e-Safety for the Youth of America

Risk taking is a natural part of children’s lives. They take risks in order to grow, including trying new activities, generating new ideas, and experimenting with new roles. However, they can also find themselves in trouble with their risk taking. Concern over such risky behaviors has led to the creation of many types of intervention. Some of these interventions have attempted to manipulate kids/teens beliefs, values and behaviors hoping to get them to act more cautiously. Other interventions have attempted to improve their stability to make sensible decisions, hoping to get them to make wise choices on their own. Developing general decision-making skills enables kids and teens to protect themselves in many situations—both online and in the physical world.

Many programs have been developed by various organizations to help American youth avoid online hazards. Combating the growing epidemic of online youth victimization has become a national concern after several high profile cases of Internet-based abductions and murders were brought to the media spotlight in recent years. The FBI says that besides Homeland Security issues, child pornography and sexual exploitation of children through online means are the most significant crime problems that it confronts. The difference between i-SAFE and these other programs lies in the fact that active learning is the primary mode of the i-SAFE Program.

The Difference in Active Learning Lessons

The i-SAFE Inc. Safe Schools Education Initiative and Outreach Program focuses on proactively educating and empowering students to safely and responsibly take control of their Internet experiences. The i-SAFE Program encourages the extension of valuable e-Safety knowledge and skills throughout students’ schools and communities. The i-SAFE Program utilizes Best Practices in education to create an active, real-life atmosphere and to provide real experiences to the hazards and consequences of risky or inappropriate online behavior—experiences that are more difficult to acquire through solely Web-based learning modalities.

From 2002 to the present, i-SAFE Inc. has provided interactive e-Safety lessons to students in their own classrooms and administered pre and post-assessment surveys to measure the effectiveness of the i-SAFE curriculum.

The i-SAFE curriculum is designed to foster active participation between students and their teachers through classroom discussions and cooperative group-learning activities. Integral to each lesson at all grade levels is the incorporation of an empowerment activity, which provides students with opportunities to share what they have learned about e-Safety with their peers, their families, and other community members. In this way, students internalize and take ownership of the concepts learned.

The i-SAFE e-Safety curriculum is correlated with each of the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS) published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Integrating the i-SAFE curriculum with these (and other) standards provides teachers, technology planners, teacher preparation institutions, and educational decision-makers with frameworks to establish enriched learning environments supported by technology. For more information about the i-SAFE Curriculum lessons, please visit www.isafe.org and enter the Educators area on the Web site.