boys who is chairman of the technology committee at the Carroll School in Lincoln. Formerly, she was president of Decision Support Technology and has more than 25 years of experience working for software companies and information technology consulting. Her work now focuses on educational software and Internet safety.

    Gaskin gave many examples of how kids often trick their parents and sometimes school administrators. She recalled a particular funny story where she had gotten onto a wireless network for her presentation at a school. The administration had thought the school server was safe, but students were getting onto a neighbor’s network - the church next door. Gaskin joked how the administration immediately had a chat with the church’s staff.

    She told parents to be aware of the facts and admitted that even though statistics are always changing, the number of incidents is always going up.

    Gaskin warned, "The Internet is not only about sex predators. Five-hundred sites promote eating disorders. None of the filtering software will filter those out, they will slip right through." She went on to say some 5,000 promote hate, others promote suicide. "There are popular music sites with nasty music out there, again not filtered."

    She listed some social networking sites, including AIM (AOL Instant Message), Facebook, MySpace, Livejournal and Webshots. Showing parents a live AIM demonstration, she explained that kids "need to be careful what other information they’re sharing," She stressed that IM’ing becomes extremely important in middle school with buddy lists and away messages. If a family does not have any screening on its computer, any posted links, phone numbers and public chat rooms are available. As an example, Gaskin went to a "Love & Romance" room "that usually has a steady stream of raunchy conversations."

    AIM prevents a lot of homework from getting done, and so do the popular networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, the latter geared toward college students.

    On these sites, kids post their profiles and sometimes pictures, write blogs and browse other users’ profiles. While most parents can’t understand why teenagers would want their private lives exposed to the world, Gaskin said, "Profiles are as important to a teen as what they’ll wear to school the next day. It becomes their identity." Personal information such as cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses and street addresses can often be tracked down as well through profiles.

    She also touched upon cyber bullying; a practice of sending mean messages over IM, create Web sites that ridicule or threaten others, pretend to actually be others, or steal a screen name.

    Gaskin said, "You used to be able to leave the bully at school, now he follows you right home and you can’t avoid him." She mentioned IM has its own language and recommended netlingo.com so parents "can translate the Greek they’re typing."

    She believes, of course, the Internet is "not all negative." It can connect far-away family members or help parents to keep in touch with children. Gaskin stated for many it could be beneficial, especially in middle school. "This is often a difficult time ... some times a socially withdrawn or isolated kid can make connections online." She also suggested they look at internetfilterreview.com to learn about the top 10 filtering products.

    The last speaker of the night was State Trooper Dave McSweeney of the Norfolk District Attorney’s office specializing in Internet crime investigations.

    He said, "It is good to see a pro-active forum." He works with 18 troopers on computer-related crime forensics. "We’re the CSI of computer crime. But it’s guaranteed we don’t solve them in an hour with commercials." It usually takes six months to a year to solve a crime working closely with local police departments. "We get to see the inside life of predators and the progression of conversations between the victim and the bad guy."

    He stressed parents needed to educate children when they are as young as possible. For example, they should never click yes to someone who wants an online conversation, "most likely they will because the feel safe at home." McSweeney discussed a predator’s "grooming" of a victim; "They are building an intelligence file on each kid they’re grooming with the ultimate goal of setting up a meeting." He suggested parents "go back to stranger/danger days. We need to teach them at a very young age that when a stranger approaches them online, click no."

 A lengthy question-and-answer period followed, and still many topics were not addressed such as gaming and computer addiction. Many of the sites mentioned during the Internet Safety Program are already listed at doversherborn.org/internet_safety.htm. Corning said he also hopes to post the night’s presentation on the site as in the near future.     

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