Students’ safety on Internet
remains priority for district
By larry ramer
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — The township’s K-8 school district has implemented a variety of measures designed to prevent students from carrying out inappropriate activities on the Internet.
Fred Style, the district’s technology curriculum supervisor, discussed the issue with the Board of Education at a recent meeting.
District administrators take several steps to stop students from accidentally or intentionally accessing unsuitable Web sites during the school day and also try to teach children about dangerous people they might encounter on the Internet, Style said.
In order to prevent students from visiting improper Web sites, the district has installed a program on its computers called Secure School that automatically blocks children from entering these Web sites. When Style, while demonstrating Secure School to board members, typed the word "sex" into a search engine, the message Access Denied flashed on the screen.
The system blocks students from accessing Web sites or conducting searches that contain hundreds of other words, Style told board members.
If the system blocks a Web site that a teacher has checked and believes is appropriate for students, the teacher can override the barrier by typing in his or her e-mail address in a box on the screen. By doing that, the teacher sends a message to the district’s network administrator, who would then eliminate the block. Occasionally, students type inappropriate words in this box, Style told the board.
The network administrator, who can determine in which building and on which computer the words were entered, would proceed to report the incident to a school official, who would then take appropriate disciplinary action.
Even when a student conducts a legitimate search on the major search engines, he or she may be presented with a list of results that include improper Web sites, Style said. For example, if a child searches the term "baseball" in Google or Yahoo, he or she will be presented with millions of results.
"You can bet that many of those sites will not be appropriate," Style said.
For that reason, the district, particularly with children in grades one through four, uses a directory called "Yahooligans" that is especially designed for children.
"The results from this directory have been selected by educators or other adults and any problematic sites are eliminated," Style explained.
A search for baseball on Yahooligans turned up a list with 178 Web sites, an amount that Style described as large, but manageable for young children. Furthermore, the children’s safety is enhanced, Style said.
"If we teach children in grades kindergarten through five to use a directory like Yahooligans, which we do, we’re going to eliminate a lot of potential problems," the administrator said.
When it comes to dangerous people on the Internet, Style said administrators try to protect students by applying concepts that the children are taught about strangers in general to strange adults on the Internet.
For example, teachers use the phrase "stranger danger" to refer to both unknown individuals on the Internet and adults on the street whom the children do not know, Style said. Teachers also tell students, "You know that everybody who says they are 12-year-old girls in chat rooms are not really 12-year-old girls. You know that, right?"
Young children are also taught about the dangers of the Internet through songs, Style reported. At the board meeting, Style demonstrated a song that the district uses to warn young children about strangers on the Internet. A portion of the lyrics were as follows:
Now listen kids, when you click on the Web and you’re surfing for something to do,
Chatting in a Chattanooga chatroom with a man named Mr. Kazoo,
Now don’t give out your number or your address, too,
It ain’t safe to give it out if you don’t have a clue.
In addition, as part of the district’s curriculum, teachers tell students to inform their parents if they have an uncomfortable encounter on the Internet and to refrain from giving personal information to strangers. Information on how to use the Internet safely is included in the district’s acceptable use policy, which parents and students must sign.
Middle school students receive curriculum guides that explain how to spot signs of danger on the Internet. Both parents and students have to sign the guides, and middle school teachers discuss the rules in class, Style said.
Occasionally, state and local police officers, as well as FBI agents, have held seminars with Marlboro students and teachers about safety on the Internet, Style said. In one such seminar, a law enforcement official went into a chat room on America Online and revealed that at least three people in the room were undercover FBI agents posing as 12-year-old girls. The official showed that he was able to obtain personal information about a girl from Marlboro by accessing her AOL profile, which she had created. This shows that parent education is important, Style said.
Board member Andrea Miller said she believes police officers should regularly visit the schools to lecture students about the dangers lurking on the Internet.
"Kids are so computer savvy these days. These programs with the police or FBI should absolutely happen every year, and not be a hit-or-miss situation," she said. "By the time a kid is 10 or 11, they view their parent as ‘just a parent,’ but maybe if they hear it from an officer and other people they respect in a different way, instead of just from their nerdy mom, it will have a different effect."
Miller said she had decided to run for the board because the 10-year-old daughter of a friend of hers had gotten harassed by an older man on the Internet, and Miller’s friend wondered if the school district could do something to educate children about this problem.
"If we can frighten children by the real stories of things that happened to kids their age [as a result of the Internet], we’ll be doing a service to the community," Miller concluded.
Style reported that until now lectures by law enforcement officials in the schools only occurred when the opportunity became available, rather than on a regular basis. He said he would attempt to schedule another seminar about the dangers of the Internet for students.