Villa Parents created this list of “Best Practices” to help middle school parents address computing issues with their children. Computers are great tools to support academics, foster creativity and enable communications. With the privilege of using this tool comes the responsibility of appropriate use.
While students sign a “Responsible Use Agreement” with the school for their computer use, we also recommend that parents discuss their own guidelines for computer use with their children. Each family will define “appropriate use” a little differently, selecting the right balance of privileges and requirements. Keep in mind your child’s safety, social maturity, the enforceability of your guidelines and related consequences for misuse.
The following are simply recommendations based on what some parents consider their “Best Practices.”
Parental Oversight:
• OPEN SCREEN policy
Setup the expectation that anything your student does on the computer should be viewable by you. The litmus test is an OPEN SCREEN. If your student wants to close their screen to hide what they are viewing or working on, the content is not appropriate on the computer. This applies to email to friends—not because kids shouldn’t have privacy with their friends—but because email is NOT reliably private. Private conversations are best in person.
• Password access to computer and email
Students should keep you informed of their computer and email passwords, so that you can view the history of their computer work when you request it. The privilege of using the computer comes with the caveat of parental review as you see fit. Establish the expectation that you will periodically review their email. This helps ensure an OPEN SCREEN, even when you are not present. Your student may benefit from knowing that you can ask the Villa technology department to help you see the history of your child’s computer and Internet use.
• Stay involved
Ask your student to share what’s going on in the technology world. The best way to help your child make good choices about their computer use is to know what’s available and popular with kids.
Personal Safety:
• Protect Personal info
For their own protection, students should not share any personal information in email, chats, IM or on webpages (such as myspace). Personal information includes your full name, email name, photos, phone number, address, age, birth date, credit card info, school name, neighborhood, sports teams, interests etc. Clearly the amount of information included varies by activity (email discloses the email name, etc.), but students should be cautious about giving any information that would help a stranger to identify them.
• Protect Others’ Personal Info
Your student should also respect others’ personal privacy by not sharing their personal information. One innocent example of violating a friend’s privacy is posting a picture of friends on a public web space.
• Report the suspicious
Ask your children to tell you about any email or Internet interaction that makes them feel bullied, intimidated, harassed or “creepy.”
• Keep passwords private
Other than sharing their passwords with you (and the technology department), students should not share passwords with others or write them down in their school notebooks. Advise against ever sending a password in email.
• Password protect your computer
Your student can password protect the opening screen on the computer.
• Do not share computers with friends
Each middle schooler has a computer. If your student is the only one using his/her computer it reduces the risk of deleted work, impersonated email (someone else sending email from your student’s account), technological failure (from accidentally breaking the hardware or crashing the software).
• Password Protect your home wireless network
The Internet:
Your guidelines on the Internet use may stem from your viewpoint on protecting your child from inappropriate Internet content. Approaches vary from requiring parental oversight of Internet use to entrusting the child to self-monitor. Some recommendations:
• Discuss Inappropriate Content
Because your child will likely be exposed to inappropriate content (in an Internet search, spam email or peer discussion), we recommend that you be proactive in discussing what you consider inappropriate and what you expect your child to do when confronted with this content.
• “Open Screen” and “Close Site”
If your child feels they want to close the screen, close the Website instead.
• Earn the privilege of “private space” Internet use
Many families require their kids to use their computers in a public space, such as the family room, under adult supervision. This may be the right approach for your family. With wireless networks, your kids may find they have access in private spaces. You may want to start with supervised public computer use, earning the right to use in their rooms.
If you choose to allow private space use, you may want to establish “OPEN SCREEN” and “OPEN DOOR.” For example, there would be specific consequences if your presence (POS—Parent Over Shoulder) causes your student to either close the lid or switch out of open window. Some effective consequences have been: using the computer only in public spaces, banning Internet access or email for a period of time, restrictions on computer gaming, limiting TV time, taking away phone privileges etc.
• No private space use with peers
Some parents do not allow other kids to bring their computers to a friend’s house. This alleviates the risk of a damaged computer, loading potentially harmful software, cruising the Internet in a peer setting, etc. It is recommended that students keep their computers at their own homes after school with the exception of working on a joint project, in a public space with a parent present in the home.
• Limit non-academic Internet Surfing
Just as you may have weekly parameters for TV time or video games, consider a limit on Internet surfing.
• Close Internet Pop-ups
Explain that advertisers will try to entice students to click on pop-up windows, and that to avoid viruses and advertisers garbage, they should close all pop-up windows.
• Internet Content Filters:
There are many content filters that parents can install on their home computers and student computers that reduce the amount of inappropriate content. Villa maintains a hardware-based Internet content filter at the school, but this is not available for home use. You may choose to install a content filter such as CyberPatrol or Safe Eyes, but this requires you to setup and maintain the filtering. If you choose to use a content filter, supply Villa techs with the passwords in case they need access while maintaining your student’s computer.
• Search Engine Content Filters:
From your student’s computer and your home computers, open the most commonly used search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, MSN) and change the search preferences to select the highest Internet filtering available. Villa has a site license for a search engine that filters content and categorizes it in age appropriate groups. Contact Villa for more info and access to nettrekker.
Email:
• Discuss Email Etiquette
Email can be a challenging communication vehicle for kids and adults. It does not allow kids to interpret body language or voice inflections. Email is easily misinterpreted and easily propagated. Middle school is a time for social growth, and mistakes on email easily become public knowledge. Specific Recommendations for your student:
• Do not use email to argue with friends.
• Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t say face-to-face.
• Don’t slander (insult, smear) your classmates or teachers.
• Don’t swear or use vulgar language.
• Re-read your email before you send. Write strong feelings on paper to allow time to cool off.
• Never send email from another person’s email account.
• Do not create or forward “chain letters” that intimidate friends by requiring them to either forward the email or endure some consequence, such as bad luck for a year, etc.
• Your Email on a billboard
A common error is assuming an email is private. It is a written record of your thoughts that can easily be passed from the recipient to ANYONE. While the communication seems private, write it as though it will be printed on a billboard for everyone to see. Any child who has told someone a secret and been betrayed will understand.
• Establish an email name without the full name
Do not use your child’s full name in their email address to avoid personal information disclosure. Select a “screen name” instead. If the email address is with a popular email provider such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail or Comcast, include a random string of numbers or letters to avoid spam mail.
• Protect against strangers / cyber bullies
Advise that your student NOT open email from strangers. Delete it. Client email programs such as Entourage and Outlook allow your student to establish a contacts list and only accept email from this list.
• Protect against Viruses
PC users need to be particularly vigilant in protecting against viruses. Advise not to open any programs inside of an email. Explain that clicking to open anything inside an email exposes them to computer viruses. If they need an attachment, save to the computer first so that the virus scan software can check it.
• Protect against Spyware and Adware
To prevent spyware and adware from corrupting your computer, PC users should run Spybot and Ad-Aware with weekly backups.
• Protect against Spam
The greatest weapon you have against spam is choosing NOT to disclose your email name. Set up a free email account for your family and use this whenever you are asked for an email name on a survey, a catalog, a registration or purchase.
• Ask to be removed from junk mail
Many students struggle with receiving email from friends that are sent to massive distribution lists with content like chain letters and jokes. Empower your child to reply to these asking to be removed from the distribution list, please. It can be as simple as “my parents don’t want me to clog up my email with this kind of stuff.”
IM (Instant Messaging):
• IM not recommended for sixth grade
IM allows kids to monitor which of their “buddies” are using their computers and open a live chat with them. Since kids use their computers for homework, this often means that they are interrupted while studying. In addition, IM exacerbates some of the etiquette issues of email because messages are instantaneously transmitted. Because IM requires the discipline to resist distraction and a greater level of social maturity than email, parents recommend email over IM. Instant Messaging cannot occur without a “buddy list” of other IM participants, so the more parents who opt against it, the better.
If you choose to allow IM, it is recommended that you limit use while studying and use a screen name.
Social Networking Sites (Myspace, Facebook, etc.)
• Social networking sites are not recommended for sixth grade
Myspace, Facebook, etc. are social networking sites that allow people to meet each other by sharing their pages. Kids and adults create their pages and post all kids of personal info like favorite music, hobbies, sports, games, photos, video, blogs, Internet links etc. They can allow public access or restrict to a list of “friends” who have to ask for permission to enter. At the sixth grade level, a social networking presence is not recommended. The risk is allowing strangers access to personal information.
If you choose to allow access to a social networking site, it is recommended that you restrict access to friends and prohibit personal information such as full name and photos.
Gaming:
• Restrict gaming during homework time
• Advise against loading up on games
Games can corrupt the software configuration and that any time the technology department spends repairing the computer will be charged to the student at 50%.
Backup:
• Backup music and video files
Students have server space at school for weekly backups of their work. Because video files and music files require a lot of space, they are not backed-up on school servers. It is recommended that you purchase an external hard drive with a firewire or USB cable to backup any videos or music.
Additional links:
Internet Safety
http://www.ncjrs.gov/internetsafety/
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm
Cyberbullying
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/prevention/cbms.html
Printable version of Internet Best Practices
