Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) Meeting Coming Up Next Week
Comments: 2 - Date: September 15th, 2008 - Categories: Berkman@10, Safety
Next week, on September 23rd and 24th, the Berkman Center will host a day and a half-long public meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) at Harvard Law School.
Created in February 2008, the ISTTF is a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that have joined together to identify effective tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. This meeting will be an opportunity for members of the public to learn about the work of the Task Force, to explore the different technology-related problems and solutions under consideration, and to raise questions and share ideas. (For an example of ISTTF’s work, watch this video on “Teens Online, Stranger Contact, and Cyberbullying”.)
The meeting will conclude on Wednesday, Sept. 24th with an open discussion of the technologies presented on the previous day. For more information on this event and how to participate, check out the Berkman website here.
Comment by Mike Donlin - September 16, 2008 @ 11:04 am
CURRENT LINK: http://cyberbullying.seadesk.seattleschools.org
Good Afternoon,
I was recently introduced to the Berkman Center and the Digital Natives websites. I have been looing thru the documents and the posts on each with great interest. I am particularly interested in 1) cyberbullying and 2) the intersection of and interaction among education, home, industry, law and youth around cyberbullying, in particular, and internet safety, in general. From this current post, it looks as though these are areas of interest for the ISTTF, as well.
Within the Seattle School District, we are working hard to keep our young people safe. One of the biggest issues, here and around the world, is what kids do to each other using their 21st Century, Web 2.0 tools and toys. The link you find here will take you to our first, complete set of Middle School Cyberbullying Curriculum materials. The initial feedback from people around the country has also been very positive.
((It is still in our development sandbox site. If you hit this link and come to a log-in page, just delete the extension /public.aspx after the .org, and it?ll take you there. It will be moved to our SPS site soon; that move is in the works even as we speak.))
The curriculum you find here is complete and useable. However, it is not done. I say that because over the next few weeks, there will be even more wonderful student activities incorporated into it. As they are added, we will seamlessly change out the pages. We are also hoping to get some good feedback as people use the evaluation/feedback forms which are included on the web site with the materials. Even as we say that, we also know that, given the ever changing nature of technologies, and the creativity of our digital natives, this curriculum will never be really done.
These materials were designed to be incorporated into ongoing bullying prevention programs. With the Olweus Bullying Prevention model as our basis, the individual Lessons were created to be flexible enough shorter classroom meeting-type settings or to be used in longer classrooms periods. If they are used in longer classroom settings, they would fit nicely into existing Technology, Health and/or Language Arts units. They can also be used as stand-alones within an Exploratory-type setting.
The Lessons were also designed by educators with teachers in mind. That is important to note because, although there is a lot of ‘stuff’
out there for teachers to use, there is a broad range of quality and, more importantly, there is little to no context within which teachers can implement those materials. Within out curriculum, all the information and materials which a classroom teacher needs to present a Lesson are self-contained. Teachers who may think of themselves as less-than-tech-savvy will be able to use them as easily as high-end tech users. We plan to pilot these materials ? and incorporate feedback suggestions ? over the coming months.
It is our longer range plan to be able to expand on this core in two directions: both across the K-12 grade span and from cyberbullying to a more complete internet safety curriculum. This will take time and resources. In our current thinking, we will probably start with a middle school focus on internet safety and expand from there. We have some folks who are interested in expanding on the current MS (Junior High)cyberbullying. (I think that that may happen quite a bit. We can then take input, vet it, massage it, and coordinate all the look-and-feel.)
In addition to the curriculum lessons, you will also find a couple of the presentations I have been using with parents and educators. There is a particular need to work with educators, principals and counselors, as well as teachers, as there is an underlying sense of ?there?s nothing we can do about this?. It?s critical that we are all working together, speaking the same language to keep our young people safe.
Please feel free to share this information. Any and all feedback will also be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike Donlin
Senior Program Consultant: Prevention-Intervention/Department of Technology Services.
Carpe Diem!
http://cyberbullying.seadesk.seattleschools.org
206-252-0799
Comment by Safety Supply - November 14, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
I look forward to future inventions to improve software technology. With todays society being as corrupted as it is, theres no going to say that your child, growing up in a public school, will not be exposed to something of an illegal substance or negative nature. I mean we all just want our kids to grow up strong physically and mentally. We cannot afford to see them deteriorate, but we can afford McAfee! 🙂