Webinars – Addressing youth risk in a positive and restorative manner

from Nancy Willard of Embracing Digital Youth: Addressing youth risk in a positive and restorative manner

Embracing Digital Youth is proud to announce our first two Webinars. Through these Webinars, Embracing Digital Youth will seek to help educators, mental health professionals, law enforcement, and policy-makers engage in prevention and intervention activities that are grounded in research insight, focus on influencing positive behavior and implementing restorative practices, and encourage effective evaluation.

A 2-page Issue Brief for each Webinar will provide insight and recommendations for practice. The Webinars will be available for later viewing in our archive. Documentation will be provided to support professional development continuing education requirements.

Register online at: http://embracingdigitalyouth.org/webinars (Cost $39)

*Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act: What Schools Must and Should Do* – April 5 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

The Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act added a provision to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring that schools receiving E-Rate funding provide students with instruction in Internet safety, including cyberbullying and social networking safety. School agencies receiving E-rate funding must update their policy so they can certify they are providing Internet safety instruction, beginning with funding year 2012 (July).

This Webinar will provide recommendations on how districts can engage in effective multidisciplinary planning to ensure that the manner in which they will provide Internet safety instruction is grounded in accurate research insight, uses effective approaches to promote positive norms and transmit effective skills, and incorporates evaluation to ensure effectiveness.

Presenters:

  • Mike Donlin, Program Supervisor in The School Safety Center of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Washington State.
  • Lisa Jones, Research Associate Professor of Psychology at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
  • Connie Williams, NBCT, Teacher Librarian, National Board Certified. Petaluma High School, California. Past President of the California School Library Association,
  • Eric Willard, Chief Technology Officer – Community Unit School District 300, Illinois.

*Positive Peer-based Approaches to Address Cyberbullying* – April 26th at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

Schools are struggling to address a new challenge–the hurtful behavior of students when using digital technologies. Addressing this new challenge is difficult because much of this hurtful behavior occurs in digital environments where adults are generally not present. Hurtful interactions frequently occur when students are off-campus, with the damaging impact at school.

How can educators ensure the development of a positive school climate and support positive actions by peers that will be necessary for prevention and early intervention? These three professionals are working on innovative new approaches to enhance these positive peer-based approaches.

Presenters:

  • Patricia Agatston, Ph.D. Licensed Professional Counselor with the Prevention/Intervention Center, a student assistance program in the Cobb County School District, Georgia.
  • Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D. Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use/Embracing Digital Youth.
  • Karen Siris, Ed.D. Professor at Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, Principal at Oceanside Elementary, NY.

>> Registration and more information

 

A decade of decline in online youth victimization

It’s not the headline that’s going to make the national press. Ho hum, young people aren’t perverts or helpless victims. But here’s another slice of non-sensationalistic reality about what parents and teachers SHOULDN’T flip out about…

From the press release – “A new study from the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center finds declines in two kinds of youth Internet sexual encounters of great concern to parents: unwanted sexual solicitations and unwanted exposure to pornography. The researchers suspect that greater public awareness may have been, in part, what has helped.

The study found that the percentage of youth receiving unwanted online sexual requests declined from 13 percent in 2005 to 9 percent in 2010. Youth experiencing unwanted pornography exposure declined from 34 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

On the other hand, youth reports of online harassment increased slightly from 2005, up from 9 percent to 11 percent.

The study, “Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000–2010,” was published today online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. It is based on national surveys of youth ages 10 through 17 conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2010.

“The constant news about Internet dangers may give the impression that all Internet problems have been getting worse for youth but actually that is not the case,” said lead author Lisa Jones, research associate professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. “The online environment may be improving.” Jones pointed out that unwanted sexual solicitations are down over 50 percent since 2000, when attention first was drawn to the problem.

“The arrests, the publicity and the education may have tamped down the sexual soliciting online” said author Kimberly Mitchell, research assistant professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. ”The more effective safety and screening features incorporated into websites and networks may have helped reduce the unwanted encounters with pornography.”

Jones said harassment may not have fallen because attention to that online problem has been more recent. ”Hopefully, the new focus on online harassment will produce some of the same improvements in this problem that we have seen in sexual solicitations,” she said.

The authors cautioned that unwanted sexual solicitations should not be understood as necessarily communications from adult online predators. Previous research has found that while youth do not know the source of all the unwanted sexual solicitations they receive, when they did know, half were believed to come from other youth.”

Download the PDF – Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000–2010

And by the way, thanks to the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center and the Journal of Adolescent Health for making this publicly available.

Sylvia

New – A Parents’ Guide to Facebook

Anne Collier and Larry Magid of Connect Safely.org have released a timely new booklet, A Parents’ Guide to Facebook. This link will take you to a site where you can not only freely download the  PDF booklet, but also an interactive at-a-glance chart with recommendations for how teens should configure their privacy settings with links to the pages on Facebook where they can actually change those settings.

It’s designed to help you understand what Facebook is and how to use it safely. With it, you will be better informed and able to communicate with young Facebook users in your life more effectively. That’s important because 1) if something goes wrong, we want our children to come to us and 2) as the Internet becomes increasingly social and mobile, a parent’s guidance and support are ever more key to young people’s well-being in social media and technology.

If you are a teacher teaching Internet Safety, it’s important to get parents on your side – the side of safe and knowledgeable use. Sharing this kind of information proactively with parents BEFORE a crisis is crucial.

Besides this new Parents’ Guide to Facebook, Connect Safely provides other excellent information about youth, social media, and how to stay safe using (not banning) the Internet in homes and schools.