Online Safety Curricula Provided by i-SAFE, Inc.

Lessons on Internet Safety for Children Available by Subscription

Nov 22, 2009 Mistie Shaw

The world leader in e-safety education, with more than 21 million students internationally, now provides schools with internet safety curricula via online subscriptions.

Sexual predators of the past had to physically go where the children were, to initiate contact and be a threat. Today, on the Internet, social networking programs like Facebook and MySpace have changed the threat scenario. Statistics show that “stranger danger” is less of a problem than a new trend called “willing participation”.

Stranger danger is when a young person thinks he or she is communicating online with someone of the same age bracket but in fact it is an older, usually male, predator. Willing participation is when an underage child knows the age of their adult Internet friend and chooses to continue the inappropriate relationship. More and more teens and tweens are becoming involved voluntarily with middle-aged adults.

The US Government Mandates Online Safety Training for all Minor Children

The Broadband Data Improvement Act, billed as "Protecting Children in the 21st Century" was passed by the US Congress in 2008. At that time, all schools – both elementary and secondary – having Internet access became required to certify that students receive training in areas such as:

Appropriate online behavior
Interactions on social networks like Facebook and MySpace
Chatroom behavioral protocol
Identity theft
Cyber bully awareness, and
Methods for handling problems and getting help

Schools which do not comply are ineligible to receive E-rate funds to help defray the costs of communicating via the Internet. E-rate funds are generated from the Universal Fund collected from customers by telecommunications companies. Approximately $2.5 billion is distributed each year.

A Leader in Promoting Internet Safety for Kids, i-SAFE Provides Curricula for Legal Compliance

In 1998, i-SAFE, Inc. was started when a group of people with a vision of where the Internet was headed began creating training programs for teaching children safety on the web. A pioneer in Internet safety for children, i-SAFE was originally a federally subsidized program providing free curricula to school districts nationwide in the US. Since then, the company has reached out to to become a global solution to Internet safety training and is now the world leader of e-safety education.

Effective August, 2009, the company’s online access and end-of-year metrics reports became subscription-based. Statistical reports are generated from student surveys taken before, immediately after and six weeks after the classroom instruction ends. Because the surveys are anonymous, reliability is considered high. Current trends show that 85 - 93% of the students finishing the Internet safety training are more likely to exhibit less risky online behavior than before the training.

Talking about kids’ responses to the curricula, Chief Operations Officer of the California-based corporation, Dennis Shaw said, “Kids’ behaviors are changed! They’re more cautious and more aware of the risks to which they’re exposed when they’re online.”

Statistics Prove that i-SAFE Training Helps Internet Kids Understand Online Safety

Providing curriculum and teaching tools for more than 21 million students worldwide, i-SAFE’s statistical analysis is invaluable. The reports produced are useful tools for schools and school districts in assessing local student risk. According to Shaw, many districts have no idea what threats their students are facing. However targeting education to combat a particular menace is not very practical, “The key to educating kids is teaching citizenship online and [for younger students] media literacy.”

The Internet is not just a place for predators to find kids, it’s also the new playground for school children. Cyber bullying, pushing and shoving, identity theft and kids hurting kids – it’s all happening online – but i-SAFE is distributing guidelines for safety and providing blueprints for building a caring cyber community.

Source:

Dennis R. Shaw, Chief Operations Officer of i-SAFE, located in Carlsbad, California, was interviewed on November 21, 2009 for this article.

The copyright of the article Online Safety Curricula Provided by i-SAFE, Inc. in Curricula/Lesson Plans is owned by Mistie Shaw. Permission to republish Online Safety Curricula Provided by i-SAFE, Inc. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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