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February 8, 2002

Dear Subscribers:

The newsletter will be taking a mid-winter break for the next two weeks. The next issue will land in your in-box March 1. Here's our lineup for this first full week of February:

• Family Tech: Cool tool for school; The Olympics on the Web
  
• Teaching kids constructive Net use: 2 tools
  
• A subscriber writes: 'Cam girls'
  
• Web News Briefs: Online Americans; Canadian families online; How file-sharing is used to distribute porn; US Congress's tech focus; Digital divide downturn?; Cyber Patrol over-filters?; Digital music, plus; Identity theft help; Censorship Qs in Australia....

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Family Tech

1. Cool tool for school

   With the help of his son, Will, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid makes a strong case for handhelds at school, in this week's column for the San Jose Mercury News. Larry says that Will, like his dad, is penmanship-challenged. Will has permission to take a laptop to school, but it's "too expensive, too heavy, too breakable and too likely to be lost, stolen or damaged. Besides," Will told his dad, "it attracts too much attention." Enter the handheld option. Larry looks at the costs and features of Palm organizers and PocketPCs with plug-in keyboards, specifically with classroom use in mind. (See also our detailed look at handhelds at school in "Wired in the classroom" - lessons learned by Mindsurf from its Schools of Innovation program.)

2. The Winter Games on the Web

   The Olympics are upon us! The Opening Ceremony is tonight, Friday, February 8 (better to watch it on TV; tickets are $885 apiece). Here are some information-packed Web pages for those looking beyond lighter-weight TV coverage:

   • People could spend hours just in the official Salt Lake City 2002 site (created by Microsoft and NBC), complete with event schedules, athletes' profiles, the Paralympics, the medal ceremonies, a concert series, the companion arts festival, visitor information, and - of course - an online store.
   • Of more interest to students is the official Web site of the Olympic Movement, with a timeline of all the games since the first modern Olympics in 1896; the recognized sports of the Olympics, past and present; profiles of athletes who have "gone down in history" throughout the movement's history; an e-tour of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne; and news about the Movement.
   • "Winter Olympic Adventures Online," a Web researcher's Olympic perspective and finds (a researcher who happens to live in Park City, Utah, home of 40% of this year's Olympic events) at Free Pint. (Free Pint is "a community of 46088 information researchers globally and a free email newsletter with tips on Internet searching and Web site reviews."
   • For nearly 400 more links to Olympic-related sites, go to the Open Directory Project's Olympics list.
   • BrainPOP, makers of short animated, educational films for middle-schoolers, has created one about Olympics history. Here's BrainPOP's press release about the film.
   • A news story about how teachers use the Olympics to liven up lesson plans at the Christian Science Monitor.
   • The Associated Press has prepared "Olympics Internet Glance", in which links to a dozen news publishers' Olympic pages are especially useful (e.g., ESPN, CNN, the BBC, and CBC).

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Teaching kids constructive Net use

There are now two great guides for educators who want to teach students safe and responsible use of the Internet:

1. "Computer Ethics, Etiquette, and Safety for the 21st Century Student," by Nancy Willard, head of the Netizenship Project at the University of Oregon. Designed for teachers of grades 6-12, librarians, students, and parents, this resource points out the "ethical, cultural, and social issues that technology brings to everyday life," as its publisher describes it. With lesson plans and learning assessments, it's designed to help students develop critical thinking and consider ethical issues in the context of their own values. The book can be found at the online bookstore of the International Society for Technology in Education, the publisher.

2. "CyberSmart!" for grades K-8 is a new curriculum (a resource just for schools) that just launched at Briargrove Elementary School in Houston. Also designed to teach students "how to use the Internet safely, responsibly, and effectively," it was co-developed by the CyberSmart School Program and McGraw-Hill Education. Lessons cover safety, manners, advertising, research, and Internet technologies. CyberSmart says the program will first roll out to the entire Houston Independent School District and then nationally.

   For parents, it certainly wouldn't hurt to review the site's "Top Ten Computer Security Tips for CyberSmart! Teens". But, with families - not just students - in mind, we would add a few other key guidelines from SafeKids.com:

   • "Get to know the [online] services your child uses [such as instant-messaging or particular chatrooms"
   • "Set reasonable rules and guidelines for computer use by your children ... [and] remember to monitor their compliance with these rules."
   • "Be sure to make this a family activity. Consider keeping the computer in a family room rather than the child's bedroom. Get to know their 'online friends' just as you get to know all of their other friends."

Tell us what rules and policies your family has found most useful - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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A subscriber writes: Teens 'going public' on the Web

Our thanks to subscriber and police officer Bob Williams in Connecticut for emailing us recently about a segment he saw on ABC's Good Morning America about "cam girls". They're teen-aged girls who basically put their private lives on the Web. Diary-style private thoughts, photos, and sometimes even video (live via Webcam) are the types of content that appear in these sites. Often the cam girls unself-consciously request gifts, providing a post-office-box address so parents don't stumble upon packages from strangers, Good Morning America reports.

In a brief item on "Cam girls," we touched on this last November, linking to "Candy from Strangers," a well-written piece in Salon.com on the subject.

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Web News Briefs

1. More than half of Americans now online (and even more US kids!)

   The US Commerce Department this week said new Census data show that about 143 million Americans, or 54%, were using the Internet by September 2001 - 26 million more than the previous September. Not surprisingly, kids' Internet use is well ahead of that figure. The Commerce Department report, "A Nation Online," found that 75% of 14-to-17-year-olds and 65% of 10-to-13-year-olds use the Internet at home and at school, reports the Washington Post. Other interesting findings in the report included:

   • 2 million Americans are going online for the first time each month.
   • The digital divide is narrowing somewhat: Lower-income groups went online for the first time in greater numbers than any other income bracket last year, and rural users are nearly just as likely to be online as their urban counterparts.
   • Still, the higher a person's education and income levels, the more likely s/he is to own a computer and use the Net: About 60% of whites and Asians used the Net last year, vs. 40% and 31% for blacks and Hispanics, respectively.
   • Nearly 80% of people with a BA degree used the Web last year, vs. 40% of high school graduates.
   • 25% of Americans with annual incomes of less than $15,000 were Web users in 2001, vs. nearly 80% of households with incomes of $75,000 and up.

   
   Here's the Commerce Department's press release on "A Nation Online" and the full report, and here's coverage from the BBC and the Associated Press (via Wired News).

2. Canadian families online a lot

   A new study by market research firm Ipsos-Reid found that the average Canadian family spends more than 32 hours a week online. According to CyberAtlas, the survey 750 online parents with children under the age of 18 indicates that Canadian families view the Net as a means of bringing their families together - 39% of parents surveyed said they sometimes go online with their children, and 12% said they always go online with their kids. "And that's not limited to a supervisory capacity," CyberAtlas reports, "56% of parents admit they have learned at least some of what they know about the Internet from their children." Here are other key findings about Canada's online families:

   • 57% of parents surveyed said they have guidelines about how kids use the computer.
   • 48% of parents said they impose time limits or curfews on their kids' Net use.
   • 41% of parents said they've had to negotiate computer or online time at home.
   • Asked what they'd take if they knew they'd be stranded on the proverbial desert island, 51% said their PC, 21% a phone, and 12% a TV.

   
   

3. How file-sharing is used to distribute porn

   We think parents and educators need to know more about how pornography is found, traded, and downloaded using file-sharing, or peer-to-peer software (e.g., Morpheus at MusicCity.com or Gnutella at Gnutella.com, LimeWire.com, or BearShare.com). Here's a very credible resource: "Peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet: An Analysis of how Gnutella networks are used to distribute pornographic material" in the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology at Dalhousie University Law School. This study does not mince words about the kinds and content of pornographic images available on the Web; it's for grownup consumption.

   The study gives the history of Gnutella software and describes how it's used, and it also explains how the new, decentralized kind of file-sharing (which doesn't have a central database of files as with Napster) works. Parents and educators will also want to know: "Our data suggest that the availability of pornographic video files, generally considered obscene or illegal, constitute a relatively small percentage of the overall set of video files being shared through Gnutella," the study's authors write, adding: "Although video files defined as pedophilic in nature represent 3.7% of the sample, due to the millions of files being exchanged, this represents a sizeable number."

4. US Congress's great interest in tech

   More than 500 technology-related bills have been introduced in the current session of Congress, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Times cites a just-released study by the generally anti-regulatory Cato Institute which says lawmakers have thus shown they "have lost their reluctance to regulate the Internet for fear of discouraging its growth." "Congress blasted for 'destructive' tech legislation" is InfoWorld's piece on the study. Calling them the "dirty dozen," the Cato study focuses on the 12 "most destructive" bills proposed so far in the 107th Congress."

   In the study (in pdf format here), its authors explain their concern: "The primary threat raised by increased legislative activism is that policymakers are beginning to box the Internet sector into the same regulatory paradigm that has governed the telecom sector for 100 years." The authors describe that paradigm as "more command-and-control," with "endless legislative and regulatory meddling," compared to Congress's more "hands-off" approach before this legislative session which "stressed humility and regulatory restraint." BNA Internet Law, which pointed these resources out to us, says that Congress's "favorite topics" for tech legislation include promotion of Internet access, limitations on online gambling, net taxation, copyright issues, and privacy protection."

5. Digital divide downturn?

   By the looks of it, President Bush's proposed budget for next year will not be good for efforts to bridge the digital divide. According to the Washington Post, the budget would "kill two widely heralded grant programs to help low-income, rural and other disadvantaged groups share in the benefits of high technology." One such program funded "such efforts as teaching computer skills to elderly residents of the Shaw neighborhood in Washington [D.C.]. Other examples of cuts the Post mentioned were funding to the Washington police department for sharing crime-solving information with neighborhoods; a program to enable Cambodian torture victims who had immigrated to the United States to receive specialized counseling and medical services via teleconferencing; a companion Community Technology Centers program funded through the Department of Education ("although other grants can be used for the same purpose"); and high-tech research grants.

6. CyberPatrol said to filter too much

   Anti-filtering organization Peacefire.org recently released its review of Cyber Patrol filtering software, concluding that it overblocks Web sites. In its article about Peacefire's review, the Washington Post cites these examples of sites blocked for being sexually explicit: the Windham Center Fire Department in Windham, Conn.; WNEC, a low-power radio station at New England College in Henniker, N.H.; and the White House Conference on Small Business, a group that lobbies for legislation promoting small business. "Peacefire said the site for the USNA Nevada Parents Organization, an information site for parents whose children are attending or have been nominated to attend the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., was blocked by Cyber Patrol for being 'questionable/illegal'," the Post reports. Peacefire's page on Cyber Patrol says the organization's "most recent test of Cyber Patrol was conducted in January 2002. Cyber Patrol has now been on the market for six years, with complaints about overblocking dating back to 1995, so it is reasonable to assume that if problems with the accuracy rate have not been fixed by now, they are probably inherent in the program." (Our thanks to QuickLinks.net for pointing this piece out.)

7. Not-so-new concept: Phone sex chat

   Sex chat on the phone isn't particularly novel. What is new about it is users can obtain a local number (so it's hard to trace) via a Web site. According to WKYC.com (in Cleveland, Ohio), "kids get the number [of this chat line] for their local community on a Web site. 'Conversation' on those free chat lines is often raunchy at best, full of vulgar language and talk about sex." WKYC added that a 13-year-old girl was "lured into a personal meeting by two adult men she met on that live chat line service, and that the girl was held against her will for 4 days, sexually abused, and had a gun held to her head." (Our thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this story out to us. If you know of any child at risk in this way, you can report your concerns to the NCMEC's hotline at CyberTipline.com or 1-800-THE-LOST.)

8. How digital music's changing

   Not every digital music fan just wants to swap and download music files. According to Wired News, the new music subscription services like AOL Music and MusicNet are changing the way people use the Net to feed their music interests. The story's headline says it: "New Song: Subscriptions, Plus." The "plus" equals chat, concert footage, music news, and other features the services put with the music itself. Which makes sense, given that, in the online gaming world, chat and discussion boards play an important role. After all, fans - of sports, music, games, automobiles, anything - are members of interest communities who like to talk about the interests they share. There will always be purists and loaners who just want to find and download specific tunes, but they're probably outnumbered by those who also want to talk about them. Read the Wired piece to find out about other online music services offering a range of features, including sale of concert tickets, tour information, and radio station listings.

9. Sexually explicit SMS messaging...

   ...is becoming big business in Europe. A Nua Internet Surveys editorial looks at the latest numbers of SMS-messaging (42 million SMS or text messages sent a day, up from 24 million last year), the content of the messages, and what this means for companies like Time Europe and MTV. (MTV is establishing a "Text Flirt" service by which it plans to develop a large database of mobile phone numbers to use for marketing purposes." A new study by the wireless division of Siemens found that "British mobile owners are the most likely to send sexually explicit text messages, as they tap out up to five times as many naughty messages as their European counterparts." An earlier study by Philips found that 24% of Europeans have engaged in "text sex." Nua makes the point that, "while all of these 'statistics' make for mildly amusing reading, and demonstrate that SMS is rapidly having an impact on the social mores of young Europeans, they would also lead us to believe that somebody, somewhere is making lots of money from all of this."

10. Identity-theft help online

    The Federal Trade Commission has just come out with a tool to help limit the damage and streamline the solution for victims of identity theft. It's an ID Theft Affidavit, "a single form that simplifies the process of disputing fraudulent debts and new accounts" opened by criminals who have stolen personal and financial information, the Nando Times reports. It will replace the many different types of affidavits victims generally have to fill out for the various fraudulent accounts established in their name. The Nando Times piece links to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse with more information. Here's the FTC's Web page for the ID Theft Affidavit.

11. Putting novel technologies into kids' hands

    Computing is to faculty and students at the MIT Media Lab as Lego and Play-Doh is to kids, and those academicians have a lot of fun giving kids a change to play with their toys into kids' hands. According to Education Week, the [Media Lab's] researchers are steeped in the philosophy that children learn by doing, and especially by designing and building things themselves. It's the familiar idea of project-based learning, yet the Media Lab applies such thinking to the new vistas that advances in computing are making possible." The article describes some of the projects on which kids and researchers are collaborating. (Our thanks to ConnectforKids.org for pointing this story out.)

12. Questions about Australia's 'online censorship' law

    Only the censors know for sure, critics claim, as to whether Australia's two-year-old online-content law is doing what it's supposed to do. According to Wired News, opponents of the law (which on Jan. 1, 2000, gave the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) the power to order Australian content hosts to remove material deemed "overly sexually explicit or violent") say it has become unaccountable. For their part, "the censors say secrecy is vital to fighting child pornography," Wired reports, and disclosure of URLs of inappropriate content is tantamount to the promotion of such content. Electronic Frontiers Australia, a free-speech advocacy organization, has asked Australia's Administrative Appeals Tribunal, an independent review panel, to evaluate the ABA's censorship practices. A decision, which "could come at any time," Wired reports.

13. Uncle Sam's new ed-tech czar

    Recently appointed to direct the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education, John Bailey "is responsible for implementing educational technology policy at the national level," reports Wired News in its profile of Bailey. Wired quotes people who know the new ed-tech czar as saying his strengths are accessibility, accountability, and tech integration rather than tech as an end in itself.

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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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