Ok parents! I want to take a second to ask you to help spread the word. As a digital literacy and media literacy advocate and speaker, I can tell you first hand that there are a lot of traps out there for children on the social media landscape, but if you’re on this computer even half the amount of time as some of us who do this for a living then I’m sure you know as well. In recent months the social media landscape has been in bloom opening up new sites and Facebook alternatives for our children. One such site is YourSphere.com, a great site for children which is lead by an awesome mom, Mary Kay Hoal, who also has a section of the site where speaks on and informs parents about the gotchas out there on the landscape. Coming up is the part that some may tune out, but this post is about getting the word out, not politics, so please stick with us…. Recently, with Michelle Obama in the news for saying that Facebook IS NOT for children, Bill O’Reilly spent some time speaking on this on his show but we need to do our part to make sure that more time is spent talking about this and that the alternatives to Facebook are brought to the fore so that parents will know that they exist. I can tell you first hand from having spoken at schools and PTA meetings that there are more parents who don’t know about many of the wonderful places for children online than those that do so I’m asking you to do two things:
1. Email the O’Reilly Factor at [email protected]
2. Please include your name and the town you live in otherwise it won’t count.
There is nothing in this for the Dads Talking crew beyond helping spread the word about an awesome site for children, and ultimately helping to expose more parents throughout this country to an exceptional alternative to allowing their young children to go on Facebook. Thank you for reading this and giving us your time… stepping off the soapbox now. 😉
I see in the photo you have at the top of this page there is something about the website Topix. I know parents are concerned about Facebook with good reason, but I have got to tell you that Topix site is ten times worse. Fathers need to know about it and the media needs to do as well. I am a father and I have never seen a more destructive site.
Ask whether a site has TRUSTe certification of child privacy. That’s a sure sign that the site has committed resources to keeping info about children, particularly those under age 13, out of their site. No posting of last names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. See http://www.truste.com to look for companies that walk the walk for children.
The largest K12 education network, ePals, has TRUSTe certification and also robust ways to enable social learning, while keeping kids safe. For example, role-based computing in combination with adult monitoring (parents or teachers) and filters for problem words add a whole lot that help to keep kids safe.
Look for products designed for children, designed for use in schools, with attention to things that matter to parents, teachers and to kids too.
ePals has Student Forums where students can post questions and answer those of others…but with monitoring from ePals staff, so no personal info or non-age appropriate content is posted. Great way for your children to see how children from other places around the world react to questions from the fun to the serious.
Many of the powerful collaboration features of ePals products are available for free. ePals designed the most powerful social learning platform that exists in the world today, called LearningSpace. http://learningspace.epals.com (not free)
The International Baccalaureate licensed it to use with IB schools in 140 countries, to increase the online educational contact between students and teachers without trying to overcome the immense problems of mass market sites NOT designed for education. http://ibo.epals.com (free for IB MYP and DP programs and all IB teachers)
Thank you Rita for your awesome addition to this conversation! Great information and great sites which comply with COPPA. We have to rely on sites who comply because there’s so much new technology that govt. enforcement of COPPA is almost non-existant.
Excellent write-up