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Founded in 1974 by Dr.
Kerby T. Alvy,the Center for
the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) has
grown to
be one of the nation's largest and most productive
nonprofit parenting and parenting education
organizations. For more information about our many
programs, activities, products and services, go to our
website,
www.ciccparenting.org, or call (800) 325-
2422.
(If this newsletter has been forwarded to you, and
you would like to be added to our mailing list, please
click "Enter your e-mail address" at the bottom of the
right hand column.)
| i-SAFE |
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i-SAFE Inc. is the worldwide leader in the Internet
safety education. Founded in 1998 and endorsed by
the U.S. Congress, i-SAFE is a non-profit foundation
dedicated to protecting the online experiences of
youth everywhere. i-SAFE incorporates classroom
curriculum with dynamic community outreach to
empower students, teachers, parents, law
enforcement, and concerned adults to make the
Internet a safer place.
It provides a variety of materials and resources for
parents, educators, youth and the community on its
website,
i-SAFE.org.
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| i-SAFE Resources for Parents |
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i-SAFE offers a i-PARENT Toolkit CD on how
best to deal with sexual predators, cyber bullying,
cyber-security and identity theft. In the kit is
information about Internet safety issues, the
National i-PARENT Campaign along with an i-PARENT
Toolbox which shows parents how to:
- Join or create an i-PARENT Board
- Conduct an i-PARENT Program or Training
- Promote Youth Empowerment
The i-PARENT Toolkit CD includes a "Start Here"
training video and topical videos on the
Internet safety issues listed above. The CD
also includes all of the forms and documents you
need to perform a successful parent event, as well as
how to create or join an i-PARENT Board in your local
school district.
To get a free copy of the CD, log in to the i-SAFE website, and submit an
Implementation Plan for an
i-PARENT Program Event. You can also purchase a
copy fro $5 by clicking
here.
Concerned parents can become certified to conduct
Parent Nights to other groups by attending a training
in their community or watching a 45-minute online
video. To find out if a training is scheduled in your
area, go to the i-SAFE Calendar of
Events.
On the I-SAFE website, parents can also get the
current issue (as well as back issues) of i-PARENT Times. This
downloadable publication has a variety of
helpful tips, ideas and information that parents can
utilize to learn about what their children are doing
online.
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| i-SAFE Resources for Educators |
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i-SAFE provides a variety of educational materials
and programs to educators as well as school districts
such as the i-SAFE Professional Development
Program.
The i-SAFE Professional Development Program can be
completed in one of several ways.
An i-SAFE certified trainer can present a four-hour
scripted Power Point presentation. A DVD is also
available which can be presented to a group of
participants.
There is also I-LEARN Online where individuals can
take the training on their own and at their own pace.
The i-SAFE
Store offers a variety of items for
educators such as curriculum guides. Also available
for purchase is a hard copy of the Professional
Development PowerPoint presentation. Each slide
comes with a suggested easy to follow script. The
booklet also includes a summary of the i-SAFE
curriculum, the activity pages used during a training
seminar, and copies of the forms and procedures
needed for teachers to complete classroom
instruction of the i-SAFE curriculum.
Educators can also download the monthly i-EDUCATORTimes
which contain Internet safety information,
tips
and ideas that can be used in the classroom.
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| i-SAFE Resources for Youth |
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Kids and teens can learn about Internet Safety
through I-SAFE’s free I-LEARN Online.
The program is composed of six online video modules,
which address personal safety, cyber-community
issues, cyber-predator identification, cyber-security,
intellectual property and community outreach.
Included as part of the I-LEARN Online Program is the
I-Mentor Training Network. These modules help
empower students to take their knowledge of
Internet safety in the real world to educate friends,
peers, family and community members.
Students are encouraged to hangout, learn about
cyber safety and share their online experiences with
others on the I-SAFE’s X-BLOCK.
The interactive webpage has a chat room, contests
and the "411" where a 58-page student tool kit can
be
downloaded.
There is also I-DRIVE TV where students can
watch video casts made by other students.
Students can also receive i-SAFE’s student news the
Kewl Times.
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| i-SAFE Resources for the Community |
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i-SAFE’s Community Action Teams (CATs) help raise
Internet safety awareness in their community.
Comprised of community leaders and activists, CATS
help increase public and media awareness by:
- Developing student mentors
- Advocating to elected officials.
- Distriubuting information.
- Partnering with schools to implement the iSAFE
curriculum.
- Raising awareness about the need for Internet
safety education.
CATS also organize letter-writing campaigns and
help organize various Internet safety activities and
events in local schools and the community through
such events as a Cyber Safety Week.
In addition, CATS help promote Operation i-SHIELD
through which state and local level law enforcement
agencies join together in a coordinated effort to
educate and empower their communities against
online victimization.
A downloadable brochure on Operation i-SHEILD is
available by clicking here.
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| We'd Like To Hear From You! |
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We'd like to hear your thoughts about this Internet
Safety edition of Effective Parenting.
We would also like to hear your thoughts and
suggestions
about how we can improve Effective Parenting.
And, if you have an idea or topic you would like us to
consider for Effective Parenting, let us know!
Just click
here and share what you would like.
Warmly,
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Internet Dangers to Children and What You Can Do |
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The Internet is an extraordinary tool for
parents to use to learn how to be more effective and
successful in raising children. There are numerous
websites where they can find the latest and best
information on parenting and child development, such
as
BabyCenter.com,
ParentCenter.com., and the
CICC
website.
The Internet is also magnificent for connecting
parents, teachers and students to resources that
can guide their quest for college information and
financial support, for lesson plans to use in their
classrooms, and for assistance in completing
homework assignments, like the more than 1700 such
websites that can be accessed through the CD, The Gateway to Academic
Achievement.
Unfortunately, the Internet is also a place where
children can be seriously endangered and victimized
by sexual predators.
A study by the British NOP Research Group found that
of the four million children aged seven to 17 who surf
the net, 29% percent would freely give out their
home address and 14% would freely give out their
e-mail address if asked.
A Parents' Internet Monitoring
Study (2005) prepared
for Cox Communications, the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz,
determined that nearly three out of 10 parents in
their study didn’t know or were not sure if their
children talk to strangers online.
An even more shocking report by The Crimes Against
Children Research Center, Online Victimization: A Report on the
Nation's
Youth (2000) found that one in
five youth using the Internet receive online sexual
solicitations.
These dangers have recently become more widely
acknowledged as more young people are using the
Internet for social networking and friendship
communication purposes. A good example of this
phenomena is the use of MySpace.com (which now
has over 70 million youthful members) and Facebook.com.
In a recent Time magazine article, A Dad's Encounter with The
Vortex of Facebook, author Michael
Duffy
says, “Facebook.com is both noun and verb, the
unchallenged colossus of adolescent communication
that works like the telephone, the back fence, the
class bulletin board (and, at times, the locker room),
all rolled into one virtual mosh pit. In other towns,
MySpace.com plays the same starring role. In both
cases,
they have legions of parents pulling out their hair.”
The careless use of such websites by naive and
gullible young people has been putting hundreds of
thousands of such children and youth in the direct
lens of sexual predators from every state and
country.
The likelihood of children being groomed for, coerced,
intimidated and seduced by predators is increased
when they use their webcams, digital cameras and
other devices to place sexually explicit images of
themselves on their personal webpages.
These realities, threats and dangers call out for
parental intervention, as well as intervention by
schools, churches, community organizations, and law
enforcement agencies.
Help with intervening to protect all children from
these and other Internet dangers, such as
cyberbullying where resentful classmates and
competitors use the Internet to broadcast lurid and
false information about a peer, is now available
through several Internet Safety projects.
This issue of Effective Parenting will highlight
probably the most comprehensive of such projects,
i-SAFE America. As you will learn, the i-SAFE
organization, whose work is supported by such
federal government agencies as the Department of
Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, provides many concrete actions for
parents, schools and communities to take to protect
children from these hazards, as well as mobilizing
youth themselves in this war against Internet
dangers.
Do share and use these resources to combat
these shocking hazards to millions of children, and to
make the Internet a safer place for all of
us.
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