A Survey Reveals Social Networkers Concerned About Digital Manners

A survey released last week by the Consumer Internet Barometer, a production of TNS and The Conference Board, found that common pet peeves among social networking regulars include lack of privacy and, more interestingly, lack of "manners." While the survey doesn't delve into much detail about what people mean by the lack of manners, it is not hard to conceive of what they might be thinking about. How do you turn down a friend request without hurting the requester's feelings? What happens if you categorize someone as a "teammate" when they consider you more of a close friend? How do you avoid offending someone who doesn't make the cut as one of your "top friends?" How do you politely ask your friend to stop bombarding you with countless invites for yet another application? When should you just pick up and give someone a call versus just blowing them off with a digital message? Would love to hear your thoughts on this in regard to you and your kids.

Where Are We in Internet Safety?

It seems as if we've been writing about online safety on the Web forever, and even before the Web became so popular we were writing about safety on online services. Are we getting anywhere with keeping our children safe online? Certainly there are more programs to keep kids safe today, but there are also more problems-probably because so many more people are online and kids have learned to get around the safety nets we put out for them. Like drugs, smoking, and alcohol abuse education, we've tried scare tactics, monitoring, and reasoning. With technology, we've also tried filtering. Through it all, we've learned that we (teachers and parents) are the best Internet filters, monitors, and guides for our children-better than any program. One of the problems we face is that kids think they know so much more than we do about the Internet and think we are overreacting when it comes to their safety online. So what do we do? Because we can't watch our students all the time, we have to educate them and hope that they'll make the right decisions when we are not there to watch. What else can we do? Ideas?

Six Ways To Be a Media Savvy Parent

If you've told yourself that this year you REALLY are going to get caught up to your kids when it comes to digital savvy, you might want to start by looking at the checklist on the Common Sense Media site of six ways to get started. Once you've covered that list you can find lots more of in-depth parenting with technology tips on this site in the archives of Parenting with Technology and in Internet Smarts :What Parents Need to Know.

Hanging Out Safely on the Web

Safe Card tech and a Web site are combining to test a new idea for student digital safety.  When students go online, they insert a card with their fingerprint into the computer and are directed to a safe site where they can enjoy monitored chatting and traveling to sites that are screened for violence, nudity, solicitation, etc. The program is targeted to students 17 and under and can be put to use in homes as well as school. In schools, the card can be used for keeping track of attendance, lunch purchases, library records and more. Check out information about how Safe Card is currently being used to provide online security for purchases.

What Parents Think & Do When It Comes to Their Children & the Net

Parenting Moves Online: Parents' Internet Actions and Attitudes 2007 features the results of a poll taken by Cable in the Classroom and Common Sense Media. It features information about what parents are doing at home to keep their children safe online in addition to parent attitudes about how the Internet can help their children. Find out if parents are facing the same problems with their children's Internet use as you are with your students' Internet use. You might also be interested in the 2006 poll, Parenting the MySpace Generation.

Cell Phone Manners

As someone who follows both the employment and criticism of digital manners, it is interesting to see the profusion of articles on the subject lately. Mind your cell phone manners appearing in a regular column by Kent German on on C/Net is another one spurred on by the author's personal experiences. "Though I write about cell phones every day, even I think it makes perfect sense that cell phones are continually cited in studies that say good manners have gone out of the window. You don't need a sociology degree to see just how handsets have changed how we relate to each other; and I'm not talking about their positive effects (though indeed there are some). Rather, I'm talking about how you can put a cell phone in an otherwise courteous person's hand and then watch how that person loses all awareness of the people around him." Kent writes.Had any such experiences yourself lately? We've all been there and the scary thing is what kind of digital citizen models we are portraying for our kids.

Ban the Internet at School?

Perhaps they are not out to ban the entire Internet, but the Professional Association of Teachers in Britain has voted to ban Wi-Fi and YouTube. The Association wants Wi-Fi's health risk investigated before it is used in schools. This means not installing new wireless networks and disconnecting the old ones. As for YouTube and similar sites, the Association says that these sites encourage cyberbullying against both students and teachers. What's the stance on such topics at your school? Will this be a topic at parent's night this year?

A Crush on Obama

Having kids do online research on political candidates may get a bit tricky as more and more "faux" supporter sites and videos are beginning to spring up. One such video featuring a rather scantily clad supporter of Barack Obama is making the rounds on YouTube. The music video, the launch gimmick of a new political Web site, barelypolitical.com, put the official Obama camp in an odd position. While venues like YouTube offer low-cost alternatives to expensive television ads and mailings, there's no way for them to control where Obama's image goes or how it is being used. While the elections may be 18 months off, you may want to discuss this kind of misinformation on the Web with your child's classroom teacher in the fall and ask them to give kids a list of official sites to use for research purposes.

Court Rules MySpace Postings are Free Speech

A Court of Appeals in Indiana has ruled that a judge violated the First Amendment rights of a teen when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal. In February 2006, Greencastle Middle School Principal Shawn Gobert discovered a Web page on MySpace purportedly created by him. The unidentified teen, who did not create the page, made derogatory postings on it concerning the school's policy on body piercing. The state filed a delinquency petition in March alleging that teen's acts would have been harassment, identity deception and identity theft if committed by an adult. A judge ruled that her comments were obscene and placed her on nine months probation. The teen argued that her comments were protected political speech under both the state and federal constitutions because they dealt with school policy. This incident magnifies the growing concern of many schools about exactly where does a school's authority end. Will parent and teachers become more and more adversaries rather than partners because of these kinds of incidents?

Bloggers Code of Conduct Proposed

In response to death threats made to a prominent blogger named Kathy Sierra because of comments she made on her blog, a "code of conduct" for blogs, bloggers and those who comment on them is being proposed. Of course such a thing would be impossible to enforce, but it's encouraging that people are talking about some social norms for the blogosphere. At this point in digital history, many people are willing to write things online that they would never say to someone's face. This is perhaps not all that different than the cyberbullying that we often write about in this blog, noting that it happens more often among teens. In my mind, something has to give. So you have the power to be anonymously nasty to me and I in turn can do the same to you - endlessly. After a while it just doesn't get either of us anywhere. No progress, resolution or compromise can be made. But some bloggers have reacted negatively to the proposed draft with one commenting "I don't need anyone lecturing me and telling me not to be disagreeable." You can read the proposed code for yourself on the O'Reilly's Radar blog.