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School Boards Rule, Internet No Longer Dangerous
destinyland writes "Good news. The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of the internet are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd actually met a stranger from the internet without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include social networks in their curriculum!"
Because kids will tell their teachers and the school boards the truth.
The opposite of progress is congress
remember kids, the internet might not be dangerous, but overuse of commas can be!
Heaven forbid our youth finds out that the world isn't nearly as bad a place as our fear-mongering overlords paint it to be. I for one welcome... Ah crap, I'm too afraid to finish...
Are social networks (presumably they mean things like myspace, bebo etc) really the most educational resources on the internet that they could think of ? If so future generations are in serious trouble.
OMG mathz rulz. I have mad science skillz, lolz!2!@! check out my blogz. c u guyz at da mall. ;)
FAQs are evil.
That's the surprising new recommendation from the National School Boards Association -- a not-for-profit organization representing 95,000 school board members -- in a new study funded by Microsoft, News Corporation, and Verizon.
I'm hardly surprised that a study funded by that group would decide the Internet is safe. And less surprised that social networking sites should be used. Perhaps using Myspace from your Vista PC on your Verizon broadband connection isn't so bad!!11
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Next thing you know, these kids will be poitnlessly commenting on newsgroups and opinion sites instead of worki... Oh Crap, here comes my boss!
Well, putting aside statistical issues with sample size and whatnot, 1 / 1277 is indeed 0.00078, or as a percentage: 0.078%. Rounding that to 0.08% hardly seems like bad math.
"...76% of parents expect social networking will improve their children's reading and writing skills..."
The internet improving the writing skills of children? That's unpossible!
It may be early, and I haven't had coffee yet, but wouldn't 1/1277 be more like .0008%? Methinks the public school system has bigger problems to deal with than internet access...
Agreed. Their methods must be incorrect if they can describe anything containing /. as not dangerous, or anything other than "A threat to humanity, the planet, and possibly the solar system, galaxy and universe as well."
"yet only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names or other personal information to strangers." - TFA
I would think this is a fundamentally flawed survey. What student hasn't heard the message that giving out personal information is considered risky?? I remember getting surveys in school that involved some rule or restriction that was unpopular and organizing group responses in the hope of getting those restrictions lessened.
Why on earth would you need to teach about social networks in school? Isn't it easy enough to pick up outside of school? Their success would indicate that to be true.
"84% of school districts have rules against online chatting in school" - TFA - OH NOES, my freedom of speech!!!!!!! Seriously maybe you should be learning where Iraq is on a world map instead of talking about your latest crush in IM.
This is why I pay for private school. Freaking tax dollars going to rubbish like this
Internet No Longer Dangerous != Fears overblown
/. would get that.. I'm sure there is some value in social networking sites for educational use, even though nothing comes to mind at the moment. But, the summation is wrong, the internet IS dangerous. I'm sure that, pulling stats out of my butt notwithstanding, fear of social networking sites IS overblown, but that does not mean the danger isn't there.
And
Internet != Social Networking
Geez, you'd think that a user on
When do I get to mod an Article "Stupid Summation"?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
May the Maths Be with you!
Those magic words, "who reported," show why this is non-important data although most will not consider it so. Like surveys, Nielsen ratings, man on the street interviews, and polls, this is a classic case of bad science. Take a sample and rely on the honesty of the people involved to report difficult truths. I'd say it's about as reliable as government promises.
I'm all for a free internet, but that requires no one declare it "safe," because then fat politicians will feel compelled to attempt to make it so, even though that's mathematically impossible.
technical writing / development
There usually is a parent who is, for whatever reason, not involved. I bet if you did a study on the parents whose kids meet strangers in public after contacting them online, you'd find a few of the following things:
1) Parents are working extra hours to buy fancy things.
2) Parents are afraid of their kids being bitter toward them for *gasp* being AUTHORITY FIGURES!
3) Parents are more concerned about being their kid's friend than a mother or father.
4) Parents are too lazy to learn how to control their own home.
5) The kids have internet access in their rooms, where their parents have far less control.
#5 is something that my wife and I have already agreed to with our kids. They can be on the Internet all they want/need, but they will not be doing it in their room where no one can watch them. It's possible that they could sneak downstairs while we're asleep, but if they can just get out of bed and go to their desk, that makes it virtually impossible for us to police them.
Any idiot knows the internet can be dangerous to children (and adults too...), yet, now they try to debunk that with some statistics? How good of a survey was this...
If you're reading articles, sure, it can be safe (but exposure to non-appropriate material is still an issue), but when you engauge in social activities (chat, IM, etc) - it goes to a whole new level.
Just simply...WOW.
It's about student productivity. It's a lot easier to ban IM/e-mail/social networking outright than try to enforce "now you can, now you can't" policies. Given access to sites like Myspace, a lot of kids would never get anything done without a teacher hovering over them constantly.
It's also about network security. Giving a thousand high school students unfettered internet access is just asking for trouble, no matter how hard you try to protect your network.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Or how to spell percentages... ;D
There is a war going on for your mind.
by a teacher than by a total stranger on the internet.
While we do get some sensational stories on occasion, usually involving hottie female teacher or some male gym coach, there are hundreds of cases that never get national press attention. There are some estimates that children are more in danger from teachers and other school employees than any other source (they were comparing to the scare on churches)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Certain people who use the internet are dangerous, for sure. Certain website might expose children to things (Sex, violence, etc.) that parents might not want them to see, for sure. But in and of itself the internet has not killed, raped, or assaulted anyone. (Apart from goatse and tubgirl)
Speaking as a teacher and future school administrator, schools are legally and morally obligated to protect the children in their care. No principal wants to be known as the "Porn Principal" who allows high school students to surf for pornography. No principal wants to have to answer calls from the media regarding why little Amber was allowed to chat with a previously-convicted pedophile from the school library and ended up kidnapped and molested as she walked home (What do you mean you don't know why? What kind of unsafe place is this?) The odds of these things happening is small, but it's a simple risk analysis. What do school administrators have to gain from granting students total access to the internet? Sadly, not much, really. So, sometimes they go a little overboard.
Children, however, have to be taught responsibility in a controlled environment. Generally, most school buildings can be rather well-controlled (doors locked, visitors checked, metal detectors, etc.). The internet, however, opens up access to the school and reduces the control of the administration, which is something most administrators are very afraid of. Combined with the slight possibility of things going terribly wrong, we pay to have the filters block out most "objectionable" content.
"... but it isn't teaching"
Go to hell. You and all your "get off my lawn / kids nowadays" buddies can seriously just go stuff yourselves. With comments like this you devalue everything learned and accomplished by schoolchildren / highschoolers in America. Stop tearing things down just because you don't understand. I have no idea why slashdot moderators allow comments like this. How about you a) do something about the education system since you dislike it so much or b) stop reducing the work of millions of childrens and teachers to "daycare."
Your answer is a good illustration of what the parent poster was saying. "What's the difference between lossy and lossless compression?" Sheesh, that's exactly the computer equivalent of "Write a report about Sweden". No wonder the dropout rate is at an all time high. How about "Does the Star Trek transporter use lossy or lossless compression? Why?"
Back in the day, we could have typed stuff out of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia and computers has made cheating a little easier, but hasn't enabled anything new.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Why on earth would you need to teach about sex in school? Isn't it easy enough to pick up outside of school? It's success would indicate that to be true.
Of course I don't expect the teachers to know anything about social networking, just like in High School I suspected that the teachers were pretty clueless about sex as well.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
If this works like most school actions, it'll be a disaster. The kids will soon be deciding that the Internet isn't cool; it's boring and "hard". They'll drop it and go back to other ways of upsetting the adults.
;-) be boring? But the schools (and some historians) manage to make it so.
If we really want young people to become familiar with the Internet, and learn to use it for their benefit, we should take the approach that works: Ban its use by children (where "child" even includes someone 17 years old). Put all sorts of leaky barriers in the way of their access. That way, the kids will be fascinated by it, and will spend lots of time learning how to use it.
Lots of people have observed that the main effect of most schools is to take various topics and make them boring and uninteresting. Consider a topic like history. How could the story of all the people who came before us (and messed up this world so thoroughly
Or consider music. That's a hard-wired human activity, that can be intensely exciting, right? How can we teach kids to not waste their time learning to make music, and make them content to spend the rest of their lives at a desk job? Right: Give them music lessons.
We should totally ban the use of the Internet in schools. They'll just do to it what they've done to so many other exciting human developments; they'll teach the kids that it's boring and uninteresting, and too hard for anyone but a "nerd" to understand.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm going to set up a proxy server for my kids. It will be like a cat and mouse game. They'll try to gain access to things they shouldn't, and I'll try to stop them. I can't think of a better way to teach my kids about computers and the Internet.
To put it another way: I'm less concerned about them talking to strangers than I am about them not learning valuable skills.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Captain, sensors have picked up the Internet, dead ahead.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Who says they wanted the truth?
Doing a non-anonymous survey is a good way to skew the results the way you want. If you're looking to make the internet seem "safe," do all the interviews with the kids' parents sitting next to them. Nope, no porn on that Internet, no-siree.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Absolutely, whoever raised that .7 needs to be spoken to in the harshest possible terms.
ow about "Does the Star Trek transporter use lossy or lossless compression? Why?"
So *that*'s why the show kept gradually getting shittier over time. ;)
Content filtering is an exceedingly difficult and often labor-intensive task, but public school IT departments are among the worst funded and supported IT departments in the entire IT industry, perhaps equaled only by those in public healthcare. There are many examples of legitimate Internet use which might be blocked by a content filtering system. For example, an anatomy/physiology teacher may attempt to 'incorporate the Internet into the curriculum,' performing (during class) a Google Images search upon the word 'chest' but have the appropriate and desired results snared by a content filter. In addition, the content filtering system may block the desired content and allow a piece of undesired content through. The number of possible content iterations is mind-boggling.
I'm not saying that the effort of content filtering should not be undertaken by public schools. Instead, the public school boards and the court system must uphold the principle of 'reasonable effort' undertaken to protect a child. Just as we should not allow school building doors to be locked (fire safety) yet still control school campus ingress and egress, we can also implement 'reasonable' Internet controls. Society needs to wake up to the fact that the entire world can be a dangerous place just as much as a beautiful place, and teaching children how to respond accordingly seems far more valuable and sensible that insisting upon a futile 'arms race' to impose blinders and barriers to protect the tender minds of lil' Johnny and lil' Suzy.
I have a teen child who has a computer in his room with full Internet access. However, my child does *not* have Administrator access to any computer in the house, all of which are loaded with real-time virus and spyware protection as well as a bidirectional firewall. The home network is also firewalled, and I have configured all of the systems at home to use OpenDNS so that I can utilize the (free) rudimentary content filtering offered by OpenDNS. I can review the firewall logs to see every place upon the Internet which is visited, and have done so in order to demonstrate to my child that monitoring is done and that access to certain types of content is not appropriate for his age. Is the system perfect? No. Can his friends still expose him to 'inappropriate content' at their homes? Yes. Has he tried to bypass the controls? Yes (and such is normal). Have my wife and I shown 'reasonable due dilligence?' We believe so. The configuration that I have described above is not expensive - excluding only the network firewall, all the tools to do so can be obtained for free. The sad truth is that the majority of technology companies, Internet Service Providers, school boards, and police organizations have done virtually nothing to educate parents (all users, for that matter) about not only the risks, but the countermeasures and how to use those countermeasures.
"Doveryai, no proveryai." ('Trust, but verify.' - Russian Proverb)
By the end of reading your post, my pulse was perfectly in sync with the commas. If you had ended your post with ellipses instead of a period, there's a good chance I'd be dead right now...
This was why I set up a class wiki for my students to complete some assignments on.
As long as they completed their work, they were allowed to use the talk features to socialize. Constructive development of tech social skills, and no risk of creepy freaks from the offline world. I controlled registration and since it was a wiki, everything was public.
Which isn't to say, of course, that any of my students weren't ALSO on bebo or myspace or the rest, but given the socio-economic status of the district I teach in, I'm pretty sure that ALL of them weren't, so it was a learning experience for at least some of them and a safe place for all of them.
The better that the kids of today can learn to deal with technology with a level head and asses the risks, the better off they'll be. I'm a proponent of educating rather than insulating.