Grammatista

“Virginia Schools Teach ‘Net Safety Lessons” is the article that I read for this post. This article contains many disturbing statistics, in regards to pedophiles online, however it carries an overall positive message of the internet. I think the last line of the article serves as a great summation of the entire article as well as sums up my feelings in general about MySpace and Facebook, “No one wants to curb teen from using Facebook and MySpace, he [Attorney General Bob McDonnell] said, but in the internet age, it’s necessary to reinforce the old warning: ‘Don’t talk to strangers.’”

            This quite understanding quote comes after these staggering statistics: “in 2006 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that about 13 percent of internet users ages 10 to 17 had received unwanted sexual solicitations. Four percent of those youths reported being asked for nude or sexually explicit photographs of themselves.”

This quote is to say the least a blow to my cause; because at the end of the day there is no technology in the world that is worth the safety of our kids and students. However there are people out there fighting on behalf of student safety. People like Judi Westberg Warren president of Web Wise Kids, “a non profit group funded by the federal government and corporations such as Verizon and Symantec to proved schools with no-cost internet safety lessons for 11-16 year olds.” Along with Web Wise Kids, Virginia has developed training for teachers through their “Department of Education office of educational technology” which “helps schools educate parents, including encouraging families to use filtering software and put their computers in parts of the house where they can easily be seen.”

In my opinion the attitude that the Virginia board of education is taking on the issue of Myspace and other social networking sites is the right one. They are acknowledging the fact that students are going to use the sites no matter what and thus it’s just better to educate the students, parents and teachers to help protect kids when they are online opposed to just telling students to just not use it; because kids are still kids and rebellion is just in their nature. More schools need to adopt a pro-technology agenda like Virginia has so that eventually all of these great innovations can be used an educational tools rather than the distractions that it they are currently.    

Virginia Schools Teach Net Safety Lessons

by Associated Press

6 April 2008

Full Article