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August 22, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this third week of August:

• Family and School Tech: Almost perfect PC for college, Laptops in school, and more....
  
• Web News Briefs: The teen chat culture; US/UK on 'grooming'; Child porn sites up 64%; Minneapolis librarians' settlement; Euro ISPs study; 'War of the worms'; German camp for 'Net-addicted' kids; Prospects for anti-spam legislation; Anti- spam law prospects; RIAA not targeting little guy; Gearheads' digital divide; Sex & other ed on the Net....

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Family and School Tech

1. Almost perfect PC for college

   Which computer to send off to school with your child is not an easy question. On the one hand, desktop PCs are cheaper and bigger (tougher to steal, an issue on college campuses); on the other hand, laptops deliver a lot of value because they can be used wherever the student goes (library, dorm room, and, with a wireless modem, anywhere between). SafeKids.com's Larry Magid started thinking all this through over a year ago, when he was getting ready to send his daughter to Whitman College in Washington State. Here's his latest thinking (as his son starts the school search): "Her notebook PC managed to survive the school year so it, along with Katherine, are about to head back to Walla Walla, Wash., for another term," Larry writes. "But if I were to buy her a machine right now, I'd opt for the new $1,199 eMachines M5310 notebook computer." He explains that eMachines has beat its original bad reputation with good products, the M5310 being a great example. "With a weight of 6-1/2 pounds and dimensions of 1.36" x 14.0" x 10.0", it may be a bit too large and heavy for frequent travelers like me, but for a college student and most other users it's everything you can ask for in a mobile computer at an extremely attractive price." He goes on to describe other attractive features, including a DVD drive and wireless connectivity (besides Apple, eMachines is one of the first to provide 802.11g, he explains).

   Covering other schoolbound product categories, here are ZDNet's "Top tech buys for back-to-school time".

2. Laptops in school: One high school's experience

   The results of a three-year laptop program at Union Hill High School in Union City, N.J., certainly weren't just about technology. Here's a sampler:

   • Improved relationships between students and teachers.
   • Students recognizing teachers' investment in their academic success and well being.
   • Teachers and students working together in teams to develop, e.g., the school Web site and related projects.
   • Roving, impromptu, laptop-based training sessions by students ("students were frequently found teaching their teachers and peers in the media center, in the cafeteria, or in class").
   • Students becoming an important tech-support resource for teachers and peers throughout the school (developing a new kind of student leader).
   • Standardized test scores rising significantly for students involved in the project.
   
   These were among the findings of the New York-based Center for Children & Technology (CCT), which observed the "Hiller Project" for three years from its start in 1998. The Union City School Board-funded project equipped 40 freshmen and 20 teachers and administrators with Net-connected laptop computers and printers. More people joined the project in Years 2 and 3 totaling 110 students and 70 teachers.

   In the conclusion of its analysis of the program, CCT points out that giving students "substantial responsibility and autonomy in relationship to technology and their learning" was key to the project's success. CCT's study focused on how the project affected students' learning, teacher-student relationships, and the climate of the school.

3. More back-to-school tech
   • For the 'pointy pencil crowd'

     Online back-to-school shopping opportunities are detailed humorously (and substantively) in the New York Times's "Online Shopper" column. Writer Michelle Slatella would probably be rather busy anyway, but factor in having a 12-year-old daughter, and the equation becomes mind-numbing. Witness the pre- teen's notes from "sleep-away camp": "Exhibit A: 'Dear Mom, Please bring two pairs of long pants on Visiting Day - whatever is in my bottom drawer is fine - along with C batteries (6), a deck of cards, any copies of Seventeen that came in the mail after I left and more stamps.' Exhibit B: 'Mom: A letter from Girl Scouts may arrive this week. Please leave it in the envelope. I will take care of it when I get home' Exhibit C: 'Visiting Day was great, I miss ya already! Don't forget, I needed six C batteries, please don't forget to send two more. Love ya!' " Sigh. I think I'm grateful I have boys. ;-)

   • Young writers' online roundtable

     Even a 10-year-old writer loves to have her work available to the reading public. In a compelling article, the New York Times tells of a California teacher who changed the life of at least one of his elementary-school students by introducing his class to a Web site called "Writing with Writers" by Scholastic.com. "It showcased biographies written by young people around the country, offered commentary from experts and encouraged students to submit their written profiles for review. Mr. Barrett and his students offered oral critiques of several of the posted pieces and worked on their own biographies for publication," the Times reports. It's another example of how the Internet, often blamed for hurting young people's language, analytical, and literary skills, provides tools for defeating those concerns.

   • Google does the math!

     Hey, cooks, get this: Google does conversions now. "Type 'quarter cup in teaspoons' and see Google reply '1 quarter US cup = 12 US teaspoons'," the Washington Post reports on the latest Google feature. "Does a mechanic want to know the size of a replacement part for a clock in inches, but you only know it in millimeters? Enter '.715 mm in inches' and Google will inform you it equals 0.0281496063 inches." A student can type "eight plus seven minus four" or "8 plus 7 minus 4" and get the same answer as that calculator buried deep in the backpack she left somewhere between calculus and chemistry classes.

   • Cell phones in school

     At least for one Dallas mom, a cell phone is just as important a safety measure for her 8-year-old as a car seat used to be. It's on the Thompson family's back- to-school shopping list, and its owner-to-be, third-grader Sydney, is "the youngest of four and the last to go mobile," the Dallas Morning News reports. While cell phones are on the contraband list in many school districts, the one in Plano, Texas, is about to change its policy back, to allow phones at all grade levels.

   • AmericanRhetoric.com

     It's a very large two-year-old collection of "some of history's greatest speeches," sermons, debates, interviews, and courtroom and cinematic oratory - a "one-stop survey of the art of oration," as the Christian Science Monitor puts it. What a resource for students of history, biography, rhetoric, etc. is this brainchild of Prof. Michael Eidenmuller at the University of Texas at Tyler. The site includes or links to thousands of documents, with multiple versions (in some cases audio as well as text) of, for example, the Gettysburg Address.

   • Spycams for distance learning?!

     According to Australian IT, the University of Newcastle sees this spycam as a way to stop online cheating (by off-campus students taking exams via the Net). "The camera sits on top of the computer and every 20 seconds sends a low-resolution picture to the university server. It also records sound, which means it can monitor conversations," according to Australian IT.

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Web News Briefs

1. The teen chat culture

   One in five UK children 9-16 use online chat on a regular basis, according to an extensive new study from the Cyberspace Research Centre at the University of Central Lancashire. In other findings, over half of the young people surveyed reported engaging in conversations of a sexual nature, a quarter of them had received requests to meet face-to-face, and 10% had accepted those requests and met with the person, Rachel O'Connell, the Centre's director, told the BBC. "Those children who had face- to-face meetings on the whole reported having a 'really good time,' [O'Connell] pointed out - typically meeting other children, rather than an adult paedophile. But that did not mean the paedophiles were not out there." The BBC article leads with comments from teenagers themselves about how they use chat.

   As for the dark side of teen chat, Dr. O'Connell details the "grooming" phases a pedophile typically takes a child through over a period of time spent in a chatroom. This is extremely useful information for parents who want to help their children develop critical thinking while chatting online (not to mention helpful information for parents themselves!). Here are the fairly typical phases of grooming (and other manipulative) behavior: 1) Friendship (flattering a child into a private chat room); 2) Relationship-forming (asking the child what problems s/he has); 3) Mutuality (identifying with those problems to create a bond); 4) Risk-assessment (asking about location of computer, etc.); 5) Exclusivity (using powerful language to create trust and often love); 6) Starting sex chat. Dr. O'Connell's study can be found on the Web in pdf format. (Our thanks to QuickLinks for pointing this piece out.)

2. US/UK approaches to online 'grooming'

   Cops patrolling children's online chatrooms to catch pedophiles is now commonplace in the United States. UK police have shown some reluctance to take this duty on, The Guardian reports - though the case of 12-year-old Briton Shevaun Pennington's abduction this summer may be changing all that (see Guardian coverage. "Most specialist police units dealing with computer crime [in the UK] concentrate on financial fraud, hacking, viruses, pornography and paedophile rings. Fewer resources have been directed at the problem of preventing online 'grooming' of vulnerable youngsters by paedophiles. The sheer volume of traffic discourages intervention even though grooming - the seduction of children over the Internet with intent to obtain underage sex - will have become a criminal offence in Britain by the autumn." The Guardian adds, though, that some British chatrooms themselves do some policing, through monitoring by trained adults and requiring letters from schools verifying users as children (measures used in the US in some cases as well). Early on in the States, much of the chatroom police work came under the aegis of Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces in state attorneys general offices and the FBI, but these and local police departments around the country are working together increasingly closely, sharing the burden, which has definitely grown.

3. Child porn sites more than doubled in '02

   The number of child-pornography Web sites rose by 64% in 2002 from the previous year, according to the annual report of the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service, released this week. The finding was "based on intelligence gathered from around the world," Reuters reports. "These sites may be hosted in one country and managed from elsewhere, making it difficult for police to trace offenders - most of whom are male - and to identify victims." More than half the sites are based in the US, the NCIS also found. A piece at the BBC coverage focused on the part of the report about the role that criminal gangs are increasingly playing in crimes ranging from Net pedophilia to drug dealing.

   In a useful Q&A headed "Striking back at child porn sellers," the New York Times answers a question about who to contact if you've received an email selling child pornography, including your Internet service provider (by law, US ISPs are required to report child porn to law enforcement agencies) and CyberTipline.com.

4. Minneapolis librarians' settlement

   In a struggle between librarians and their employers that began six years ago, 12 Minneapolis librarians have settled their lawsuit over workplace exposure to Internet porn, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The librarians' attorney said the lawsuit was not about the $435,000 financial settlement (based on workplace insurance coverage limits) but rather whether their concerns about librarian and patron exposure to sexually explicit online material, including child porn, were heeded by the library system. The plaintiffs reportedly were more interested in the changes the settlement promises, including "the beefing up of penalties against Internet violators," according to the Star Tribune. "A violator could be suspended from all city libraries for up to one year after repeated violations, up from 90 days now. Viewers of child pornography could lose library privileges permanently if that change is deemed legal by the city attorney's office." The Star Trib added that the library did not admit wrongdoing but apologized to the librarians in an all-day settlement conference on August 7 for not addressing their concerns "more expeditiously."

5. ISPs not doing enough for Euro kids

   A recent European study has found that Europe's Internet service providers are not sufficiently protecting children online (no study like this in the US has ever come to our attention). The study, by Safeboarders of the EU's Safer Internet Action Plan, found that "information and advice about protecting children when they surf was often difficult to find from the ISPs' home pages or related pages." In other findings...

   • 9 of the 17 ISPs reviewed had links to safety guidelines for parents and children from their sites, and the language was often difficult to understand.
   • 5 of the 17 had information about the potential dangers of chat rooms on chat room pages.
   • 5 had clear explanations about filtering/rating on their own sites; some others linked to such information in other sites; 3 had a clearly marked link to parental controls; 4 had no information about filtering/rating.
   • 4 had special areas for children on their sites but none of these had its own chat room; only 2 had links to chat rooms specifically for children.
   • "Whilst the majority of ISPs had help lines for their chat rooms so that suspicious behaviour could be reported, only a few provided links to EU hotlines where people can report illegal material.
   • "Children can easily enter chat rooms for adults and adults can easily enter chat rooms signalled for minors.
   
   The survey's press release cited other studies showing that "about one-third of girls are harassed online, and there are an estimated 1 million pornographic images of children on the web. Three quarters of children surveyed in 2001 said they see things that are nasty, rude, upsetting, violent and/or to do with gambling, and 80% say younger kids should be protected." There is a link to the study itself from the SaferInternet press release. (Thanks to QuickLinks for pointing this info out.)

6. 'War of the worms'

   This week the Net was slowed by a worm and a virus - though they were a problem more for business than home users this time. This week's worm was a well-intentioned one, computer security experts told Wired News. "After removing its predecessor MSBlaster, the new worm, which - just to add to the confusion - has been dubbed WORM_MSBLAST.D, Nachi and Welchia by various security and antivirus firms, then politely patches the machine against the vulnerability that MSBlaster exploited." Wired News's security sources wonder if next week there will be an anti-worm for the anti-worm. The "good" worm overwhelmed some corporate networks early in the week. As for the virus, CNET reports that it's a "new variant of the mass-mailing ... W32/SoBig.F" and took off on Tuesday. Neither nasty caused problems for the Internet at large, CNET added. However, later in the week the BBC declared Sobig "one of the fastest growing viruses ever" and reported it's expected to cause more trouble over the weekend.

7. Germany's camp for 'Net-addicted' kids

   SaferInternet.org cites an article in Deutsche Welle (8/12/03) about a camp provided by German social services designed to help children overcome "Internet addiction disorder (IAD)" by encouraging other interests. "While the statistics are not precise, and IAD is not clinically recognised as a psychological problem," SafeInternet.org reports, "there is cause for concern among parents whose children spend more and more time on the Net." It's the first camp of its kind in Europe. Those who wish to seek professional help can use this project set up by the German social security services. It is the first camp of its kind in Europe.

8. Prospects for anti-spam legislation

   The head of the US Federal Trade Commission this week criticized several anti- spam laws under consideration. FTC Chairman Timothy Muris's remarks at a tech policy forum in Colorado clouded prospects for congressional action this year, the Washington Post reports. He was especially negative about the idea of a national anti-spam registry, which has grown in popularity since a do-not- call registry was established for telemarketing calls to US households. Musis "said a no-spam registry would be impossible to enforce because the purveyors of the most offensive and fraudulent spam mask their identities," the Post article explains.

   A recent spam summit in the UK zoomed in on the problem of children receiving inappropriate email messages. Almost echoing the US FTC chairman's comment, a speaker at the conference, John Carr of UK children's charity NCH, said changes in laws governing email are unlikely to affect publishers of porn spam, "already in breach of a great many more serious laws," Silicon.com reports.

9. RIAA says it won't sue 'small-fry'

   The recording industry made assurances this week that it would not go after small-scale copyright violators in its lawsuits against file-sharers, Wired News reports. The message came in "a written response to questions by Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations." Meanwhile, an anonymous file-swapper went to court this week to challenge the RIAA's battle tactics, CNET reports. "Jane Doe's" motion is the first from an individual whose personal information has been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of American in recent months," CNET explains.

10. Gearheads' own digital divide

    Even though UK dads and sons agree on PlayStation 2 as their entertainment device of choice, there is a clear gap between the generations in their grasp of other tech entertainment gear. A third of British fathers feel more at home with portable radios than with CD, Minidisc and MP3 players, the BBC reports, citing a national survey from Stuff magazine. Males 16-24 "are more likely to try out new technology and think broadband Internet is the greatest invention of the 21st century," the BBC says. Stuff's editor said fathers "should make more of an effort to find out about new technologies because they are not as complicated as they might think." It's partly just a problem of "geek-speak" and acronyms, which often do not mean much to your average dad, according to the BBC. The piece suggests that if kids could just get the gear into dads' hands so they can mess around with these new toys, the digital device gap would narrow. Now, what kid wouldn't do just that if he only could?!

11. Sex & other ed on the Net

    "Education: Log On and Learn" at MSNBC, with its tagline about how the Internet has "all the answers for today's kids," is all over the map. After arresting readers with a lead about a controversial, UK-based sex education site for Generation K (today's "screenagers") - which parents will want to know about it - it moves on to discuss favorite teen online activities many of us have heard about, such as file-sharing and instant-messaging. But it never hurts to get more perspectives on critical thinking, Web-based misinformation, plagiarism, distance learning, and technologies schools use. You'll find it all in this article (though it does seem strangely US-centric for an article first published in Newsweek International - no refs to kids using mobile phones!).

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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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