Children, Youth, & Families Consortium

Surfin' the Net

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Internet -- what it is and why it's good for kids and families

How to find information for kids and families on the Internet

How to tell if you have found quality information

How to block "offensive" material on your computer

Lists of directories of wonderful sites for kids and families

Perhaps no single development has received more attention in the 90s than the Internet. This incredible resource is being used by children and families around the globe. But, with the excitement over the Internet comes some anxiety, and many unanswered questions. How can we use this tool to benefit families? How do we find information for families on the Internet? How do we know the material we find on the Internet is current and accurate? How can we protect children from offensive material that is available?

This guide is intended to help families make good choices in using Web resources. It contains an introduction to the Internet, instructions on how to find information on the Web, tips for evaluating what you find, some information on products to block offensive material and a list of just some of the useful, valuable and interesting resources for children and families that are on the Web waiting for you.

The World Wide Web can be a wonderful tool for families. Like television, the Web can bring a wealth of new educational and entertaining resources into our homes, schools and workplaces. Unfortunately, like television, this Web can also bring material that is unwanted, damaging and offensive to families and children. Internet citizens are concerned about the type of content available on the Web. At the same time, they are concerned with protecting free speech online and the issue of government censorship. Fortunately, many sites are choosing to rate themselves and filtering products are available to assist parents and caregivers who cannot monitor children's computer use at all times.

Each of us must learn to use this tool wisely, to critically examine what is coming at us from the computer screen and to make informed choices about what we will see and hear. With television our choices and decisions have been limited to some extent by the number of channels available. With the Web the choices seem to be unlimited. There are millions of Web pages available right now and at least 3000 new pages added every day.

The Internet is a network of computer networks linked at local regional, national and international levels. Individual institutions such as the University of MN are linked regionally, forming regional networks, and these, in turn, are connected to the National Science Foundation network, the backbone of the Internet. And, of course NSF is linked internationally to networks all over the world.

The Internet is not new. It began in 1969 -- nearly 30 years ago --as a project funded by the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation to link computers for defense research. When restrictions on joining the Internet were relaxed in 1990, the use of the Internet by the general public began to mushroom. Today it is a vast web of thousands of networks connecting more than 50 million computer users world wide. It is estimated that by the year 2000, 550 million people will be connected by the Internet.

The Internet has six parts:

1. E-mail or the ability to send letters, notes or messages using your computer to anyone else who is connected to the Internet email system. It is a fast, easy, inexpensive way to communicate with other Internet users around the world. You do not pay long distance charges. When you sign up for Internet access you will be given an address which will be some form of your name with an at sign and then your computer location.

2. Discussion groups or list servs or mailing lists are groups of people who want to send email messages to each other, but do not want to have to type out individual messages. So, they agree that they will be part of a group and send messages to everyone in the group at one time. When you subscribe to a mailing list, you receive messages from the mailing list in your mailbox. When you want to make a comment to a mailing list, you send an email.

Subscribing to a mailing list does not cost money. You simply need to let the moderator of the list know you want to participate. Different mailing lists require different subscription instructions. Usually you send the moderator an email although web-based subscription forms are increasing. Generally you will find subscription instructions in the same place you find a description of a mailing list.

There are thousands of mailing lists on as many topics. For a searchable lists of mailing lists visit Tile.Net. Mailing lists are a good place to go for expert information or advice.

For those of you old enough to remember old fashioned telephone party lines, you can think of discussion groups as the Internet equivalent of a party line.

3. USENET is a collection of newsgroups distributed electronically around the world. This is like a large collection of Internet magazines. There are probably over 17,000 in existepnce. USENET is not an organization and no one person or group is in charge of USENET as a whole. USENET newsgroups can be read at thousands of sites around the world. If your site provides USENET access, then you can subscribe to newsgroups, follow threads of discussion, and posting of messages to the various newsgroups. Please note that "alt" newsgroups can be spontaneously initiated by anyone. Unlike other groups (rec, sci, etc.) which have to go through a democratic process of creation, alt.* groups may or may not be serious arenas of discussion.

4. Chat areas are like discussion groups, but they are interactive. They are open channels which you can log into at any time and join a group of people carrying on a discussion. When you are in a chat area, the "conversation" you see scrolling by on your screen is going on as you see it. If you type a message, in a short time you will see your message on your screen as part of the conversation. This can be a useful tool for groups who need to hold meetings, but have members located in different locations far from one another.

5. Gopher is a big part of the Internet. Gopher technology allows people to burrow through the Internet to find information. It organizes information in hierarchical menus. As you can probably guess, when people started putting things up on the Internet they were a little messy and unorganized. Gopher technology made it possible to organize Internet information into hierarchically based menus of information. For example, back in 1991 when the Consortium first put up its Clearinghouse, it was put up as a Gopher site. To get to it you had to go into the Gopher system, look at a menu that listed all the continents and select North America, then from a menu of countries in North America, select USA, then from a listing of states, select Minnesota, and then from a listing of all the Gopher sites in Minnesota, select the Clearinghouse, from the Clearinghouse menu you could select the resource you wanted to see and bring it up and look at it. Information on the Gopher system was text based. All one font, no pictures, and no color. People soon decided they wanted more "glitz" on the Internet so the sixth part of the Internet -- the World Wide Web was created.

6. The World Wide Web is a huge and rapidly growing part of the Internet. The Web merges the gopher techniques of networked information with hypertext to make an easy to use, but powerful global information system. In the Web, documents are linked to other documents, and you can move from one to another, to another very simply by using your mouse or arrow keys.

Why the Internet is good for kids and families

It's almost impossible today to watch television without encountering Internet advertising. Ads promise that on the Internet now we can go to places we've previously only dreamed about, see things we've never seen and hear things we could never hear before. And, all that's true. The Internet is a wonderful place for children and families, a resource so big and powerful that most of us would not have imagined possible even ten years ago. This resource can bring together people from all around the world in one incredible community where people are known for their thoughts and ideas, and no one can even tell what gender you are, what ethnicity or what income level. People think of computers as something that isolates people, especially children, from other people and limits social interaction, but computers can facilitate all kinds of networking and build relationships with caring adults, other children, mentors, and grandparents.

The Benton Foundation's KickStart Initiative (Connecting America's Communities to the Information Superhighway) has posted a paper on the benefits of the Information Superhighway. Realizing the Benefits explores the Information Superhighway's potential and possibilities to:

Enhance and improve the lives of individuals

• Obtaining job skills for a changing economy
• Gaining New Opportunities for Lifelong Learning
• Improving Job Skills, Career Advancement, Employment Opportunities, and Professional Development
• Improving Participation in the Democratic Process -- now many more people can find out what their elected representatives are doing AND let the representatives know how they feel about it
• Enhancing Cultural and Creative Opportunities
• Improving Access and Communications for Individuals with Disabilities
• Improving and Reducing Costs of Health Care

Families use the Web for:

• Current news
  
  • CBS
  • ABC
  • NBC
• Finding out what to buy and where to buy it
  
  • Yellow Pages
  • Superkids offers unbiased, informative software reviews of educational and edutainment software. With updates every two weeks, this is just what the edutainment shopper needs.
  • FamilyPC allows browsers to read many of the articles and product reviews found in their magazine as well as other articles written specifically for the web.
  • World Village family oriented site offering software reviews, free demos and areas just for parents and teachers.
• Finding people & organizations
• Homework
  • Washington Public Library Youth Services
  • BJ Pinchbecks Homework Helper
  • Weathernet4 Homework Helper
  • WBAY Homework Helper
• Entertainment
  • Castle Infinity cooperative game in which children from around the world work together online to solve problems, complete puzzles, and win the game
  • Headbone Derby children of all ages must search the Web for clues to answer questions and win prizes.
  • National Museum of the American Indian
  • National Wildlife Federation Kids Page
  • Disney
• Communication with each other across the globe
• What else is there -- after the news or the homework assignment, how can we find out more?

The Internet is a collection of interconnected information resources. There is no central indexing. However, there are multiple ways of getting information. It is like a library in that way.

In a library you can find information by looking for a book on the catalog system, or browsing the shelves. Once you have a book, you need to scan it to see if it contains helpful information. You can also look for information in magazines, by flipping through magazines on the shelf or using a periodical guide. Again, you must read the article to see if it contains the information you need.

The same is true with the Internet. There are several places and ways to look for information. However, only by actually looking at the information can you know if it is helpful.

Before you begin

The Internet contains a tremendous amount of information. It is easy to get sidetracked during a search. That is why it is best to focus and limit your search before you begin. Children especially will need help and practice focusing and limiting themselves. So, before you begin:

• determine the time you will spend online
  
• formulate a question(s) to answer
  
• develop a search plan: think of related sites you have visited, think of key words

Tips for Searching Efficiently:

• Make a plan before you start searching. Is the internet the best place to look? If so, think about the best place on the internet before going forward
• Have reasonable expectations
• Ask for help when you get stuck. Most communities have public access sites in libraries, schools or county Extension offices. These sites should have someone available to provide you with assistance. If not, ask your local librarian where you can go for help. There may be a computer store with helpful staff. (If all else fails ask the nearest child.)
• Are you using the best search engine? Try more than one.
• Read the instructions when you use one for the first time, check back periodically, spend a minute to save an hour
• Redo search periodically, new material is frequently added
• Try either more specific or general terms or more or less terms when searching
• When possible, use part of the word and a symbol to get all entries containing those letters. For example, in some systems you can use father* to get all sites using the words fathers, fathering and fatherhood. Use this with care as it can also give you many unwanted sites and it will not automatically give you synonyms like dads.
• Avoid common words: a, an, and, Mr., html
• Peak hours are slower. In the Midwest, late afternoon is usually bad (the East Coast is finishing up their day and California is getting work done so they can go to lunch)
• Try phrases
• Many search engines rank results - the top ones are typically better
• Use synonyms - father, dad, youth adolescents
• Combine words (using and, or & not) to expand or narrow your search - blue jays not baseball, father or dad, St. Paul and MN
• Don't get side tracked. If you find an interesting site that does not answer your question, use the bookmark option on your browser to save the address of the site you are on and go back to your search. Once a site is bookmarked it is saved as part of your bookmark list and will be waiting for you anytime you wish to access it.
• Type most important term first
• Check your spelling, use alternatives. Try using upper/lower case options

Limitations:

* No filtering system
* No bibliographic control (subject heading - not a card catalog)
* Be persistent and creative. It's a big web out there.

Evaluating information is an important skill, especially on the Internet where virtually anyone can become a published author. There are three essential aspects to consider:

• content
  
• authorship
  
• readability
  

Concern over offensive material on the Web surfaces predictably sometime during almost every TV ratings week. A story on pornography on the Web is sure to draw attention. Anyone who frequently uses the Internet realizes that the media frenzy over Internet pornography is generally hype. Unfortunately, it's also true that offensive material is out there. The Web is a glitzy, new medium with millions of users. A very attractive place for posting all kinds of material and marketing all kinds of products. It is all out there and accessible to those who know where to find it.

As a result of these concerns, a new industry is emerging. Software companies are creating and selling products which can filter the material that is sent to your computer. They claim to make the Web a safer place for children. Some of them do help. Most of them have serious limitations which users need to be aware of before installing on their systems. Most of the available products are either so restrictive that users find the material that they are allowed to view is very limited or they are so easily circumvented that they are not effective.

The filters block obscene or pornographic material either by maintaining a list of objectionable Web sites or by scanning the Web for objectionable terms and blocking Web pages which contain those terms. Those that maintain a list may have a way for parents to edit the list -- adding sites they wish to block and deleting sites from the banned list that they may wish to visit. There are a couple of obvious problems with lists of sites. First of all, there are so many new sites being added to the Web every day, the lists need to be updated very often. Secondly, it's time consuming and tedious for parents to review and edit lists to ensure that they are blocking only what should be blocked and are not too restrictive.

Products that block material by scanning for offensive keywords also have some limitations. Currently, most of these products are not sophisticated enough to block only offensive material. They block all sites containing words like sex and breast including all sites containing the words sexually transmitted diseases, sexual harassment, sextons, breast cancer, keeping abreast of new developments -- many of these sites could contain useful, educational material that families need or would like to know. Many Web site producers are also very clever at using words with double meanings that may appear innocuous to an electronic scanner.

Products currently available include:

Cyber Patrol/Net Blocker Plus has strong filtering ability. You can set how long and at what time of day your kids can access the Internet.

Cybersitter identifies words in context, and allows access to worthy sites whose URLs contained suspect terms. Updates to Cybersitter's built-in filtering list are free and easy to handle.

InterGo/KinderGuard a bundle of Net tools for kids, leads children to fun sites. Its KinderGuard Security Screen filters out bad sites while allowing access to useful ones. KinderGuard checks against a list of sites that parents can add to or subtract from as they see fit.

Internet Filter lacks a list of banned sites. Instead, it crosses out "objectionable" words in searches, URLs, and Web pages, regardless of context. Rather than blacklisting specific sites, Internet Filter simply replaces all "inappropriate" terms it encounters with a series of X's. Filter can respond to violations by logging the violation or emailing parents at work.

Internet In A Box for Kids/SurfWatch comes with links to fun places for kids. It also includes SurfWatch, which blocks sites well, but doesn't check the context of objectionable words very accurately. Goes beyond filtering to show kids great places on the Net.

iscreen filter works by giving your child access to approved sites only, an approach that blocks even many benign sites. When setting up iscreen, parents create a user group for the family and set levels of access for individual users based on categories ranging from nudity to violence to advertising.

Net Nanny blocks few sites, but parents who have the time and patience can tinker with the program to strengthen its filtering capabilities. Net Nanny also lets you keep track of where your kids surf.

SurfWatch has above-average filtering capabilities, but it's likely to block sites with useful information. All the blocking has been determined by SurfWatch's board of parents and educators. Parents can turn off all blocking for themselves with a password they select.

What to tell your kids?

Talk to your children about web sites as you would about television programming. Some sites are for children. Some for families. Some for adults only. Explore the Internet with your children. Yahooligans is a good starting place. Talk about good sites and bad sites. Discuss what makes a site good.

Teach them to look at information with a critical eye. Whenever possible, they can cross reference answers, this is often easier and less time consuming with the web than with traditional information resources.

In the information age, children who become smart information consumers at an early age will be best prepared for the future. The evaluative skills you teach them will be invaluable to them in school and later in life.

No software package can be considered a good substitute for adult guidance. Parents and caregivers need to supervise children when they are using computers, in the same way they supervise other activities. Software, the government, standards organizations, the V-chip -- none can replace a parent or caregiver as guide to helping kids make the most of the Internet.

Parents and caregivers can introduce children to the Net in a positive way by telling them where they can find interesting material, places where they can learn and share common interests.

Contract with your children to set appropriate use policies and maintain child safety. Talk with them about what they feel is appropriate. Your contract can include limits on computer time and content, restrictions on the use of credit cards to order products on line. It can also include items that build youth responsibility, let children know how to communicate with strangers, and how to use good manners in computer communication.

Other Web Resources on Keeping Children Safe