News

The Indian government is reflecting a real threat to long term cognitive abilities of children growing up in a world whee there has always been cellphones, computers and the Internet. If you are serious about doing something talk to your counsellor or politicians about similar legislation. Technology companies will freak out about this because they are in some warped way the new tobacco companies. And we all know what happened with them. Here’s the story…

Bangalore, Sep 12: After banning sale of soft drinks on school and college premises, the State Government is now all set to ban use of mobile phones by children up to 16 years of age. While teachers and heads of educational institutions would be authorised to confiscate mobile phones if students from primary to pre-university education were found using it, the onus would be on parents to enforce it at home.

The decision had been taken on the basis of suggestions from medical experts on adverse impact of using mobile phones on children, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Basavaraj Horatti and Health Minister R Ashok told media persons at a joint media conference here on Tuesday.

Use of mobile phones by growing children for long durations have an adverse impact on brain, nervous system and ear. We have taken this decision on the advice from paediatricians. A circular will be issued in this regard within a few days. Parents play an important role in enforcing this ban in the interest of their own children,?? the ministers said.

Comprehensive guidelines for the ban would be formulated in consultation with law department. Action would be taken against even mobile phone dealers who sell the instruments to children below 16 years of age. All the special packages of mobile service providers would be scrapped, Ashok declared.

As for enforcement of the ban outside the educational institutions, the ministers said, We will examine whether to authorise the police department to enforce it.

Apart from the health perspective, the action would also help in ensuring a more congenial atmosphere for learning in class rooms, especially in urban areas, they said. An extensive campaign through posters and other media would be launched to bring awareness about the harmful effects of mobile phones on children?s health, they added.

source: DaijiWorld.

Avondale Meadows Upper Elementary science teacher Laura Amatulli smiles as she stands in her classroom, which was redone by designer Vanessa Deleon. Amatulli won the makeover for her creative lesson in Internet safety.Sixth-graders in teacher Laura Amatulli’s class are going to be safer on the computer, thanks to a lesson plan she created.

Students are also going to be surprised when they enter Amatulli’s Avondale Meadows Upper Elementary classroom when school starts Sept. 4, because their

Avondale Meadows Upper Elementary science teacher Laura Amatulli smiles as she stands in her classroom, which was redone by designer Vanessa Deleon. Amatulli won the makeover for her creative lesson in Internet safety.

teacher won a $10,000 classroom makeover by a New York designer in a national contest.

The lesson plan Amatulli created to teach children about Internet security made her a national grand prize winner in the Honeywell and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Got 2B Safe! Awards Program. It recognizes teachers who are committed to keeping children safe from abduction and sexual exploitation.

“I have children of my own,” said Amatulli, an Auburn Hills resident who has been at Avondale schools seven years and was delighted this week watching the designer at work in her classroom.

“Much of children’s socialization today is on the Internet,” Amatulli said. “When I was a kid, I came home and played with friends. Now children go home and talk to their friends on the Internet. I really saw a need for a foundation on Internet safety.”

The teacher’s desire to teach Internet safety comes in a time when adults are infiltrating chat rooms or e-mail addresses used by children. They ask for personal information, try to talk youths into meeting them, or coerce some into sending inappropriate photos over the Web. Police departments have created task forces dedicated to protecting children from pedophiles who seek children on the Internet.

“My students frequent chat rooms and communicate with Instant Messenger nightly,” Amatulli said.

In her search for ideas to promote Internet safety, Amatulli found the Got 2 B Safe! competition on the Honeywell Web site. It requires four safety rules be a key part of any entry by teachers around the country.

“They are easy rules kids can recognize quickly,” she said.

“I took the Honeywell idea and incorporated it in a lesson plan. Before the children get on the Internet to do any research, we talk about safety first and they create their own public service announcements on Internet safety; what to report and who to report it to.

“They totally understand and they are very receptive.”

After explaining the rules, the teacher also cites a scenario and asks the students what they would do. For example, a student is in a chat room and one of the Ôgirls’ she has met on the Internet says she is coming through town and wants to get together at the mall. The Ôgirl’ who gives the name of Morgan also asks for the student’s home number and address.

Amatulli asks her students; “Do you think (the student) made a good choice by saying she would meet Morgan? Should she give her home information out? How can you apply the Four Rules For Safety to this situation?”

Students will be given time to discuss and reflect on the situation and come up with decisions that will protect them in the future.

Then students create a commercial for their peers that include the “Four Rules For Safety.” This commercial will be uploaded to the classroom Web site, where their peers and parents can view it from home.

Amatulli does not want to discourage the use of the Internet.

“In our classroom, we embrace technology. That’s their future. When you have a foundation of safety, you don’t have to fear it because you understand what’s right and what’s wrong and what should be reported,” Amatulli said.

“This year, we are going to publish it on the Avondale district Web site, along with a public service Pod cast,” she said. The Oakland Press/JOSE JUAREZ

The research now about victimisation on the Internet turns out to be vastly different from what is reported in the media. This is leading me to believe South Africa needs to investigate heavily in researching the impact of Internet and mobile phones on young children and teenagers. So many assumptions are turning out to be false. Here’s a short transcript followed by a video clip of the proceedings. Double click on the video below to gain access to Youtube and the 9 videos in total. You may also want to visit the Youth Online 2007 page for mp3 audio version, and additional resources of these proceedings.

But actually, the research in the cases that we’ve gleaned from actual law enforcement files, for example, suggests a different reality for these crimes. So first fact is that the predominant online sex crime victims are not young children. They are teenagers. There’s almost no victims in the sample that we collected from – a representative sample of law enforcement cases that involved the child under the age of 13.

In the predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence, stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor. Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating with.

So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who are considerably older than themselves.

< Remember to click here to view all the videos of these proceedings.

You may have heard Patricia de Lille speaking out on MXit and Blogging over the last few days. Well she was on 702/Cape Talk radio last night. I tuned in towards the tail end of the conversation. Dave Duarte, a blogger, stepped in to defend freedom of expression with blogging. I called in to make the listeners aware of the Parents Guide to MXit. And more importantly about the importance of education. One thing that you as a user should demand is that your service provider, whether cellphone, mobile or Internet based does more to educate the public at large.

The banks in South Africa, for example, have been suffering from increasing attacks of what is called phishing. They have posted some notices on their websites but I have seen little else in the form of reassuring the public. MXit has since responded to Patricia de Lille’s outrages request to have blogging and MXit regulated.

It is extremely difficult to regulate blogging because it’s on the Internet or rather the World Wide Web. As Herman Heunis, CEO of MXit Lifestyle said in his response to de Lille, even China with it’s massive investment in online censorship with firewalls, proxys and filters, cannot prevent all their citizens from speaking out. They successfully block a large portion but users or the community will always find a way to make it’s voice heard.

So what is your response to this as parents, citizens or some other stakeholder. My advice is that you apply more pressure on government to make basic computer literacy compulsory for all teachers, learners, civil servants. That is a good starting point. Next you can request from your ISP or favourite website that they support this online safety action campaign. All they have to do is start by putting a link to this website. They can also publish safety tips which I will gladly source for them to ensure it’s appropriate to their audience.