Orland schools survey cyber dangers
It’s Friday and I’m out the door but I found this little bit and wanted to share… The results clearly show a need for good computer monitoring software like our PC Pandora!!! 
June 18, 2009
Orland schools survey cyber dangers
By Meg Sullivan, The Regional staff reporterAttention parents of Orland School District 135 students: Do you know what your child is doing on the Internet?
Some 25 percent of district parents do not check their children’s MySpace or Facebook profile. That translates to 110 students in the district who have accounts their parents do not know about, according to a recent Student Internet Safety and Technology survey conducted in the media centers of the district’s schools.
Some of these profiles contain full names, addresses, phone numbers, and photographs, which could potentially put children at risk.
The survey was administered by “Survey Monkey” to 3,028 students from fourth to eighth grades in the district and had questions pertaining to Internet use and cyber bullying.
The results of it will help the administration including; Director of Curriculum Dr. Paul Ho well, Assistant Director of Curriculum Dr. Laura Barry, Media Center Director Lisa Weinstein and Community Relations Coordinator Bridget Mc- Guiggan, to know student’s computer habits and better plan next year’s curriculum.
According to the survey, 98 percent of students in the district have a computer at home; meaning only 60 students out of 3,028 do not.
Howell said that most of the software that students will use in the coming years would run on a computer or DVD player. [The survey did not ask if the students have a DVD player in their home].
After analyzing the survey results, school officials are considering having a personal computer in the library with priority use for a particular digital textbook, extended classrooms making creative use of teacher preparation and starting a peer-support system where students share resources with each other.
The survey results also led to other needs such as teacher and parent professional development and community education.
“Practitioners and parents will need opportunities to become familiar with electronic texts and a great deal of under standing before they know how to support their student’s use of these tools,” Howell explained.
Student safety when using the Internet is of concern to district officials, and the survey says it is a valid one.
“There are concerns over uses and abuses which we feel can best be met through the use of training students on what are the standards they need to use when ethically using the Internet. In addition, what are the warning signs, and when they feel safety is being compromised, stop, think, and act,” Howell wrote in survey summary.
Howell said that 61 percent of the students have their own cell phone and 26 percent have Internet access on it.
Sixty-seven percent of the children have their own e-mail addresses and “kids are all over the internet”, Ho well said.
Seventy-two percent of them play games on it, 52 percent use it to do homework, 48 percent check e-mail, 47 percent instant message (converse on-line with another person who is on-line at the same time) and 18 percent use chat rooms.
The survey has produced some unsettling results, such as that in the past year, 12 percent of chat room use by children in the district made them uncomfortable, 9 percent have been made fun of, 8 percent received an e-mail that made them uncomfortable or upset and 17 percent received a text message or instant message made them feel upset or uncomfortable.
Seventeen percent of the students felt “cyber-bullied” on the Internet or by telephone and seven percent of those students didn’t know who was doing it.
Just 2 percent of those being bullied called police, while ten percent told a parent. Fifteen percent just blocked the bully from sending them email.
Seventy-five percent of the students felt that they knew how to be safe on the Internet, but should they be the ones deciding?
