EHHP Operations and Accreditation

Thanks to Bob Perkins on our EHHP faculty, here are some safety measures for young people engaged in social networks, particularly Facebook.

If you have not checked out the blogs and news stories on Common Sense lately, here is a good piece on the continual change of privacy settings on Facebook and at least two important concerns with youth and their settings:

What Parents Need to Know
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/facebook?utm_source=newsletter10.07.10&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feature1 <http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/facebook?utm_source=newsletter10.07.10&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feature1>

This review of Facebook was written by Carla Thornton <http://www.commonsensemedia.org/user/carla-thornton>

Parents need to know that teens must be diligent about setting their privacy controls on Facebook. When Facebook unveils a new feature, users must pay attention to their privacy and account settings to make sure they understand what information they are releasing to others or keeping private. The privacy settings can be confusing. There are settings in applications and other places that also need to be selected. The new applications dashboard allows users to view and change what information applications access, and to remove applications. With Groups, users’ friends can add
them without asking first (users can remove themselves after they’ve been added, but cannot prevent themselves from being added). Anyone who is friends of their friends could be added to a group (in other words, possibly strangers), and wouldhave access to anything anyone—including your kid—has posted in the group. Places is a location-based service that lets kids tell others where they are and find out who else is there. This function is easy to use and teens will want to use it, but we recommend teens do not use location-based services <http://www.commonsensemedia.org/managing-location-sharing-apps-keep-teens-safe>  because of safety and privacy concerns as well as the potential to be targeted by advertisers. Parents need to set ground rules about what is and isn’t appropriate to share before letting kids have an account. They also need to go over the privacy settings one by one with teens — not just once, but regularly.

Another wonderful idea from one of my faves, MakeUseOf: six free online programs to create your own personal chat room. These are options for those of us who want to chat with a group but everyone in the group doesn’t use the same chat program and doesn’t want to sign up for several. Here are several very brief previews to show you what is out there to explore:

TinyChat supports voice, webcam, whiteboard, and desktop sharing.

Chatterous is password protected and you can even chat via SMS on your cell phone, too.

Anologue is a simple, clean chat program without lots of bells and whistles.

BabelWithMe allows you to chat with others who don’t speak your language; chats are converted to your language of choice.

BoostCam is a simple one-on-one video chat room with no sign up requirement.

And, finally, ChatRide is similar to BoostCam with the added feature of chat.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/03/free-33-page-guide-google-for-teachers.html

An author at Freetech4teachers put together this guide (see link above) to using Google search, docs, books, news, and maps in the classroom. The guide consists of 33 pages containing 21 ideas and how to instructions for creating Google Maps placemarks, directions creating and publishing a quiz with Google Docs forms, directions for embedding books into your blog, and visual aids for accessing other Google tools.