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Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first week of December:


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Family Tech

  1. Computer security & kids

    "Kids do have a tendency to download a lot of files and experiment with software," writes SafeKids.com's Larry Magid, father of two Web-fluent kids. That's why it's important to teach them how to protect home computers from intruders, he suggests in this week's Family Tech column at the San Jose Mercury News. It's especially important if you have a high-speed connection, and even if yours is a family of Mac users.

    In the article, Larry tells families what they need to be alert to (e.g., few guarantees that download sites screen the software they offer for viruses; though the one we profile below, Kids Domain, does do this screening). He also offers some solutions and links to sites with security software. All in all, this is an excellent discussion point for a family discussion on this important topic.

    If any of you have had computer security struggles and found good solutions you'd like to share, do email us via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

  2. Holiday gifts for PC users

    In his Los Angeles Times column this week, Larry has a whole Santa's sack of ideas for holiday giving - from the no-longer-lowly mouse to better sound (an $80 speaker system) to a whole $699 PC.

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KidsDomain.com: For grownups too!

It's not easy to provide content that gamers aged 2 and up - as well as parents and teachers - will like. But with separate "domains" like Happy Puppy, ConsoleDomain, and Kids Domain, theglobe.com's Games site has a formula that appears to be working.

In a recent interview with Cindy Sorrels, mother of three (6, 7, and 16) and co-founder of Kids Domain, we zoomed in on the 2-to-12-year-old part. Kids Domain - a site based on the simple idea that learning should be fun for kids - is like one of those play areas thoughtfully designed to appeal to parents and teachers, too.

"We do have fun for the kids," Cindy told us, referring to the site's 1,000+ online games; 2,500 downloadable games, demos, screensavers, etc.; 2,000+ icons, clip art images, and e-stickers for kids. "But what really makes us different is that we also have a lot of material for adults…. We try to be advocates for family in this world where technology is always changing and parents are trying to keep up." That content includes teaching tips, parent-screened links, and a continuously updated library of more than 1,000 kids' software reviews written by parents, teachers, and homeschoolers.

Kids Domain is kind even to the least tech-literate grownups in a number of ways:

To that last point, Cindy says KidsDomain.com gets its highest traffic levels during the day during the school year. Its newest feature, Brain Builders, pulls together software downloads, worksheets, games, reviews, and links aimed at teaching math, ecology, dinosaurs, music, etc., in fun, innovative ways. And a new alliance with FunSchool.com, makers of interactive educational games for pre-K through 6, provides the added help of categorizing games by grade levels.

We asked Cindy how she defines "educational" when she reviews games. "The worst one I ever saw was a puzzle game that was supposed to be about the rainforest," she said. "You moved a couple pieces around and it would show a butterfly picture, then a fact about the rainforest. It was very shallow. We look for depth of material."

Here are highlights of what Kids Domain offers parents and teachers:

If any of you use KidsDomain.com, agree or disagree with any of its reviews (including Erin's ideal family online-safety tool), send us your thoughts! What are you looking for most in kids' online-safety tools - what features and capabilities?

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Other software-review options

If you can't find a software title at Kids Domain, here's another possible tool: the Entertainment Software Review Board's search engine. The ESRB is a nonprofit organization that has rated more than 7,000 video and computer software titles since 1994, according to the New York Times. The system is not exactly Kids Domain (guaranteed parent-tested), but the ratings are determined by at least three "average consumers" in a pool of about 175 reviewers who look at video samples of each title, the Times reports.

Another great resource is the Children's Software Revue. The only problem is, it's not all free on the Web. One has to subscribe to the magazine to benefit from their database of more than 5,000 reviews of family- and school-tested software (there are a few useful samples in the Web site, though).

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Web News Briefs

  1. School filtering advice

    What online-safety measures should families and schools use, if any? That's the $64,000 question that can begin to be answered by an independent software review board. Author, librarian, and "Netmom" Jean Armour Polly suggested just such a thing before the COPA Commission last summer, and many of you called for this sort of help in your survey responses to us this past fall. No such animal exists as of yet. We think such a panel should have expertise on solutions for both home and school. For the latter, one organization, the Consortium for School Networking, has gone a little ways down the road for the school part of the equation.

    Like many of you, CoSN believes there is no single solution for every school, especially a law requiring filtering software on every computer (such legislation, though written, still has not passed the US Congress). CoSN says Internet content management has to be a local decision, based on each school and district's conditions and needs. So, reports the New York Times, CoSN developed a Web site and 33-page paper designed to help educators assess their needs and explain filtering issues to the community. The paper, "Safeguarding the Wired Schoolhouse: A Briefing Paper School District Options for Providing Access to Appropriate Internet Content," can be downloaded in PDF format. The Times piece includes an update on school-filtering legislation.

  2. Canada's new privacy law

    The USIIA Bulletin reports that Canada has passed a new Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act offering sweeping privacy protections Canadians. The law says a company may not use the information of any person without his or her consent. "It will apply to US firms doing business in Canada in three years," the Bulletin added.

  3. Hate in sheep's clothing?

    More and more hate groups are parking themselves in some of the largest Web sites, or portals, as they've come to be called. According to the New York Times, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other organizations dedicated to the marginalization of hate promoters such as the Ku Klux Klan, are actively pressuring portals and auction sites to stop providing safe havens for hate. The Wiesenthal Center says the Net now harbors more than 2,000 groups promoting anti-Semitism or white supremacy, at least twice as many as it found in the spring of 1999. The center, as well as HateWatch.org, BiasHELP.org, and the Anti-Defamation League, have published books, CD-ROMs, videos, and Web sites to combat hate promotion on the Web (see p. 3 of the Times piece for details). Lots of good material, here, for teaching critical thinking and Net ethics (not to mention ethics in general). Teachers and parents, if you do have such a discussion, email us about how it went!

  4. Watch out: Holiday e-viruses

    Two new high-profile Christmas-themed viruses are arriving in people's in-boxes this holiday season. According to ZDNet, the "Music" virus hides itself as a Christmas tune program that can update and mutate itself by connecting to its creator's Web site. Another called "Navidad" targets Spanish speakers. And there's a third, non-holiday, virus that you might want to alert young Flash fans to. Reports the USIIA Bulletin, the Shockwave movie virus is an Internet worm that disguises itself as a Shockwave Flash movie. It arrives via email with the subject line reading: "A great shockwave flash movie."

  5. PlayStation 2 scams

    Because Sony's newest gaming console is high on a lot of holiday wish lists this season, parents should know about a couple of e-tailers that are promising and not delivering. According to TheStandard.com, the Better Business Bureau is warning consumers in the US and Canada about PS2storeusa.com and PS2storecanada.com. And CNET reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating.

  6. Bye MP3, hello…

    Ogg Vorbis?! You might call it the Linux of Internet audio. Here's how Internet.com explains what's happening to Internet music: "Whenever increasing numbers of participants [like record companies] take an increasingly larger piece of the pie, the market goes out and finds a new pie. The pie is Ogg Vorbis, different from MP3 in that it's "a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for high-quality … audio." Whew! Its name comes from novels by science fiction writer Terry Pratchett, Internet.com adds. It's one of those great stories about how the Internet turns well-established industries on their ears (no pun intended!). If any Net-music-philes at your house or school has played around with the Ogg Vorbis format, tell him/her to email us!

  7. Young Aussies wired

    Ninety-five percent of Australian children 5-14 have used a computer, and 47% have accessed the Internet in the past 12 months, according to Nua Internet Surveys. Nua was citing an Australian Bureau of Statistics study that also showed 53% of Australian households having a home computer, up from 48% last year, and the number of households with Net access having increased from 23% in '99 to 34% this year.

  8. US parents more strict

    In the US, 19% of home Net users between the ages of 12 and 24 say their surfing is restricted by filtering software, as compared with 4% in France 3% in Sweden and Italy, and 2% in The Netherlands. That's according to an international study cited by Nua Internet Surveys. The survey (of 10,000 youths) also showed that European parents seem to be more concerned about the amount of time their children spend on the Web than about Web site content. Only 19% of young Americans reported time restrictions, in contrast to 37% in Sweden and 28% in France. The survey suggested this could be because of the higher cost of Net access in Europe.

  9. Tech-literate Hong Kong

    More than 36% of Hong Kong homes have Internet access, and over half have PCs, according to a government survey cited in Newsbytes. Usage went up from there among younger, better-educated people and students. Hong Kong's cell-phone penetration is 71%. The government survey, released recently, was conducted in the first quarter of this year.

  10. 'Take Your Parent to Work Day'

    You may have heard of "Take Your Daughter to Work Day." Well, in these strange, Net-ified times, a lot of parents don't understand "what exactly it is their children do for a living," as the New York Times puts it, so here's a first stab at remedying the situation. This annual special day is put on by Vault.com, "a three-year-old career guidance Web site with about 100 [young] employees." You may enjoy this article as much as we did.

  11. A profitable teen site (this is news!)

    Some of you have emailed your objections to the discussion board content you've seen in teen sites (for an example, see "A mom's thumbs down". Well, the very site that got that thumbs down, Alloy.com, looks like it's here to stay - at least for a while. According to the New York Times, Alloy's Web site (the company also has a paper catalog) attracts 1.3 million 13-to-19-year-olds a month, and the company's third-quarter revenues were triple those of the same quarter last year. Not bad considering all the dot-com demises we're seeing these days.

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From teachers, for teachers

Our thanks to ConnectforKids.org for pointing out these "Etools" - "practical, ready-to-use ideas" submitted to the National Education Association by educators. They include tips for using the Internet, software, videotapes, and other technologies in the classroom. Included on the page are lists of Web sites teachers have found useful too.

Teachers and homeschoolers, send us your favorite classroom tools - Web sites as well as software. We'd love to share your experiences and recommendations with fellow subscribers.

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P.O. Box 1283
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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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