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Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this final week of August, heading into September:


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Family Tech

In his column this week for the San Jose Mercury News, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid discusses "The Ins and Outs of Working From Home." It's a recurring theme for many of us, but it's nice to get the perspective of someone who's been doing it for some 20 years and to see what human - as well as technological - measures he's found useful and ruled out. We welcome your expertise on what works in working at home - send tips via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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How to protect the innocent

The COPA Commission - a panel appointed by the US Congress to figure out how to protect children online - is thinking very hard right now. What it's working through is of interest to parents and teachers for two reasons:

  1. Over the summer it looked at virtually all the options - present and future, human and technological - for keeping kids safe online, and…

  2. That process and the testimony the Commission's heard from all kinds of experts would be a pretty amazing civics lesson all about children themselves. The entire process, meeting minutes and presentation transcripts, is available at COPACommission.org. A high school class could be divided up, with one group serving as Commissioners (who have to listen, take notes, deliberate, and write a report) and the rest "testifying" on the various resources people and government have to protect online kids (with help from testimony in the Commission's site - e.g., in Hearing 2). [If any of you teachers and homeschoolers do incorporate COPA material into your curriculum, do share your experience.

We're providing an update now because the Commission has completed its three "expert" hearings (in Washington, Richmond, Va., and San Jose, Calif.), and we wanted you to know about this most complete, up-to-date collection - from a remarkably diverse body of sources. There will be two more, public, hearings this month (send in your own comments), then the Commission has to submit a report on all this to Congress by October 21 - unless it gets some funding to extend its deadline and think even harder. We'll keep you posted.

Before the highlights, a bit of background: The COPA Commission is the part of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (not to be confused with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA) that wasn't blocked by a federal court for constitutional reasons, right after COPA was signed into law. The 19 commissioners' mission is to study "various technological tools and methods for protecting minors from material that is harmful to minors."

Hearing highlights

Interesting ideas and technologies presented to the Commission include:

You may also find useful testimony by fellow teachers and librarians on "The Consumers Perspective" (Friday, July 21) in the second hearing. And there was copious information on various online-safety technologies (Web site ratings, filtering by ISPs, and home PC filtering software) delivered in the Hearing 2.

Monitoring and filtering of email and Instant Messaging - a growing online-safety concern because of IM's popularity among teens - is discussed in Hearing 3 testimony by the president of a company focusing on this technology. The third hearing also looked at acceptable-use policymaking, how sexually explicit Net content is marketed, and future technologies that certainly will not make the kids' online-safety problem or its solution(s) any less complex! See, for example, testimony by the editor of a newsletter on wireless Internet technology, citing a wireless content company in Japan that already has 8 million subscribers, 45% of whom are teenagers.

Here's more background from Wired News:

We'd love to hear from you about any part of this important topic.

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Childnet's international message (and awards!)

Before we're pulled into the season of educational tech toys and holiday e-commerce, an alternative view of the Internet is most welcome - Childnet's view. This very international (multi-lingual), London-based nonprofit organization promotes Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee's goal for the Web, that it "support and improve our weblike existence in the [offline] world" as an agent for social change. Music to our ears!

The 2001 Cable & Wireless Childnet Awards is a global contest designed to "reward children, and those working with them, who are developing outstanding Internet sites and activities that directly benefit other children." Anyone working on such a project is warmly encouraged to enter. Projects can be in French, German, Spanish, or English.

Here's the page where individuals, schools, nonprofit organizations, and government entities can enter their projects. The judges, of whom SafeKids.com's Larry Magid is one, are "particularly keen to receive entries from those who are working with limited resources." The deadline for entry (projects don't necessarily have to be completed by then) is October 31. Awards will be presented next spring in Washington, D.C. For examples of projects that have won Childnet Awards in the past, go to this page.

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'Moms Vote': Resource for everybody

Here's a wonderful service for any US voter for whom children's issues are top-of-mind. This meaty voter-research feature, which launched this week, is brought to you by ConnectforKids.org, a nonprofit organization about community involvement on behalf of children.

To learn where national and state candidates stand on child care, the working poor, and children's issues in general, from the "Moms Vote" page, do go to "Who's for Kids and Who's Just Kidding". It has a number of links to bi-partisan voter information pages on the Web, including Vote-Smart.org, Politics1.com, Democracy Network, and Women's Voting Guide.

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A subscriber writes: Net use in schools

Michelle in Virginia emailed us about Internet-use practices in her son's school district and her own thoughts about the Internet in school:

"After speaking with our superintendent, the principal, and many IT people, including the one at our school this was my findings:

  1. "In my son's school, teachers are not to leave computers in the classroom logged on to the Internet unattended.
  2. "Filters are in place, however students are being directed to approved sites [as well].
  3. "[Search-engine use] and surfing for research are not allowed without adult supervision.

"What I would like to see some day is a team effort in developing a software with a database that has educational sites approved by teachers and educators to use as a browser for grade levels. It is impossible to weed as you go in real time, but it is not impossible to improve what they see on the Net. Some may find this to be censorship. I would like to think of it as sorting, much like weeding a garden. This will place some in data-entry 'havoc,' but I feel there is a need if people can just pull together. As you know, even the best unfortunately can be left out, such as New Articles, Magazines and other countries that have different sets of values. This is unfortunate, but students can have this access at home, community colleges, or universities. My intention always has been to help make a safe place for younger students to learn how valuable the Internet can be for them…. The Internet is needed in school, but without responsibility we are failing our own race, let alone our children."

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Editor's Note for Michelle and everyone: The following resources don't exactly match Michelle's description, but they do provide links according to grade level….

In PBS TeacherSource there's a section called"Search and Standards Match". There, teachers and parents can find recommended Web links by grade level (as well as state and national curriculum standards) in five subject areas: Arts & Literature, Health & Fitness, Math, Science & Technology, and Social Studies.

Discovery.com's School channel has teacher's lesson plans by grade level which include recommended links - e.g., here's the K-5 "Ancient History" lesson page.

If other subscribers use a Web resource, database, or technology that you feel meets the need for safe, constructive Net research in school, do tell us what's working for you!

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Web News Briefs

  1. Women's Web?

    The tide has turned. What started out to be "a male-dominated research medium," as Reuters put it (via Wired News), is now dominated by women, at least in the United States. A study by Jupiter Communications and Media Metrix puts the female part of US Net usage at 50.4%. Interestingly, the survey "shows strong increases of women using the Internet in the United States in all age groups, except for those between 18 and 24. The usage of this age group actually declined from last year," Wired reports. Pre-18-ers, on the other hand, are the fastest-growing user group, and the number of female Net users 55 and over more than doubled, reported the USIIA Bulletin. TheStandard.com looks at how a bunch of media outlets covered this story and whether they show a little gender bias.

    In its report on this mile-marker survey, ZDNet added value. Its male editorial director ventured to suggest the three things women "really want form the Web": "savings," "a place to buy stuff," and "ease of use." He offers four sites that claim the highest concentration of women visitors. Women, do you agree with him? Send reactions!

  2. Wiring Africa

    South Africa and Egypt - with 70% of Africa's 5 million Internet users - are next on the docket for Africa Online. According to Wired News, the company, "Sub-Saharan Africa's leading Internet service provider," has grown quickly by selling low-cost connections in the poorest countries first. Bigger, more competitive markets are next. Growth is a big feat for an ISP in Africa, facing constraints such as tough government regulations, making telephones scarce and bandwidth prohibitively expensive; civil wars and political instability; a dearth of computers; and low literacy levels. We would love to hear from our subscribers in Africa about this report. Is it accurate? What has been your experience with connecting to the Internet? Do email us.

  3. Buying cars online

    The process is still not without bugs, but car-buying online is getting easier. News of Amazon.com's entry auto retail was all over the Web the past few weeks. TheStandard.com shows healthy skepticism in its "coverage of the coverage" of Amazon's latest addition. The New York Times reports on both Amazon's launch and Ford's response, with FordDirect.com. The Ford site, the Times says, puts pressure on dealerships "to adopt fixed prices or a narrow band of prices for all of their sales, instead of subjecting customers to hours of negotiation." Dealers will be allowed to offer prices lower than the fixed ones to customers who contact through the Web site. Earlier in August, the Times reported on GM's plans and other car e-retailers, such as Autobytel.com and CarPoint by Microsoft.

    Meanwhile, prices in general are lower on the Net - 9-16% lower than "brick 'n' mortar" outlets - according to the research of two MIT reports. That reports in the New York Times as well.

  4. Amazon.com's privacy push

    The Internet superstore will soon be showing its privacy cards, according to CNET. One of the Net's bigger gatherers of consumer data, Amazon.com appears to be responding to pressure from the US Federal Trade Commission and "several class-action lawsuits filed on grounds of electronic privacy invasion," CNET reports, spelling out some of the techniques Amazon uses.

  5. Teen CEOs

    The evidence is a bit conflicting, but what eMarketer says makes sense to us: "The newest and hottest online ventures are being spearheaded by CEOs barely old enough to drive." It makes sense because it's probably easiest for teens (or recent ones) to come up with content that has broad appeal to their peers. Two examples eMarketer cites are SchoolGossip.com (watch out, parents, kids under 13 can register by lying about their age - we checked) and Goosehead.com. As for conflicting evidence, Wired News reports that venture-capital funding is drying up for "student- and university-initiated [Web] startups." Their example is Jeremy McGee, the 17-year-old founder of TwoToads.com.

  6. TV's future?

    So far, the research says Internet use is causing TV viewing to go down. Well, if you believe the reports on TV's latest enhancement - "personal video recorders" like TiVO and ReplayTV - that trend may get reversed. If you're at all curious about this technology that some analysts are saying will revolutionize (maybe even destroy) commercial TV as we know it, here are two articles on the subject: The New York Times explains why consumer aren't clamoring for them yet. ZDNet has a more nuts-and-bolts article that compares the two biggest players in the space (mentioned above). Sports fans will probably be the early adopters of this technology!

  7. Barbie's best advisers

    It seems intuitive, but at least one analyst thought Mattel was innovative to hire girls 6-12 to help redesign its Barbie site. According to Wired News, the teen advisers knew what they were doing: "When the site was re-launched, Barbie.com's traffic doubled." It also holds their attention, apparently: "The average visitor to Barbie.com spends 26 minutes on the site." Now we need the opinion of Gen, editor of Games4Girls.com. How 'bout it, Gen - or any other subscriber, for that matter? Email us!

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

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