Internet Safety – The Course

Last week I ‘attended’ an online course on internet safety for parents (previously mentioned here), which was set up by the Scout Association, but run by Microsoft.

Ok, so I’ll get my grumbles out of the way first. It was held at either 13.30 or 17.00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, which is not really the best time to have these sort of things because of people being at work – I was 5 minutes late! The other thing was that when it came to view the videos, for me, they didn’t work (this was quite common apparently). However, the videos, along with the presentation, were available to download afterwards. And that’s it, nothing else to grumble about!

Now I like to think that I’m quite savvy about all thing internet and computer related (I have to be, it’s my job!), but going through the information on this course contained a couple of interesting surprises for me.

First of all while talking about chat rooms, a site called Habbo was motioned. When looking at the site at a glance it looks like a game where you move your character around and interact with the other characters. However it is actually a social networking site and chat room. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing and there are moderators and word filters on the site, but a child could be on the site without their parent actually realising what it is.

Another point was that while it is suggested the family PC is located in a communal area (e.g. the lounge) so usage can be ‘monitored’ (I don’t like to use that word as it implies that the parent is always looking over the child’s shoulder, but you get the idea), there are now so many devices that can access the internet, from the mobile phone (not even using your own home internet connection), to the Xboxes, Wiis, PSPs etc. that they all cannot be monitored.

Finally the acronyms. So LOL, I got (laugh out loud), and some of the other more common ones, but ASL and POMS (or POS)? To my non teenage brain, ASL is Assistant Scout Leader and POS is a term used in the retail industry for Point of Sale (the labels and barkers that tell you of special offers)!

WRONG! ASL = Age Sex Location and POMS = Parents Over My Shoulder.

So there is some interesting stuff there. There are a couple of videos on the presentation that show examples of cyber bullying and the dangers of meeting people who you’ve met on the internet (the 16 year old girl turning out to be a 55 year old man type thing). Having done the course I can now show the same presentation and videos to parents, but I can’t put any of the stuff on here – sorry!

If you are a UK Scout Leader, there will be more of these courses run in the future (see the link on my previous post about this) and I’m sure that similar information is available in other countries, but irrespective of whether you are in the UK or not, it is worth looking into internet safety for the benefit of your Scouts and your own children.

Finally a link to CEOP – The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. This is where you can get advice, help and report inappropriate behaviour and content (in the UK). They also have a version of Internet Explorer 8 available to download with a CEOP button built in or if you already have IE8 you can add the button to your existing IE8.

UPDATE: I’ve just discovered that Microsoft have a page about keeping children safe online and have a parents guide to the available parental controls on MS products. Again a few bits are UK specific, but the majority is relevant irrespective of which country you are in. View the page here.