Programs - Cyber-Dangers

Cyber-Smarts for the Already Gifted and Talented: For Faculty and Staff by Katie Koestner

Do your faculty members know what a Hotornot rating is and how it can affect a student’s self-esteem?  Have any of your staff members received MySpace messages from students?  Do they understand the consequences of video phone technology in the academic setting?  Do they know how X-Box live outings might affect students’ interpersonal and language skills?  Do they know the purpose of BitTorrent Programs?  Do they know how predators use MySpace, Facebook, and Wii to locate their next targets?

"Cyber-Smarts" effectively bridges the gap between adults and today’s cyber-generation caused by the explosive growth of the Internet, video games, and other popular technologies.  These technologies have revolutionized youth social scenes in ways we are only beginning to understand and unfortunately many of us have been left behind, completely unaware of the risks offered by these technologies. 

Part 1:  The Overview

This interactive program begins with a tour of popular websites and other technologies frequented by adolescents and highlights insights into youth online behavior.  Our program’s content is a compilation of research on the incidence of various technology related experiences of today’s teens, work with over 500 schools, insider-information directly from teenagers as well as partnerships with technology-focused institutions and the FBI.  The program covers everything form deciphering secret IM chat codes to understanding the techniques of online pornographers to the avocation of online gaming. 

Part 2:  Case Studies

Next, the program gets participants involved in case studies exploring the gray areas and intersections between teaching and technology.  Each case is drawn from the presenter’s experiences with schools as well as current news stories and legal cases.  Faculty and staff will help to negotiate clearer boundaries for themselves and their community in setting expectations for the use of various technologies with students and peers.

Some of the topics we cover include:

• Acceptable Use Policy potential issues
• Intellectual property issues
• E-mail correspondence and privacy
• Chat – IM
• Blogs
• Use of .com sites and commercial enterprises online by faculty
• MySpace – Facebook – to use or not use?
• Profiling future employees and students
• Plagiarism
• Music downloads and file sharing-P2P
• Copyright violations
• Video technology
• Cell phones incl. iPods and iPhone
• Filtering
• Personally owned devices on campus and in use on school property
• Jurisdiction – school events
• Pictures/photos on school’s website
• Third party use of school's logo
• Portal technology: for students, parents, and staff
• Virus protection, anti spyware
• Identity theft
• Free speech – rate my teacher/coach websites
• Pranks and practical jokes
• Intersection of other policies, i.e. bullying, harassment, and sexual exploitation
• Physically tampering with hardware, computer settings, etc.
• Vtunnel and how students get around firewalls
• Gaming and downloads – using up bandwidth
• Discrimination - Hate sites (White Power group on Hot or Not website)
• And more!!

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