Weaving a safety net

Schools work to keep students from getting tangled in the Web

By Hilary Anderson
Contributor

The Internet can be a two-edged sword for schools, and those in the archdiocese are no different. They are proud to be technologically advanced with Internet capability and resources. But at the same time, teachers are continually looking for ways to protect young people from the dangers that can lurk in cyberspace.

“There are no easy answers,” said Bill McLean, director of microcomputer resources at St. Laurence High School in Burbank. “It is very difficult to make children understand the dangers of many of the sites they may voluntarily or accidentally enter.”

Gordon Tech’s Joe Terrasi, who is the school’s director of technology and instruction, calls it a cultural challenge.

“Teaching students to exist in an on-line world presents both social and cultural challenges,” he said. “We try to teach our students to understand what’s appropriate and ethical and what’s not.”

The schools without exception maintain firewalls and content filters to prevent students from accessing inappropriate Internet sites. However, they are not the only answers, teachers say.

“The smarter kids can bypass the filters,” said Jim Joachimiec, chief information officer at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. “We prefer educating our students about proper usage and providing good supervision.

Terrasi agrees.

“There is a proliferation of sites that enable anyone technologically savvy to circumvent them,” he said. “We supervise our students, have enforcement procedures in place but what we feel works best is student empowerment.”

Terrasi and his staff use students’ computer ingenuity to help the school, their peers and themselves.

“They can bring their computer energies to bear in a positive way,” Terrasi said. “We have students who are creating software protocols that inhibit others from reaching sites they shouldn’t. Sometimes the students have a better idea of what needs to be done to protect their peers and themselves than do we. Others are helping teachers learn more about the Internet or fixing ‘sick’ computers.”

Schools have a variety of ways in which to deal with situations where a student might override a filter.

St. Patrick High School just installed a fourth server dedicated to Web filtering. Tom Christman, systems administrator, receives a special e-mail should a student try to enter a blocked Web site.

“We first try to educate our students about why a Web site might be harmful to them,” he said. “If it does happen, we deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

John Kasel, principal of Leo High School, refers to those times when students come upon a disgusting Web site as “teachable moments.”

“When our students report one to us, we talk about why it is dehumanizing or inappropriate. We can’t hold their hands forever. They need to learn why a site might be considered bad,” he said.

Most archdiocesan schools start the school year with an introduction session to Internet safety.

“We include case studies that contain comments from young people whose actions on the Internet came back to haunt them,” said Tony Ortiz, associate principal at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School. “We show an excerpt from NBC Dateline special, ‘To Catch a Predator’ and follow the session with a question and answer period. We tell students to be careful when using the Internet, not that it’s evil.”

Not all students believe what they are told.

“We talk with students about how to browse on the Internet,” said Burleigh Angle, computer science teacher and systems support network administrator at Hales Franciscan High School. “We discuss Internet safety, predators, how easily credit card and personal information can be stolen but some students don’t always take it seriously. It’s difficult for some to comprehend.”

St. Benedict High School formally addresses the now popular “blogging” on the Internet.

“We try to demonstrate to students blogging can be used for good purposes,” said Mary Kay Nichols, school principal. “You can connect internationally across the ocean. It’s like the old pen pal system but now the feedback is faster. Blogging also could help in making us life-long learners.”

Teachers and administrators continually remind their students that information put on the Internet becomes part of the public domain.

“We reinforce the fact that once a person puts something on the Internet, consider it to be there forever,” said Catherine Karl, principal at St. Ignatius High School. “You can delete it but someone with enough technical savvy could possibly retrieve personal information such as photos, birth dates, school location or comments made about someone else. Nothing put in cyberspace is private.”

She and her teachers talk with students about the ethics of blogging and holding their actions to high standards.

Grade schools like St. Celestine in Elmwood Park also consider Internet safety a top priority.

“We go as low as third grade and even revert back to using ‘Stranger Danger’ as an analogy,” said Maureen Murphy, technology teacher at St. Celestine. “We talk about how people can steal your identity from you and remind the children never to put their picture or personal information on the Internet.”

St. Celestine, like many archdiocesan schools, believes it’s necessary to educate the parents along with their children.

“Last year we sent home a ‘techie’ newsletter to parents hoping it would help them learn about Internet safety,” she said. “It listed questionable Web sites they might want their children to avoid and acronyms youngsters might use when sending emails or doing Instant Messaging (‘IMing’). “

More formal programs to educate parents about Internet safety, such as one at Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, are also growing in popularity.

“Parents must be aware of how Internet-based our world is today and how well students can navigate it,” said Natalie Formica, parent programs director. “Our program, ‘Who’s Lurking on Your Child’s Desktop,’ is an outgrowth of a program we started for students about Internet safety.”

Formica says the school has a wide spectrum of computer-savvy parents but even those who were more Internet literate were surprised to learn the depth of personal profiles some teens put out in cyberspace.

“I was surprised that some of the parents weren’t aware that colleges and employers search the Internet to help determine the ‘eligibility’ of someone to attend their school or hold a job with their business. Some companies now have a person in their human resources department whose sole purpose is to find anything on the Internet that would disqualify a candidate from a particular job,” she said.

Formica added that the worst thing a parent can do is allow their child to have access to the Internet in their bedroom.

She also advises parents to become familiar with Instant Messaging, which can be a system of inviting new “friends” into their lives.

“It’s growing in popularity and some young people view it as a means of determining their ‘friend-worthiness,’” she said. “Remind your children they should only respond to those they know and block out anyone they don’t know. It could be a predator in disguise.”

Father Mike Winkels, technology director at Fenwick High School in Oak Park suggests parents take a half hour or so and sit down with their youngsters and together view some of the more popular Web sites such as MySpace or Facebook.

“Teach your children to use the Internet responsibly,” he said. “Talk about what you see. Don’t be afraid to discuss why you think a particular site is inappropriate. We can supervise our students only so much. Once they leave school, cyberspace is waiting for them with open arms. Parents need to know what their kids are doing on the Internet and set limits.”