Pandora’s Blog

I don’t understand how this can still be the case today. A new study shows that, basically, teachers are uncomfortable and unprepared to talk to their kids about cyber safety. Furthermore, most districts have no mandates in place that make internet safety courses a part of the curriculum.

Taken from the one-page fact sheet:

The 2008 National Cyberethics, Cybersafety, Cybersecurity Baseline Study was conducted to explore educational awareness policies, initiatives, curriculum, and practices currently taking place in the U.S. public and private K-12 schools. The data was collected from 1,569 public and private U.S. K-12 educators and 94 technology coordinators through an online survey. An additional 219 educators, local and state technology coordinators, and state technology directors participated in focus groups for the study.

Here are some basic findings:

Cyber Crime:
Protecting, identifying and responding identity theft, predators, bullying, etc.

• Less than 5% of educators said that this information is included in the state curriculum
• Only 8% of educators surveyed said that this information in included in the Health/Safety
• Curriculum and just 20% said that Media Specialists provide this information.

Tools:
Installing and updating firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-spam software on a computer.

• Just more than 2% of educators surveyed said that this is included in state curriculum.
• Only 22% percent of those surveyed said that this is covered by Media Specialists.

Behavior:
Teaching students how to protect themselves on social networking sites and chat rooms

• Less than 3% of educators said that their state curriculum includes this information.
• Less than 9% responded that the health/safety curriculum includes this information and only 17% percent indicated that students received this information from Media Specialists.

More than 50% indicated they do not know how any of the above topics are taught.

Technology Standards:
Educators said their school only included cyber security, cyber safety and cyber ethics topics in 8.6% of state curriculum, 12.7% of health/safety curriculum and 9.1% of one-day assemblies (pg. 23).

Teacher Preparedness:

• More than 60% don’t feel comfortable discussing how to detect and minimize computer viruses.
• More than half (52%) don’t understand how to ensure a website is secure.
• 75% don’t feel comfortable discussing cyber-bullying and less than 32% are comfortable giving guidance on how to be safe in an online environment, including social networking and cyber predators.
• Only 22% are comfortable teaching about cyber bullying, identity theft and other types of cyber crime.
• Only 23% percent feel prepared to teach students how to protect their personal information online.

Again, how can this be?

A quote from the press release states:

“Children are integrating technology into their lives at lightning speed. Our schools need to find ways to introduce cyber security education as a fully integrated part of the K-12 curriculum,” said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the NCSA. “We take the time to teach our children how to safely cross the street. Given the amount of time children spend online, the continuously emerging role of the technology in everyday life, and the risks that young people face, we are obligated to ensure that every child learns about safety, security and responsible use of the internet; yet we are not yet to the point of teaching children how to ‘look both ways’ to avoid the ‘accidents’ that can occur online.”

This is dead on right. We need to integrate online safety into school curriculum in some sort of a life skills course. I mean, if kids are spending almost their whole social lives connected to the internet and technology, why aren’t we at the very least giving a basic instruction and reminder every year?

Parents and teachers should also be using monitoring software like PC Pandora to make sure kids are staying safe online. It takes both communication and parental smarts.

You can find the whole study here: 2008 National Cybersafety, Cybersecurity, Cyberethics Baseline Study

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.