Supervision
“Hold hands while crossing the street” is good advice in reality and makes perfect sense in the virtual world as well. Adult supervision is a primary method for guarding our children from high-tech risk, more effective than the most advanced technology yet developed for this purpose. There exists no substitute for sitting down with your kids and exploring the World Wide Web together. This is true when surfing for leisure, doing homework, or conducting education related activities. Similar to watching television together, adults and children who surf the Web together share an experience which can prove to be beneficial to the relationship. Further, the Web provides much opportunity for discussing scores of topics and issues favorable for learning. Besides, if you are an educator and a student or class in your custody accesses pornographic material on the Net because you were not appropriately supervising, you may place yourself and your school at legal risk and consequently endanger your career. More specifically, consider the following suggestions:
Keep the Computer in a Visible Area
Isolation is the key to getting in trouble. Perpetrators know on some level that if they are to succeed in their victimization, they need to first pick a vulnerable victim (sometimes, kids are vulnerable just because they are kids) and remove any potential intervening factors. Intervening factors can include both other adults in close proximity and knowing the perpetrator’s identity. You need to be that intervening factor by always being a few feet away. You can do this by keeping the Internet connected computer monitor in a public area of your house, perhaps the living room or off the kitchen. If you don’t have an Internet connection near that public location in your house, you may have to install a router and “drop” one in. This is the most secure and best way to preserve your connection speed. A more practical way to go is to install a secure wireless router. If you are not sure how to set up a wireless connection, consult with your local electronics store salesperson who can probably help (or check out http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/wirelesssetup.mspx).
Help Supervise at School
I remember doing an online chat with parents not too long ago at a local television station while they did a story about guarding kids online. What struck me about the chat was how many parents wanted to complain about how their childrens’ schools were not doing enough to protect them while using Internet connected computers (usually after explaining that their son or daughter witnessed inappropriate material while online at school). I told them what I wrote here earlier – that this kind of work does not come with a 100% guarantee. In fact, when challenged, my local school district explained that there are millions of new adult oriented and otherwise inappropriate sites that currently exist. Even if our filtering technologies are 99% effective, that means thousands of sites can still end up in plain view, right in front of our youngsters. Also, remember that the Internet is a dynamic place where sites and content is changing every second of every day. It’s literally a moving target which no filtering/blocking software can perfectly deal with. What is also needed is human intervention. We need to take turns and volunteer to help monitor what our students are doing when they are using Internet connected computers at school. No one teacher, not even with a couple of assistants, can effectively do this in a classroom of 25-40 students. Work with your child’s teacher to help children benefit from the wonderful educational tools that others offer on the Internet while staying safe and secure.
Check Your Child’s Web Presence
Every now and then (I do it every couple of months or so), you may want to conduct online searches that may lead to information about your child posted by him/her or someone else. For example, use a meta-search engine such as jux2 (http://www.jux2.com/) which can compare Google, Yahoo, and MSN search results to see what type of web presence your child has (and if it is safe or not). Use keywords such as a userid or e-mail address that your child is using. Use his name both within quotes and without quotes around them (the difference being how the search engine treats the search, either as two keywords or a phrase). Use his/her name in combination with other personal information such as school name or hometown name to narrow the search down a bit if it is too general.
If your child has information posted somewhere such as a website, use Google’s backward links feature to see if others are linked to that information. Simply put in “link:” right before the website address. For example, if you were to do a backwards link check of my site, you would enter link:www.guardingkids.com as the search term.
Finally, you may want to check some specialized search engines that index parts of the Web that other search engines may miss:
• Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.” as of this writing, Technorati is tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. http://technorati.com/about/
• Google Group is a place where users create and own their own online community. http://groups.google.com/. Also check out Yahoo! Groups at http://groups.yahoo.com
• Google Blog Search is a Google search technology focused on blogs. http://blogsearch.google.com/
• del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website – the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. http://del.icio.us
Teach Your Child to Prioritize
Being productive in today’s fast paced world requires excellent time and resource management. It also requires a great deal of focus because there are so many intriguing distractions that can potentially derail our efforts to accomplish our goals. Allocating time to different tasks, working on self-imposed deadlines, and prioritizing among goals are key skills for being successful. In addition, setting boundaries around “what” and “how” we choose to accomplish is key, especially in light of the fact that technology tends to blur or diminish boundaries and introduce chaos. How do children learn these skills? Well, like everything else, they learn them through formal education (school) and informally, through watching others exercise these skills. You as parent or guardian must make certain that your child develops these important set of skills. Here are a few websites that can help:
• What is the point of time management tips? Changing time management habits takes time and effort, and it is always much easier when you have a simple system of practical rules and hints that are easy to keep in mind. That is exactly what the tips on this page are about. http://www.time-management-guide.com/time-management-tips.html
• Stop Stressing Six Ways To Prioritize Your Work. http://tinyurl.com/39kcpe
• Time Management: Setting Goals and Priorities from the University of Florida Counseling Center. http://tinyurl.com/3ak7xb
• A To Do List That Works by F. John Reh. http://management.about.com/cs/yourself/a/ToDoList1002.htm
• Time Management from PBS. If you learn to tame the time monster, you might be surprised at how much you can get done. The real reward, however, is that you’ll probably feel less stressed and more happy. http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/school/time/
• Time Management from Mind Tools. Beat work overload. Increase your effectiveness. Achieve much more. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_HTE.htm
• Managing Your Time from Dartmouth College. This website also includes free downloadable resources. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/success/time.html
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