Reflecting on the Internet from the Past to Now

The next topic for the online course is Internet safety. This topic is one I have found interesting to follow over the past several years.

First, I have a daughter (now 20) who in Grade 7 was caught up in a bit of a mess because of the Internet. She and her friends were at that naive stage where they all exchanged msn names and passwords. Sadly one of the friends was not such a good friend and would sign on as one of the others and say nasty things about the other friends. This went on for awhile and eventually death threats were made and when the school was notified the police were called in. The girls learned some very valuable lessons through this, but they did learn the hard way.

Next, I remember first using the Internet with classes prior to any board having any real stand about safety. Not only did we not have rules, cyber tips, or safety programs, we did not have any sort of blocks for sites. No one really knew at that time what we were up against. There was a search engine specifically for kids and if an "s" was added or forgotten at the end the kids reached a porn site of sorts. Thankfully there are much better filters now.

Then there was the day that two boys tested out www.fart.com. (NOT meant to be a link) Yes, those were interesting times. Since then our board has had many inservices for ITs and staff, and an internet form is now distributed that all students and parents must sign in order for the Internet to be used by a student.

We now use "Student Link" as our home page. It is very user friendly and keeps students from 'straying' on their own. To see a sample of this go to: www.studentlink.ca

HWDSB also has programs for the middle school students and our community officer makes cyber bullying part of her bullying presentation each year. (The OPP safety tips are sent home after the presentation.)

Certainly what I have learned is that everyone needs to be educated when it comes to Internet safety: educators, parents and students.