Talk to your kids now: Be 'Cyber Safe' on the Web and with Electronic Devices including cell phones and other devices across an interconnected world

What is 'cyber-bullying?'   New technology and online media have many social and educational benefits, but there are dangers people can be exposed to. Due to anonymity, students can be exposed to peer-to-peer harassment or 'cyber-bullying.'  Among the ways people can be bullied online include: fake profiles on Facebook/MySpace; sending unwanted and insulting emails and instant messages; hurtful Internet polling; stealing passwords; posting embarrassing or harmful images online; posting personal information including real name, address and telephone numbers online. 

Keeping Children Safer Online  Find out about one of the Internet’s most useful tools to protect children online: NetSmartz. Children may be victims of cyberbullying, sexting, inappropriate sharing of personal information or abuse from an online predator.

Teachable moments  Parents, teachers, caregivers and guardians can choose opportunities or teachable moments to reinforce the importance of personal safety online. If an incident occurs and your children ask you about it, speak frankly but with reassurance. Explain to your children you want to discuss the online guidelines with them so they will know what to do if they are ever confronted with a difficult situation. Make sure you have a safety net in place, so your children know there is always someone available to help them.  Parents who don’t make time for their kids, and their questions, are putting their kids at risk. Read more about how to talk to kids: Chatting with Kids about Being Online  

Communicating Online can be inappropriate and lead to inappropriate conduct, contact and content. You can reduce these risks by talking to your kids about how they communicate - online and off - and encourage them to engage in conduct they can be proud of. 

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Child/Teen Safety Recommendations

NetSmartz411 is parents' and guardians' premier, online resource for answering questions about Internet safety, computers, and the Web. Visit the website or call 1-888-NETS411 if you have questions.

Become Aware!  Parents and educators use the Internet as a resource for learning, but the vast accessibility to information and interconnectedness lend themselves to significant pitfalls for the unwary.  Teachers in the Hilton School District integrate the lessons of good behavior on the web and other devices in the classroom and computer labs.  It is the District's goal to inform parents and guardians of the important role they play in helping their children navigate the web safely: understanding online friendships, learning to use and value the resource of the Internet, and knowing how to politely converse with others online and other devices.  Communication devices and online opportunities take many forms and are available 24-hours a day.  Important milestones for children include learning how to use their time valuably, how to make and keep friends, how to recognize and deal with 'cyber bullying,' online predators and other issues. Accomplishing this is both a school and a home lesson. 

         NetSmartz411    l     Cyber-Safety Video featuring Hilton      l       NetSmartz       I       SafeKids       l       Center for Missing Kids      l

KNOW YOUR TERMS: speak accurately about social networking, texting, blogs, tweets with your children

Educational and Library-Oriented Social-Networking:

Library Thing - Users' libraries are connected through tags. Visitors can subscribe to a library's RSS feed and get notifications when users update their libraries or add a review. You can join groups, and a new feature called LibraryThing Local helps you make connections to your community's book-related events. It's like being part of a huge book club.

Goodreads - This is a social site where users can keep track of their books, write reviews, connect with friends, and see what those friends are reading. It's a place for people to spread the love of books; catalog your library online; find friends who are into books so you can discuss literature, get recommendations, and share your interests, an efficient and fun way to further your passion for reading. After you've signed up for your free account, the first step is to begin cataloging what you've read. Log in and start searching for your favorite books. The library database is extensive.

Social Networking Online - A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web-based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant-messaging services. Among the more popular are:

YouTube - video sharing site

LinkedIn - business/professional site

Facebook - social sharing site

MySpace - social sharing site

SlideShare - presentation sharing community

Moodle  is a free and open source e-learning software platform, also known as a course management system, learning management system or virtual learning environment. Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality. Development is undertaken by a globally diffused network of commercial and non-commercial users, streamlined by the Moodle company based in Australia. Hilton CSD Moodle  

Mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs [application programming interface] and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web API that was not originally provided by either source.  

Message Boards, Forums, Blogs, IM [Instant Messaging], RSS Feeds, Tweets, Wiki:

Internet Forum, or Message Board, is an online discussion site. It is the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web application managing user-generated content.

TEXTING IM [Instant Messaging] is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet.

Blog is a contraction of the term weblog, is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.  Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online dairies. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art - artlog, photographs -photolog, sketches - sketchlog, videos - vlog, music  - MP3 blog and audio - podcasting.  Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. Blog search engine: Technorati

RSS most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication," is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel" includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. 

Twitter/Tweets  is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. 

Wiki - A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.  Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and knowledge-management systems and knowledge management systems. The term 'Wiki' is an Hawaiian word for 'fast.'  Some of the current Wiki engines are: MediaWiki , TikiWiki and DokuWiki