Nontechnical Strategies to Reduce Children's Exposure to Inappropriate Material on the Internet Summary of a Workshop (2001) / Chapter Skim
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4 Nontechnical Strategies
4 Nontechnical Strategies
Pages 42-67
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From page 42... ...
The nontechnical strategies presented encompassed a variety of programs to educate parents and young people on Internet use. The majority of strategies focus on reducing young people's exposure to inappropriate material, while others center on providing them with skills to mitigate any possible effects they might experience from encountering sexually explicit or inappropriate material online.
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From page 43... ...
SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGIES Sarah Keller used the term "social marketing" to describe several approaches that center on reducing young people's exposure to inappropriate material by increasing the amount and accessibility of positive, educational material on the Internet. An online landscape filled with productive, stimulating, and developmentally beneficial material was seen as an important objective by many workshop participants, many of whom decried the dearth of educational material online and a need for greater funding for developing such online curricula.
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Social marketing alleviates the difficulty to some extent by reaching young people directly. These web sites could easily include information on online safety as well as other educational content.
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Mary Dempsey, commissioner of the Chicago Public Library, described the Chicago Public Library's effort to create a kids-safe portal to the web. The library's home page for kids and teens is designed to be a safe portal to that links to educational material online.
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From page 50... ...
Social marketing has the potential to protect young people from many types of inappropriate material because it selects and produces carefully considered educational and entertaining material for them. Internet safety can also be incorporated into safe portals so that young people will be exposed to this information when they go online.
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From page 51... ...
For example, performing an effective search requires the selection of the right set of keywords, familiarity with Boolean logic, choosing the right search engine for the topic, and knowing how to navigate through a browser so that it is easy to enter and exit web sites, databases, and other online resource tools. Information literacy provides a set of strategies that could help to prevent young people from viewing inappropriate material in the first place (e.g., if a search returned a web site that the young person had learned to recognize was likely to contain sexually explicit material rather than information on reproduction, the user could simply choose not to click the questionable site)
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From page 52... ...
While such findings suggest that media literacy can help mitigate the impact of the media on young people's attitudes, the question remains of how to use media literacy in schools. Kathy Boguzewski, an instructional technology consultant with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, described how she used media literacy to teach students how to evaluate information on the Internet in two different contexts.
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From page 53... ...
Boguzewski offered an example of how these questions can help teach young people how to be skeptical about information presented online and how to structure an analysis of it. Recalling a high school student who needed to write a persuasive paper and had chosen the legalization of marijuana as his topic, Boguzewski described the process she guided him through in order to differentiate valid information online from advocacy or misinformation.
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From page 54... ...
In this example, Boguzewski taught both information literacy skills (e.g., using search engines effectively and selecting the most pertinent hits returned in the search) as well as media literacy (e.g., evaluating the extent to which information is relevant and credible)
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From page 55... ...
Boguzewski stated that this plan is of great benefit to students because it teaches them a life skill through information and media literacy, which they will need in college and other settings that do not have filters or adults to provide critical evaluations. As strategies to protect young people from inappropriate material, media and information literacy offer a number of benefits: they teach young people critical thinking, knowledge evaluation, and skillful use of the Internet (e.g., effective searching)
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From page 56... ...
There are existing models, largely from nonprofit organizations, that have worked to both identify the specific concerns and needs of parents as well as to develop programs that would provide training to increase their efficacy with the Internet. Both Laurie Lipper, co-director of The Children's Partnership, and Eileen Faucette, founder and coodinator of PTA Live Online, discussed outreach programs that their organizations have developed to assist parents in guiding their children's online activities, as well as the concerns parents have about the Internet and technology in general.
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From page 57... ...
The report focuses on how parents need to think about and approach technology, as well as how they can address Internet issues with their children. It is not a how-to manual on filters or web support, but rather offers guidelines and recommendations on age-appropriate strategies for setting limits and encouraging productive online activities for children.
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Hands-On Training Eileen Faucette's Live Online program started in response to local interest within the Fort Gordon, Georgia, community to provide a hands-on
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With many adults, this is a very important first step toward becoming effective cyberparents. Information, training, and hands-on activities such as those offered by The Children's Partnership and PTA Live Online can fill a knowledge gap and thereby assist parents in taking a more active role in their children's online activities.
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From page 61... ...
Mary Dempsey had several suggestions as to how parents, teachers, and librarians can keep an eye on children's online activities without being intrusive. One option Dempsey mentioned is Cyber Navigators, a program in the Chicago Public Libraries that offers a double benefit by providing personalized monitoring as well as mentors for young people.
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From page 62... ...
These policies an example of which is presented in Box 4-2 vary from school district to school district based on the particular concerns of teachers and parents, but in general they instruct young people that surfing sexually explicit web sites is not appropriate. Increasingly, acceptable use policies also address the material students post and publish online as well.
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From page 65... ...
Acceptable use policies developed jointly with the school and the community are more likely to incorporate the particular sensibilities of parents and can be designed to address specific concerns. One community, for example, may be more concerned about accidental exposure to sexually explicit material, while others worry about young people spending time in chat rooms.
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From page 66... ...
Training in how to be a responsible netizen could come as a part of media and information literacy training, parent educational outreach on children's Internet safety, or as a part of acceptable use policies (e.g., a policy could state that in addition to expecting that young people will avoid sexually explicit material, they are encouraged and expected to take appropriate action if they have an unpleasant encounter with another user)
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From page 67... ...
Roberts also wanted to see the number of professional development opportunities increased so that already-certified teachers have training opportunities to make them skillful users of technology and adept at incorporating technology into their curricula. Mary Dempsey noted the importance of providing technology training to librarians and stated that ongoing training can be an opportunity not only to increase librarians skill with technology, but to also provide a venue for sharing strategies to keep young people on task with productive use of the Internet.
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