Hello All,
My name is Michael Cohen and I am a Middle School Teacher in Orlando, Florida. This past year opened my eyes to the dangerous online activities of some of our students. During the year we had two teachers impersonated on Myspace by a student and many others became "friends" of these profiles filled with sexually explicit material. The students profiles too had everything from personal information to drugs and crude language. This summer I developed a program to teach parents the ins and outs of todays Internet so they can in turn protect their kids. I recently got my website off the ground and have been working on it non-stop for weeks. If you could visit www.cybersafetynet.com and offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. I have realized that in order to get this program off the ground, I need the support of others fighting to protect children on the net. Please contact me if you think a link might benefit both of our sites. I would of course put you on my links page as well. Thanks in advance and keep up the good fight.
-Michael Cohen
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Anne
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507
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6/26/06
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Re: Middle School Teacher Seeking Online Safety Program Advice
Jul 12, 2006 10:40 AM
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Michael, thanks for your post. Your program of personal, hands-on support for parents sounds great. But you asked about the site. I hope you don't mind my saying I feel strongly that, ultimately, fear tactics don't really help parents, and they're all over the site (this is just my personal view, not the big, official BlogSafety.com one, if there were such a thing). The kind of support and constructive advice I'm sure you offer in your presentations and other services, encouraging parents to transfer into cyberspace all the good parenting sense they already have, should be reflected in the site as much as in your in-person work, I feel.
For example, prominently displaying the top online-safety rules is a great idea (tho' I don't think clicking to the "Top 10 Dangers" should be right under the very good rule, "Learn all you can about the Internet"). On the home page, I think parents would be better served if they saw a more thoughtful, balanced message than "the Internet is a scary place," a "top 10 dangers" list, and frightening statistics. If they've arrived at your site, they quite probably already have a problem or concern they're dealing with and are seeking solutions and help instead of more to be afraid of. Incidentally, the first statistic cited on the home page is from a six-year-old study, an update for which UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center is issuing an update shortly (here's the CCRC's page, linking to a whole lot more research). There's great research going on at Cal Berkeley, Northwestern, Georgetown, UCLA, and University of TX, Austin, concerning kids' and teens' online activities too. For a couple of examples, see "Blogging's upside, downside" and "Teens' exposure to sex online: Study" in NetFamilyNews. I think it's helpful to parents, too, that you can recommend specific software you've tested yourself (and am glad you're suggesting they be up front with their kids about its use), but if you're a reseller for that company, you might want to disclose that on the site. Hope these comments are useful to you. Best wishes for the program's success. |
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Patzer
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3
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6/26/06
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(4 of 5)
Re: Middle School Teacher Seeking Online Safety Program Advice
Jul 11, 2006 7:57 PM
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Thanks for the suggestions. Ive done quite a bit of updating on my site. I would greatly appreciate it if you could take a look at the changes. Ive posted quite a bit more content than I had when i originally posted. Thanks in advance for your honest opinions.
-Mike
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Patzer
Posts:
3
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6/26/06
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(3 of 5)
Re: Middle School Teacher Seeking Online Safety Program Advice
Jun 27, 2006 4:46 AM
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Thanks, im editing it as I speak. I need to go back through that page and check the quotes I pasted. A few still need sources and I need to change the 1 in 5 source back to Center For Missing And Exploited Children. One of the biggest concerns I have at the moment to get this thing going is getting it on search engines. Now i know its only been two week, but i haven't been picked up on any search engines at all. That makes it quite hard to get the word out. Any advice?
Thanks in advance.
-Michael
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Larry
Posts:
136
From:
Silicon Valley, California
Registered:
6/19/06
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Re: Middle School Teacher Seeking Online Safety Program Advice
Jun 26, 2006 10:01 PM
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Michael,
I think it's great that you're doing this. You have some great information.
I must quibble with one statement however. I don't know whether NBC News really did say "One in five children who use computer chatrooms has been approached over the Internet by pedophiles" as you quote on your site but that's not true. The real statistic that's based on is "1 in 5 children has received an unwanted online sexual soliciation." But the majority of those were solicited by other kids, only 1 in 33 were aggressive and none resulted in a sexual act. If you do that math, the study that is misquoted actually determines that fewer than 1 in 100 kids say they received an aggressive solicitation from an adult. That's still bad, but it's far from 1 in 5. This week's Newsweek has a good article about this and Anne Collier and I will be covering it in detail in our upcoming book, "MySpace Unraveled" which hits the stores in July.
Larry
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Edited by Larry at 06/26/2006 10:03 PM
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Patzer
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3
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6/26/06
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Middle School Teacher Seeking Online Safety Program Advice
Jun 26, 2006 9:55 PM
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Hello All,
My name is Michael Cohen and I am a Middle School Teacher in Orlando, Florida. This past year opened my eyes to the dangerous online activities of some of our students. During the year we had two teachers impersonated on Myspace by a student and many others became "friends" of these profiles filled with sexually explicit material. The students profiles too had everything from personal information to drugs and crude language. This summer I developed a program to teach parents the ins and outs of todays Internet so they can in turn protect their kids. I recently got my website off the ground and have been working on it non-stop for weeks. If you could visit www.cybersafetynet.com and offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. I have realized that in order to get this program off the ground, I need the support of others fighting to protect children on the net. Please contact me if you think a link might benefit both of our sites. I would of course put you on my links page as well. Thanks in advance and keep up the good fight.
-Michael Cohen
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