Profile Safety

There are lots of sites that require you to create a profile for yourself. Game sites and social networking sites (like MySpace and Facebook) especially want to know about you so they can customize what they show you (and the ads you get to see) based on your age, your gender, and your interests. But who else can see this information? Today’s lesson will be on figuring out how to stay safe by keeping your personal information PERSONAL. We will look at:

1. What your email address says about you
2. How reverse lookup search engines work
3. How you can create a “safe” profile.

Netsmartz has a great series of games and activities based on internet safety. These can be accessed at http://www.netsmartzkids.org/games/index.htm?page=clquest/main.htm

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Parent Meeting 3/26/09

The intention of this meeting is to let you know what is going on both inside and outside of our building as it involves your children. Technology is growing quickly, and proves to be a useful and sometimes essential tool in our lives. Ready internet, social networking sites, cell phones, cameras and texting are some of the tools that create a virtual world for your child. Unlike many of us, your child navigates this world with ease- our hope is that we can help you become more comfortable in this world as well. We also hope to give you some idea of how these different technologies are managed at school, and what you can do to manage them at home.

Cell phones
Many students are able to access texts, calls, and emails on their phone. Most students have cell phones with access to a camera capable of taking both still and video shots. These shots are saved on the phone and can also be transferred to computers for further editing and sharing. The network for cell phones is provided by you by virtue of the fact that you have purchased a plan. The ability to connect to the internet from a cell phone is not dependant upon our network -while students CAN connect through our network (and are then working within our filtering systems) they do not necessarily have to do so. They can access your carrier’s service- giving them wide open internet access within the confines of our building.

A nationwide problem with cellphones and teens has been the ability to send inappropriate photos to friends. CBS, NBC and Newsweek have all reported on the problem of “sexting”- sending questionable pictures with a brief message via text to people in their contact lists. These photos invariably get forwarded onward to people that your child does not know.

How can you know what you child is doing with their phone? You have several tools at the ready:

The phone itself.
Kids often think that the phone is “theirs” and they expect privacy at all times with it. As the payer of the bill, that phone technically is yours.

Take a look in the Messages file- this will save all sent and received messages until they are deleted manually, up to a finite number determined by the phone’s memory capacity.

Cell phone bills
Your phone bill provides a lot of information for you. You can often get a detailed bill online or request one be sent to your home. This will detail all activity on the phone – who your child is calling or texting, what time those contacts are made, and whether there is a Data transfer” or “data download.” Statements will vary based on your plan.

Question your child about data transfers that you find unusual- be they very frequent during a particular time, in large numbers, or of a large size (you will see a column for data size- 2KB is not big- 1060KB is. It could be pictures, music, ringtones, games, or webpages. Ask, ask, ask.

If you are finding that your child is spending time texting or talking rather than sleeping, it is not unreasonable for the cell phone to have a bedtime…in your possession.

Laptop management techniques
MSAD 16 and the MLTI program provide a laptop for each student to help enhance learning. While at school your student is randomly monitored to make sure that they are using it for educational purposes. Internet access is filtered to help keep students from straying from educational sites, but it is important to understand that the internet grows by 10 million static pages a day. That makes it hard to keep up! And, the reality is that the ability to access the internet with cell phones can make filtering a moot point. An important task for teachers and parents is to help develop good digital citizens by teaching students safe internet use.

Having said this, we understand that they are kids. And, many of you have other computers at home that your students use. How can you keep your kids safe on your own networks? Like Dorothy in Oz, you already have the ability through your internet provider. I called both Fairpoint and TimeWarner- both have Parental Controls available at no cost for the first three computers, and at a minimal monthly cost after that. You have the ability to limit the hours that your internet is available as well as what sites (or sorts of sites) your child has access to. The handouts in front of you outline the different services available. Contact them directly.

We recommend that all computers in your home are in a common place that has high visibility. If you allow your child to have a laptop or computer in their room, be sure that you are checking what they are doing on that computer. Again, if you are concerned about your child being online later than you would like, it is reasonable for you to “repossess” the laptop at a certain time and return it to your child in the morning.

Most browsers (the software you use to access the internet- on your child’s laptop this will be Safari) collect a list of sites visited by day. To access this, open the browser and choose History from the menu bar at the top. This will show you what your child has been doing. If the history is blank, and you know your child has been on the internet, you should ask your child why they have erased it. The default for Safari keeps a web history for a month at a time before it deletes the oldest entries.

In an effort to help keep students both safe and on track academically, the decision has been made to filter all student laptops both at home and in school. As of the first week of March, students will be filtered on their laptops wherever they take them. This change does NOT affect personal laptops in your home.

In the realm of your home, you should feel comfortable setting boundaries for your child and their school laptop. We recommend that you take an active role in your child’s laptop use. It is perfectly reasonable for you to insist that the laptop be used in an open place in your home. No teacher will ever assign a project that must be done in their bedrooms with the door closed!