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March 2, 2001

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup heading into March:


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Sponsor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Publishers Pipeline - low-cost or free educational software, housewares,
PC hardware, music CDs, etc. Examples this week:
Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade (Reg price $29.99, FREE after rebate)
Barbie Print and Play (Reg price $29.99, FREE after rebate)
Brookwood Designer Desk Clock (Reg price $22.99, FREE after rebate)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Family Tech: Consumer Reports's Net-filters test

A couple of years ago SafeKids.com's Larry Magid tested "all the major Internet filtering programs" to prepare his part of the testimony in the ACLU's successful challenge to the Children's Online Protection Act of 1998. His experience with these products was different from the results of Consumer Reports's just-released test (see item "Flawed filters finding" in our 2/16 issue).

In his latest Family Tech column for the San Jose Mercury News, Larry writes about what his own results were and comments on Consumer Reports's conclusions. He also brings up a point that a focus on technology can miss….

Whether or not children would be benefitted by having filtering technology installed is a useful discussion for any family, school, or community to have, but it's only part of the discussion. Technology is one imperfect tool to be considered in a debate that factors in children's ages and context (family room, classroom, library room). But the tool kids need most in dealing with the Internet is critical thinking. That's why the guidance of grownups is needed. Larry makes this point in the home context: "In the long run, kids are better off learning what sites to avoid and what sites to visit by applying good judgment and by following the lead of their parents," Larry writes. He goes on to suggest one good way parents can help kids develop these skills with sites that advocate bigotry, sites that filtering software usually blocks.

We would love to hear of your experiences in using the Internet to teach kids judgment and critical thinking. Please email us via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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Safe e-playgrounds for online kids

The next generation of online-kids'-safety products is emerging, and it's circumventing the filtering debate altogether! Instead of blocking out the "bad stuff" on the Internet, these products and services are locking kids in to safe online environments. These safe "e-playgrounds" include databases of thousands of child-friendly, pre-approved Web sites.

Children are locked into these safe spaces in various ways. In one case, the service is a separate, private network like the old days of America Online and Compuserve. In others, it's an ever-growing database of pre-approved (by educators and the companies' employees), live Web sites to which kids are limited unless parents type in a password. The concepts and features aren't particularly new, but they're combined in new ways, and the absence of filtering technologies is notable. The downside of such services are the very restrictions they place on older kids' online experience, for example parent-picked "buddy lists" for instant-messaging (see "Family Tech" above and next week's issue, featuring parents' own comments on teens and instant-messaging).

There are other, less ambitious products/services out, too, which perform a single simple function, and we'll get to one in a minute. But first the e-playgrounds. Three that have come to our attention recently are:

  1. The Children's Internet

    To get a handle on it quickly, you might call this service a safe browser for kids. But its creators, Oakland, Calif.-based Two Dog Net, Inc., have a much more ambitious vision for The Children's Internet. They see it as "the AOL for kids 3-14." The subscription-based service ($69.95/year) uses the "white list" model we described above, with a searchable database of "at least 1 million pages, and thousands of full sites" which grows daily, corporate communications director Cindy Wilson told us. The sites are screened for age-appropriateness (for ages 3-5, 6-8, 9-11, and 12-14) as well as for kids' safety (ruling out sex, hate, violence, etc.). With individual "accounts" created by their parents, kids are kept away from other software on the computer, including other Web browsers and the PC's control panel. The "SafeZone Technology" gives parents a password that allows them both to customize the software and to disengage it. Parents can add and delete allowable Web sites.

    As for the ever-popular communications part, for kids to use email, parents must create an approved address list for sending and receiving (attachments allowed); instant messaging is coming, Cindy tells us, as is monitored chat.

    Cindy says that what sets this service apart is its comprehensiveness and the total control it gives parents (with a "99% effective" guarantee, a claim filtering companies cannot/do not make - see "Family Tech" above). The Children's Internet is going after the school market as well, offering its safe Web database for individual teachers to customize for specific subjects and classes.

  2. Crayon Crawler

    The makers of Crayon Crawler - San Diego-based Children's Technology Group, Inc. - think 3-14 is a bit of a stretch. Their "safe-browser-plus-community" service is designed for 3-10-year-olds. The basic concept is similar: a positive, parent-empowering approach that puts boundaries around the surfing area. In this case, CTG claims a white list of "8,000-10,000 sites." Here, too, parents can add to/delete from the database, but also "tell" the software each child's age, gender, hobbies, interests so the software can turn up relevant sites when the child does a search. What's different is that parent-configuring is Web-based - it can be done from work - and it now includes "chore reminders" (e.g., one of Crayon Crawler's animated characters popping up on the screen and saying, "Meghan, have you cleaned up your room yet?"). CTG says a later version will include an option allowing parents to be copied on all incoming and outgoing email. The pricing's a bit different, too: The browser's available free for the downloading, but community features (safe email, audio email for the littlest communicators, talking chat, etc.) are $4.95/month. Another difference is, Crayon Crawler is B2B as well as a consumer service. CTG is seeking commercial and nonprofit co-branding partners promoting online safety; e.g., their technology will soon be behind Paws, Inc.'s online safety solution, with Garfield as spokescat.

  3. eKIDS Internet

    This is a very different sort of e-playground: It really works a lot like the old America Online or Prodigy, when they were closed subsets of the greater Internet. In those days AOL users could only email other AOL users, and AOL content wasn't available to anyone outside of AOL. EKIDS Internet is a closed global network only for kids, emphasis on global (one way it's different from the old AOL). With eKIDS, if moms and dads want access to the Internet, they have to log off eKIDS and dial up to their regular ISP. To keep kids off the "grownup Internet," they have to put a password up in front of the rest of the computer with a product like KidDesk.

    That's not El St. John's recommendation, though. The founder and CEO of eKIDS's parent, San Francisco-based SilverTech Inc., told us this week that eKIDS Internet works with any software (blocking, browser, etc.) that parents want to put on the family computer, but SilverTech doesn't promote locking kids out of things. "We try to teach children choice," El said. And one of those choices is their own network, she added. Citing feedback she got from kids in a CNN roundtable after the Columbine High tragedy, El told us kids themselves are asking for a safe environment for chat and email, free from profanity and unknown adult observers.

    EKIDS Internet has lots of content they produce themselves, primarily for 4-to-12-year-olds - activities, games, films, educational material. They also supply 140,000+ child-friendly Web pages from out on the Net, searchable with AskJeeves.com's plain-English technology. The pages are "cached" (stored on the eKIDS network), rather than live (as with the above services) and updated about weekly. Chat and email, quite remarkably, are monitored by humans full-time, 7 x 24; and in this case parents don't have to create an address list - kids can communicate with anyone else with an eKIDS address (not a bad way to get kids to sign up their friends!). This might seem a bit restrictive but, since launch last August, SilverTech has built a subscriber base "in the hundreds of thousands," says VP business development Greg Boegner, "and more than 2 million [subscriber startup] disks are in distribution" - already a pretty good-sized universe for email and chat. The service is free.

  4. PC Time Cop

    Then there's a very basic option for parents who simply want to limit time spent on the PC and/or the Internet. Nederland, Colorado-based Access Technology Group Inc. says the "self-installing," point-and-click PC Time Cop detects what browser or any other software a child is using and allows a parent to put time limits on its use. So the parent can control access to games on or off the Net (the software also won't allow installation of new game software), chat or instant-messaging, overall online or computer time, etc. Can they do this with TV sets yet?! Available right now only for Windows 98, the software will cost under $30, but a beta copy is free for the downloading right now at ATG's Web site.

For further reading:

Do tell us what online-safety product or service your family is using - if any - and what you do and don't like about it.

* * * *

Web News Briefs

  1. Teen stock manipulator

    Fifteen-year-old Jonathan Lebed was "the first minor ever to face [SEC] proceedings for stock market fraud," according to the New York Times. When the Internet hit his family (and probably countless others), "it redistributed the prestige and authority that goes with a general understanding of the ways of the world away from the grownups and to the child. The grownups now depended on the child to translate for them," writes reporter Michael Lewis. Sound at all familiar? This fascinating story is also about how kids can invent themselves on the Internet and how the Net has shifted the balance of power in the world's financial markets as well as homes and schools.

  2. Students' personal info exposed

    Someone in Sweden got into an unprotected Indiana University computer and removed more than 3,000 student names and ID numbers, reports the Associated Press (via USAToday). School officials think the student data part was an accident, that the person was just looking for computer space where s/he could store music files - reportedly a widespread problem for e-music fans (and universities). Here's Wired News's version "College: A Cracker's Best Friend".

  3. US online kids not far out in front

    Their peers overseas are gaining on them. According to Newbytes.com, recent research based on interviews with people 12-24 in 16 countries found that "young Americans might no longer be the majority of the online youth population." Research firm Ipsos-Reid says 43% of young Americans had purchased online at least once, followed closely by Swedes (41%), Germans (33%), Canadians (25%), and Britons (22%). "The survey found youths in Asia have not embraced online buying in large numbers."

  4. UK ISP to delete porn newsgroups

    Could it be that Demon Internet heard about the child-porn case across The Pond (see last week's item, "Landmark child-porn case")? According to TheRegister.com, the British Net service provider "claims it is to take a more 'proactive role' in the removal of child pornography and will remove known paedophile newsgroups (30 in the first instance) from its servers." Demon said it would work with the Internet Watch Foundation and other organizations to find and delete the material in newsgroups but it would not seek out child pornography itself since it does not want to be seen as a censor. If US-based ISPs follow suit, this development will be milestone in Internet history.

  5. Not distance learning

    "Facing History," a Brookline, Mass.-based educational program that has been reaching 13,000 middle and high school teachers and more than 1 million students a year, is going global, on the Web. But, according to the New York Times, the Web site that will launch next fall, will also enhance existing Facing History projects in schools in communities by adding more participants to discussions and giving students better access to scholars and the program's staff. The program looks at personal identity, then group, then national, asking such questions as "Who 'belongs' in a society? Who does not? Why? How does an individual's action or inaction have impact?" Teachers find that taking this discussion onto the Web encourages more shy students to speak up and helps all refine their thinking and communicating, the Times reports. "The intimacy and intensity that well-crafted online education programs can create still stuns [Margot Stern] Strom," one of Facing History's founders.

  6. China: Top-down Net filtering

    China's Public Security Ministry has released software called "Internet Police 100" designed "to keep 'cults, sex, and violence' off the Internet in China," Reuters reports (via Wired News), adding that it's unclear whether use of the filtering program is mandatory.

  7. Internet-only court room

    Courtroom 21 - with judge presiding and witnesses testifying from the comfort of their own homes - is an experiment being conducted at the College of William & Mary. And it's not science fiction. CNET reports that the state of Michigan is a participant in this test. "In January, Michigan Gov. John Engler called for Web-based courtrooms in the state and specially trained judges to quickly resolve intellectual property rights and other cases for high-tech companies," according to CNET.

* * * *

A correction

Alert subscriber Jennifer in Georgia noticed that, in our item last week, "Student loans & e-learning", a quote from the USIIA Bulletin incorrectly referred to "US Rep. Johnny Istook (R-GA)" as a strong supporter of Web-based learning. She wrote us that "it's Johnny Isakson (and yes, he is a big supporter of Web/online and public education and technology use in general). Ernest J. Istook, Jr., is a Republican representative from Oklahoma." The Bulletin acknowledged the mistake, as do we. Thanks for the heads-up, Jennifer!

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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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