Welcome, students!

MySpace safety for teens Spend much time on MySpace or any of the other social networking sites? Take a look at MySpace Safety for Teens for information about your profile settings, cyberbullying and how to contact MySpace if you have concerns. There are also safety videos for setting up a profile.

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Keeping personal information to yourself

You might have already seen the commercials or ads on what not to say or type while you’re on the Internet, but let’s go over it again. You should never share personal information about yourself or your friends while talking, posting, blogging, or chatting on the Internet, like giving out names, addresses and phone numbers, the name of your school or mascot, or what you like to do after school. Some of these may seem like obvious things to not do, but sometimes they can slip out by accident or when you think you’re talking to friends.

Take a look at some of these sites for some games and activities to see how good you are at keeping your personal information to yourself.

• From MSNBC, how much information is too much information? Take a look at this sample MySpace profile page and see if you can spot the mistakes this student made.
• From CyberSmart!, here is a downloadable PDF activity about private and personal information
• "Tracking Teresa" from NetSmartz, follow the clues that Teresa left while on the Internet.
• More activities about Identity Safety can be found on CTAP's website.

And, always remember: EVERYTHING you type on the Internet is there for EVERYONE to see.

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Dealing with cyberbullies

Unfortunately, bullies can pop up anywhere, even in cyberspace. Bullying can be identified as teasing, taunting, flaming, and other kinds of harrassment - just plain mean stuff.

• Watch the Flash video at StopCyberbulling.org and read the different activities for your age group

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A list of safe search engines

Search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, can be a frustrating place. You type in your search topic, like “civil war” or “underwater creatures of the Arctic Ocean” and get a million results, some good and some useless. Then, there are many results with nothing to do with your topic or they may even be full of wrong information. Thankfully, there are some student friendly search engines where you’ll be sure to get the best webpages for your homework.

• www.askforkids.com - besides being a search engine, there are several study tools you can use here: a dictionary and thesaurus, a world atlas, and a place to look up biographies
• www.tekmom.com
• www.yahooligans.com
• For others, try http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156191
• For more homework helpers, you can ask your teacher or school librarian.
• www.nettrekker.com
• www.worldbookonline.com

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Resources for young children

• Visit “Hector’s World” to play games and watch animated videos to learn about Internet safety. www.hectorsworld.com
• Explore Disney’s Surfs Well Island and play games while learning about keeping safe on the Internet. http://disney.go.com/surfswell/

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