Managing the risks
Internet safety is an issue for all students of school age. The issues are comparable but different in primary and secondary schools. The following information includes examples of resources designed to provide a solution to a particular issue.
The CyberSafe Schools Quick Reference Guide relates the development of student skills and knowledge to internet safety issues for schools and teachers. Each guide is a progress map where student knowledge and internet safety skills are outlined. The guide is necessarily indicative, as teachers would be conscious of mixed-ability groupings in any given class. Knowledge and skills that are assumed to be taught at lower levels may need to be reinforced to ensure all students can engage with the internet safely.
Resources for young children
A number of publicly accessible resources have been developed by organisations with a particular responsibility for educating about internet safety. These resources aim to demystify what seems like complex technologies.
It is important to teach children how to use the internet safely from as early an age as possible. One interactive resource is Netty’s World, developed by NetAlert. Parents or carers can sign a registration form to enable their children to join Netty’s Club.
Netty’s World
Netty’s World is designed for young children starting out on the internet. It provides an interactive and safe environment for children to play in, while providing important messages about internet safety.
NetAlert encourages parents to take their children through the online storybook, Netty’s Net Adventure (www.nettysworld.com.au), where important internet safety messages are explained. Following this, children are encouraged to play the interactive games which reinforce internet safety messages.
Other interactive resources for students include Cybersmart kids online (www.cybersmartkids.com.au), smart Net surfing for kids and their grownups.
The World Wide Web
Visiting websites is the most common activity students undertake on the internet. Many children and adolescents accessing the internet using a computer or another enabled device will be confronted with material that is disturbing or inappropriate. The Australian Government, the states and territories have responded to this with a number of initiatives. These include state-wide wide area networks (WANs), filtering services and moderated search engines.
The Victorian Education Channel
The Victorian Education Channel is an online service provided by the Department of Education and Training in Victoria. It operates as a discovery site for information and services related to education and training that have been produced by the Department and selected third party providers.
The search and browse functions make use of an extensive repository of cataloguing information gathered by qualified cataloguers and through alliances with other organisations, providing access to hundreds of thousands of high quality web resources from Australia and around the world. The channel has been established primarily to serve the Victorian community and gives prominence, where appropriate, to information of local and regional significance.
Because of the large volume of content it references, it is also useful as a general purpose search engine for those involved in education and training, particularly in the Asia–Pacific region. Content referenced by the Victorian Education Channel (www.education.vic.gov.au) has been carefully selected and subjected to a quality assurance process.
In addition to the Victorian Education Channel, there are a number of safe searching environments for students and teachers. These include:
• EdNA Online — Education Network Australia (www.edna.edu.au/edna)
• Education Queensland (www.education.qld.gov.au) — Edulist (Queensland)
Email (electronic mail) is a message that can be sent over the internet to someone else. It is one of the services provided by an internet service provider (ISP). It is like sending a letter or a postcard to anywhere in the world instantly. Documents, images, text, music and movies can be attached to emails. The risks with email include spamming, flaming (attacking someone through email), bombing (sending hundreds of emails to a person to overload their system), stalking, viruses, bullying and inappropriate content.
Global Classroom Project
Collaborative projects approved by education departments are a focused, moderated means of teaching about the internet in safe and secure educational environments. By participating in collaborative projects, primary and secondary students can experience and learn about electronic communication, web authoring and a range of other internet related skills.
Thousands of schools from Australia and around the world have participated in the range of online collaborative projects the Global Classroom has to offer. Schools from as far away as Argentina, Sweden, France and Latvia (to mention just a few) have collaborated and contributed to the teaching and learning activities taking place in Victorian classrooms.
The Global Classroom Project offers teachers:
- access to online collaborative projects covering all year, curriculum and skill levels;
- opportunity to post their own project on the database;
- opportunity to place an ‘ad’ seeking partner schools; and
- access to teaching and learning resources.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development Victoria (www.education.vic.gov.au) — Victorian Education Channel - Teacher
Chatting
‘Chatting’ is a way of communicating with people at the same time by typing messages which then appear on your computer screen, and are sent across the internet to be read by everyone else participating in the ‘chat room’ – a virtual meeting place. The process of taking part is known as ‘chatting’. Participants are sometimes known as ‘chatters’. Chat rooms have an element of anonymity about them, so children and adolescents often talk about things they may not have the confidence to say face-to-face. They can pretend to be someone else—older, smarter and more popular.
The anonymity of participants may lead students to engage in unsafe behaviour, or to becomesusceptible to ‘online grooming’, where an adult takes on the persona of a child in order to befriend a child in a chatroom, ususally with the intention of meeting them in real life. Students need to be careful about how much personal information they give out to the people with whom they are chatting.
Safe internet chat rooms
The Netlearners section of the Discover website provides a service for Tasmanian teachers where they can use chat safely and securely with their students.
How to host a forum or internet chat
If you are confident in using forums and chats, you may apply by completing an electronic form to host a forum and manage an internet chat.
The Discover team will set up forums or chats on receipt of these forms and delegate management of them to the teachers who have requested them.
Forums or chats may be requested by teachers for a variety of purposes. Many forums are established as professional development activities to enable teachers to discuss issues of interest. Forums have also been used extensively as part of collaborative projects, enabling students in different schools and classes to share experiences and opinions. To use chat effectively there are some technical/software requirements that can be very easily installed on your computer.
Discover offers a range of forum tools and a choice of text based, comic or virtual reality chat facilities. On receipt of your application to host a forum or manage a chat, you will be contacted to discuss specific customisation to suit the users you have in mind.
http://www.discover.tased.edu.au/
An example of a moderated chat room is provided by the Department of Education and Training in New South Wales (www.det.nsw.edu.au).
Instant messaging
Instant messaging is a form of online chat involving two or more individuals. When you send an instant message to someone it appears on their screen almost instantly. Some services also allow the sending of files to one another. Instant messaging is also called IM, Iming, internet relay chat (IRC), or ICQ (‘I seek you’).
Using instant messaging programs exposes students to a number of risks—private conversations are easy to start with anybody, real time conversations can occur with strangers and personal information may be inadvertently released.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking
P2P programs are applications that run on personal computers with the intent to share files with users across the internet.
P2P networks work by connecting individual computers, forming file sharing communities. Members of the community—those people who have installed the P2P application on their computers—can then search for files or share files with the rest of the community. When a search is conducted, all the available computers that are sharing files in the community are requested for the file, and if found the user can start downloading it.
Common uses for P2P networking include sharing music, pictures, movie files and other documents.
Risks associated with this technology can be exposure to inappropriate content, downloading of viruses or spyware, or breaching copyright regulations for protected works. Often files that are downloaded are not what they say they are in the filename or file description.
Web authoring
Many students develop websites for school projects or for personal interest. It is essential that they protect their identities by not publishing detailed personal information, names, email addresses or photographs. There are a number of Australian guidelines that provide clear advice about web authoring by students, which address issues such as privacy and personal security.
Online publishing is also governed by national, state and territory legislation in areas such as defamation, equal opportunity and racial vilification. Students should be made aware of these issues.
Publishing student photographs on the web
Education Queensland publishes guidelines about publishing photographs on the web.
Publication of private information or photographs
Schools should analyse risks associated with posting information about teachers, students or their families on the internet and develop policies in consultation with their school community. Considerations might include:
- reasons for the publication, such as outstanding achievements;
- student situation, for example age or family situation;
- identification of the students, for example publishing first names only, or publishing group rather than individual photographs; and
- the ability of others to digitally enhance published medium.
A school’s policy might include:
- obtaining written permission from a parent or carer to publish details of students, including photographs;
- publishing the first name only on photographs, unless approved by the parent or carer; and
- involving students over a particular age in giving approval for having their details and/or photographs published.
Department of Education, Training and the Arts Queensland (education.qld.gov.au) - Risk Management
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