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Online-Safety Resources for Home & School

Part 2: Constructive school Net use in a nutshell (October 5, '01 issue)

As promised last week, here is a basic outline for age-appropriate Internet use in school. These recommendations - from educator, lawyer, and CIPA expert Nancy Willard of the University of Oregon's "Responsible Netizen" project - are timely, as US schools are working out - for an October 27 interim deadline - how to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). We also think the recommendations are an important service as talking points for a discussion required in the US but very much needed in schools worldwide. (But tell us what you think!)

[A note to parents: Nancy suggests to us that if we go to public hearings about CIPA and hear school administrators say, "We've installed this technology measure to ensure your child's safety," don't leave it there! Ask questions - such as, how filtering software will ensure that safety, not to mention constructive Internet use by students - because filtering just doesn't do the job (see Part 1 for reasons why).]

Elementary school:

Middle and high school:

All grade levels:

* To configure the Internet Explorer browser to recognize content ratings, go into or launch the browser, click on "Tools" at the top of your screen, then "Internet Options," then the "Content" tab. Then simply click on "Enable" in the "Content Advisor" window at the top there. Netscape 6 doesn't recognize the ratings (yet, we hope), but Netscape 4.7 does. ICRA.org explains how to set Netscape 4.7 under where you click on "Parents: How to Use ICRA" on its home page. (The site is in "frames," so we're sorry we can't give you the direct URL.)

For further reading

Here is Part 1 of this series.


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