by Larry Magid

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children helps protect kids from abduction and exploitation

I’ve been a board member at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for several years and I’ve heard a lot of horrible stories about children who have been abducted or abused. Every story is tragic but the ones that turn my stomach the most are cases where trusted adults — be they teachers, clergy or even parents — abuse the very children they are supposed to be nurturing and protecting.  That was certainly the case when Penn State University assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse against boys over a period of years. In addition to his duties at Penn State, Sandusky ran a summer football camp for youth.

Unfortunately, acts of child sexual exploitation are all to familiar to the staff of the NCMEC, a Congressionally authorized non-profit organization that works with law enforcement, families and other professionals on issues related to missing and sexually exploited children.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  With better education, increased law enforcement and greater awareness its possible to better protect children in sporting programs, youth-serving organizations and everywhere else.

On March 19th and 20th, NCMEC is sponsoring a conference called Safe to Compete: Protecting Child Athletes from Sexual Abuse, where it will convene more than 50 youth-serving organizations, including the YMCA, Special Olympics, USA Swimming, USA Gymnastics,  and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to talk about the issue of preventing abuse of children in sports programs.

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CEO John Ryan

In an interview (scroll down to listen to the podcast) NCMEC CEO John Ryan said “one of the deliverables of the summit will be to bring these leading national youth organizations to the Center and develop what we are calling sound practices so that parents can ask the right questions and that they can be assured that these organizations have the appropriate policies in place.” And when it comes to good practices, size doesn’t necessarily matter. “Some large organizations are not doing enough, some small organizations despite limited resources are doing more than one should expect. ”  He said that “there is no uniform code of behavior for youth serving organizations.”

Speakers at the conference will include Dr. Sharon W. Cooper, Developmental and Forensic Pediatrics, P.A., Sheldon Kennedy, Former NHL player and survivor of sexual abuse, Cal Ripken, Jr., founder of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation and MLB Hall of Fame Inductee and John Walsh, NCMEC co-founder and host of “America’s Most Wanted.’

Click below to listen to or read my full interview with John Ryan, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Listen to podcast

Transcript of interview

By Larry Magid

March 12th is World Day Against Cyber Censorship (source: Reporters Without Borders)

Reporters Without Borders has declared Tuesday, March 12th as World Day Against Cyber-Censorship in support of an “Internet without restrictions and accessible to all.”

The last time I checked, the word “all” applied to everyone — people of all ages. And the same is true for the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which makes no mention of age.

Yet, we live in a world where young people — especially those under 18 — are regularly denied access to unfettered access to speak or seek information on the Internet.

I’m not arguing that there should be no parental supervision. There are young people – especially very young children — who need to be protected from inappropriate content such as pornography but that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to ban young people from social media (as it is in many schools, even during free time) nor install software on the computers of teens that would block or monitor their activity.

Of course there are exceptions. Some young people exhibit high-risk behavior that justifies imposing restrictions or monitoring. But that’s true for some adults as well. In the U.S. and other countries there are procedures where people of any age can be denied some of their liberties after having been convicted of a crime or having been found to be mentally incompetent but, the assumption — at least in enlightened societies — is that people are able to make their own decisions and are given free access to speak and consume information unless a judge makes an exception after due process.

In the mean time, it’s worth reviewing Reporters Without Borders’ Enemies of the Internet list to learn how some countries — like Bahrain, Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea have  imposed strong restrictions on citizen’s use of Internet technology and how others — including Australia Egypt, France, Russia and South Korea are “under surveillance  by the group for less stringent restrictions that nevertheless potentially restrict free access.

But when it comes to children, there are restrctions in every country – including the United States and Western Europe including those countries that have signed the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, that specifies (in aricle 13) that “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice. It does go on to say that “the exercise of this right may be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary” which — as I read it — means that most kids should be given free access to information unless there are well thought out and well documented reasons to make an exception.

More:

Digital Citizenship Includes Rights as Well as Responsibilities (Larry Magid, Huffington Post)

Digital citizenship in process: Notes from the Baku IGF (Anne Collier, NetFamilyNews)

What’s Your Story video contest asks” What does the good side of the Internet look like?”

For the fourth year in a row, security company Trend Micro is sponsoring the “What’s Your Story” competition designed to encourage young people from the United States and Canada to submit videos that answer the question: “What does the good side of the Internet look like?” Videos should be short (between 30 seconds and two minutes) and can be produced using virtually any type of equipment, including cell phone cameras.

Contestants are encouraged to “tell us the good stuff you (and others) are doing … whether it’s connecting in kind ways, staying safe, keeping good reputations, doing cool things, being smart about cell phone cameras, or making a difference — for just one person or many.”

There are two grand prizes and four runners-up. One individual filmmaker and one school or classroom that collaborates on a video each win $10,000. Two runner up individuals get $1,000 each and two schools get $1,000 each.

The contest is funded by security company Trend Micro (which helps support ConnectSafely.org, the nonprofit Internet Safety organization where I serve as co-director) and is co-sponsored by several companies and organizations, including Meetme, Tumblr, Family Online Safety Institute, 3BL Media and the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Judges select from a group of finalists and finalists are determined, in part, by ratings from the public based on online viewing before the judges’ meeting.

Lynette Owens – director of Trend Micro’s Internet Safety & Kids program

“It’s designed this way to encourage peer to peer messaging and it’s important these messages resonate with other young people,” said Lynette Owens, who coordinates the project for Trend Micro. Contestants are encouraged to promote, embed and link to their entries using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google (GOOG)+ other media “to showcase a positive use of social media,” said Owens.

Having judged previous contests, I can tell you that originality and creativity are more important than production values, though that counts, too. Material must be original and all elements — including background music — must respect others’ intellectual property rights and shouldn’t include any inaccurate information. We’ve disqualified some entries for quoting statistics that came from unreliable sources.

Entries, which must be submitted by April 16th, will be posted to the Web and can be viewed and ranked by the public until April 30th.  A summary of the contest rule are here.

This post is adapted from a column that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

Sony’s Gaikai CEO David Perry (screen grab from Sony webcast)

As I watched Sony unveil the PlayStation 4 at a press conference on February 20th, I was struck by how much data the new device would be collecting from its users.

“We’re changing the rule when it comes to social gaming,” said David Perry, the CEO of Gaikai, a cloud-based gaming company that Sony acquired last year. “What we’re creating,” said Perry, “is the fastest, most powerful network for gaming in the world.  The PlayStation network will get to know you (emphasis added) by understanding your personal preferences and the preferences of your community and turns this knowledge into useful information that will help to enhance the future game play so like when your friends purchase a new game you’ll know immediately so you can join into the action.” Perry also announced that Sony is adding connectivity to Facebook to further enhance what they know about players and their friends.

Another Sony executive, lead system architect Mark Cerny,  pointed out that the company plans to preload games to your console based on what they know about your preferences: “If we know enough about you to predict your next purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before you even click that button,” he said. As doddleNEWS blogger James DeRuvo commented, “That’s kinda cool, but also kinda creepy.”

Sony is also enhancing what it calls the “spectator” experience in enabling people to share their game playing so that others can watch. “Your friends can actually look over your shoulder virtually and interact with you while you’re playing; and if you allow them, your friends can also post comments to your screen; you can solicit support from them, or you can just trash-talk with them,” Perry added.  The new Playstation will also enable users to capture video (as well as still shots) from the game experience and share that with others on the network.

In a post on Livescience, Sean Captain points out the irony that two of the games featured at the PS4 debut actually focused on surveillance. He reminded me that Suckerpunch’s game inFAMOUS: Second Son was all about state surveillance and quoted game developer Nate Fox’s introduction of the game: “Right now, there are 4.2 million security cameras distributed all around Great Britain. That’s one camera for every 14 citizens.” Like Great Britain, wrote Captain, “the PS4 will also have a vast network of cameras — not one for every 14 citizens, but one for every console owner.”

The new Playstation will have a stereo camera that can track movements of the company’s controller. Another game, Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs “follows a vigilante character with access to all that information. As he walks through Chicago, message windows pop up, showing details about the people he passes,” wrote Captain.

Control

It is important to remember that the user does have some control over what is captured and who it is shared with. It’s not yet clear to me how much information will be sent back to Sony’s network, but Sony has made it clear that users will have control over what they share.  But it wasn’t long ago that Sony’s Online Entertainment and PlayStation Networks were hacked, potentially compromising information from 93,000 accounts.

As I pointed out in a recent post, online privacy and security is a shared responsibility and that we’re vulnerable to what networks do by mistake or a result of a hack, what they deliberately do to monetize our data and how we sometimes jeopardize our own privacy and security by what we share.  Gaming is no exception. Whether it’s the PlayStation 4 or connected use of the Xbox, the Wii or mobile and online games, we need to be careful and parents need to educate their children about privacy, safety and security.  Strong passwords, knowing who you’re interacting with and being discreet about what you do and say are paramount in the world of interactive gaming.

by Larry Magid
This article first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

Can technology disrupt education?

Most classrooms have come a long way since this picture was taken. Or have they?  (Flickr Creative Commons License)

by Larry Magid

Sometimes I think there should be a big sign in front of some schools saying “Welcome back to the 20th century.”

True, virtually all schools have computers these days and many are equipped with smart boards and broadband access. But in too many classrooms the basic method of instruction is much the same as it was when I was in school — a teacher, aided by books and now electronic media, imparts knowledge to the students, who regurgitate that information back in the form of tests. And a series of standardized tests are used to measure the school’s performance and help determine the students’ chances of getting into a good college or finding a job.

But just as online news, music and video helped revolutionize the media industry, we are starting to see significant changes in education.

One of my favorite disrupters is Khan Academy, a Mountain View-based nonprofit organization founded in 2008 by Salmon Khan. The site provides free self-paced lessons on a wide variety of topics, often in the form of a “chalk-talk” narrated by Khan or one of his colleagues. In addition to all the typical K-12 and college topics, there are educational videos, including “American Civics,” where you can learn about the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and “Obamacare.” It’s worth a look even if you’re not in school.

It’s also increasingly common for teachers to create their own videos that students can watch at home, freeing up classroom time for students to interact with the teacher and each other. Stacy Olson, a 5th grade teacher at Ross School in Ross uses a technique called the “flipped classroom,” where instead of teachers introducing new material in class and assigning homework to reinforce the lessons, the classroom is inverted so that students use online video and other resources to learn at home — at their own pace — and use classroom time for teachers and peers to reinforce the lessons.

Screenshot from Educreations — an iPhone app that lets teachers & students create video lessons

Olson uses Educreations Interactive Whiteboard, a free iPad app to record herself giving math lessons for her students. The app lets you record your voice as you draw on the screen, enter text or import photos from the iPad, the iPad’s camera or the Web. It lets anyone create videos similar to those used by the Khan academy. I tried the app and was impressed at how easy it is to get started.

Olson breaks the kids into groups where they work at their own pace, which she said “helps build 21st century skills of collaboration and problem solving.” Olson’s students also use Educreations to record lessons for their peers. “Sometimes the students’ videos are clearer and more concise then mine,” she confessed. But that’s something to be proud of. Helping students to be creators rather than just consumers is part of what it means to be a great 21st century teacher.

Both Olson and her students post some videos to Edmodo, a social networking site designed to help students and teacher “connect and collaborate.”

We are also seeing an increased use of social media in classrooms. “Web 2.0 as a Force for School Transformation,” a 2010 report from the Consortium for School Networking, highlights the benefits of participatory learning.

The report quotes from vision statement from the Birdville, Texas Independent School district that “All students succeed in a future they create.” Instead of banning services like Facebook and YouTube, the district encourages the use of social media because “social linkages that are used so extensively by kids when they are not in school can be put to extremely productive use as resources for classroom learning.” The report also cites work at Westwood Cyber High School to combat a high rate of student dropouts. The school, which serves “at-risk” students, makes extensive use of social networking to support “the learning community.”

Educational technology is also having an impact on colleges and universities. Last week, GigaOm Pro released its report “Disrupting the university: near-term opportunities in the digital learning market.” The report stressed the importance of “adaptive learning,” which refers to technologies that alter how material is presented based on the student’s performance and learning needs.

I spent the early part of my career as an educational reformer, helping to encourage student initiated learning based on student needs rather than institutional requirements. There’s been some progress but we’ve also seen a lot of pushback lately thanks in part to our nation’s obsession with standardized tests. But I’m starting to regain hope. Technology won’t solve all of the problems of education. But in the hands of creative, talented and caring teachers and learners, it can help.

More

Infographic:  A new method of teaching is turning the traditional classroom on its head

From ‘flipped classrooms’ to flipped households (from my ConnectSafely.org co-director, Anne Collier)

It’s Time for Education to Disrupt Technology (by Larry Magid in Forbes)

Trudy Ludwig is author of several children’s books about bullying including My Secret Bully, Just Kidding, Sorry!, Trouble Talk, Too Perfect, Confessions of a Former Bully, and Better Than You. Her eighth book, The Invisible Boy, will be available in October 2013 (photo Trudyludwig.com)

Author and bullying expert Trudy Ludwig has written an excellent article on “How to Talk to Your Kids about Bullying” that’s posted on the Family Online Safety Institute’s Platform for Good site.

The article helps explain what bullying is and isn’t and reminds parents that “most kids aren’t cruel — offline or online.”

She also talks about how to turn kids mistakes into teachable moments. “Our job as caring parents is to make sure our kids don’t keep repeating those mistakes so they can move forward in positive, healthy ways,” she wrote. “We do this by being good role models ourselves in how we treat those we encounter in life. We also need to hold our children accountable for their hurtful behaviors.”

She also points out the difference between bullying and being rude or mean.

• “When someone says or does something unintentionally hurtful and they do it once, that’s RUDE.
• When someone says or does something intentionally hurtful and they do it once, that’s MEAN.
•  When someone says or does something intentionally hurtful and they keep doing it—even when you tell them to stop or show them that you’re upset—that’s BULLYING.”

Click here to purchase any of Trudy’s books from Amazon.com and here to visit her website.

Powerpoint slide by Larry Magid (photographer unknown)

When it comes to privacy and security, I’m reminded of folks who drive to the airport without their seat belt on and then worry about the plane crashing.

Planes do crash on very rare occasions but not nearly as often as cars. And when driving, there are things you can do to increase your safety, whereas when flying, there’s not much you can do to protect yourself  but we do rely on the airline industry and government regulators to do all they can to protect us.

Likewise, when we’re online, there are things we can control and things we can’t. For example, we can control the passwords we use and what we say in social media. But sometimes we’re victims of other people’s carelessness or malice, such as when a service or a retailer gets hacked or a government employee loses a briefcase containing a laptop with people’s unencrypted personal information.

And then there are those other privacy breaches that result from deliberate policies of service providers and advertising networks to harvest user information for a variety of purposes, ranging from targeting advertising to conducting market research.

Still, there are things that individuals, companies, the tech industry and government can do to increase privacy and security.

We’re not in complete control

When it comes to trying to protect ourselves from companies and agencies being hacked or losing data, we’re pretty much like passengers on a plane. We have to trust that the organizations we’re dealing with are doing all they can but there’s not a lot we can do. Obviously it makes sense to only provide personal information to trusted organizations. But when hacking victims include the likes of Sony Network, Target, Wal-Mart and universities, there isn’t a lot we can do. I was reminded of this several years ago when my son got a letter from UCLA saying that the database containing his admission application had been hacked, and I was reminded again last week when I got an email from Twitter saying it had been hacked and data from 250,000 accounts — including those of journalists like me — may have been compromised. Government played a role in at least informing us of those breaches. California was one of the first states to require companies to disclose data breaches to anyone who might be affected.

Things we can do

While we can’t prevent such attacks, we can protect ourselves to a degree. One precaution is to use strong passwords and make sure we don’t use the same password for each of our accounts. I know that’s hard, but there are ways to make it easier. One option is to use a password safe like RoboForm or Lastpass that will remember and enter passwords for you. They will even generate random passwords that are very hard to crack. Another option is to use the first letter of each word in a phrase that you can remember but others can’t guess, and to include numbers and symbols.

By now you’ve heard plenty of warnings about being careful what you post on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. But based on what I’ve discovered since I started using Facebook’s graph search, a lot of people aren’t heeding those warnings. Graph search, which is being rolled out gradually to Facebook users, enables people to search for information or pictures, including things people post to “public” and things that they make available to “friends” or friends of friends. Friends of friends can be a lot of people, when you consider that the average Facebook user has 245 friends. If each of those friends also has 245 friends, an extended network could easily exceed 6,000 people.And it’s not just regular folks who can access that information — it’s easy pickings for employers, college admissions offices and even law enforcement and government agencies seeking information about you.

Digital footprints

In my searches, I’ve found all sorts of things people might want to reconsider. I’ve also found a few things I posted and long forgot about that I decided to delete or make more private (you can change privacy settings for any post or photo at any time). Facebook’s online privacy setting, which lets you choose the audience for each post, can help but it’s a double-edged sword. Whatever setting you select remains in affect until you change it, which means that if you post something to the “public,” the next item you post will also be public unless you remember to change it.

Still another issue are those marketing related privacy invasions like tracking cookies or online profiles. Some people are bothered by them and others accept them as the price we pay for all these great free services. I recently researched a trip to Argentina and keep seeing ads for trips to that country. It’s a little creepy but at least there’s a chance some of them might be relevant.

Google’s Doubleclick and other ad networks that serve these ads swear that they’re not collecting personal information. But even though I believe there’s not a printed list anywhere with my name and the word Argentina, it’s clear to me that there are servers out there that know something about my recent travel. Whether these ads are fair game continues to be fodder for regulators in the United States and elsewhere. In the mean time, browser makers are developing ways that you can opt out if they really bother you.

Role of government and industry

The tech industry can play a role by creating transparency and simple to use features to allow users to opt-out of anything that makes them uncomfortable, including tracking cookies and profiling. Government can play a role by helping to educate the public, by protecting its own infrastructure and by assuring that companies disclose any potential privacy or security threats and adhere to their stated policies.  It can also set a good example by applying good privacy practices and due process before trying to access citizen’s personal information  While it’s true that over-regulation or dumb laws can stifle innovation and sometimes cause unintended consequences, it’s also true that ignoring the problem or assuming that the marketplace can solve all problems is equally irresponsible.

Privacy risks largely within your control

• Responding to social engineering
• Talking on cell phone in public
• Failing to shred paper documents
• Saying the wrong things on social media
• Posting inappropriate photographs
• Clicking on shortened links
• Donating to a political campaign and having that made public
• Being photographed in compromising situations
• Entering contests
• Failing to log out when accessing service on public computer
• Banking or shopping on unsecured Wi-Fi networks
• Not understanding the disclosures or privacy settings of services and apps
• Failing to password protect phone or computer or encrypt files
• Using weak passwords & same passwords on multiple sites
• Failing to password protect devices

Privacy risks largely out of your control

• Government subpoenas & warrants
• Good companies becoming evil
• Individuals affected by a data breach outside their control
• Insurance companies that know too much
• The lending industry – ever look who’s looking at your credit report?
• Aggregation: Weaving information from different sources to create a profile
• Being spied on when travelling, especially in totalitarian countries
• Publicly available data such as home address and taxes you’re paying
• Privacy Laws and policies that do more harm than good

A new study, Coming and Going On Facebook,  from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 61% of Facebook users have taken a “voluntary break” from the service for several weeks or more, and 20% of the online adults who don’t use Facebook said they did once but quit.

The study also found that 67% of American adults are Facebook users compared to 20% who use Linked-In and 16% that use Twitter.

Reasons

When you look at the reasons, concerns about privacy/security/ads/spam came out pretty low at only 4%.  The biggest reason (21%) was “too busy/didn’t have time for it,” followed by “just wasn’t interested/ Just didn’t  like it” and “Waste of time/ Content was not relevant  which both came in at 10%.   “Too much drama/gossip/negative/conflict” came in at 9%.

Another surprise, at least to me, was that “didn’t like posting all the time /didn’t want to share” came in last at 1%.

Reasons for taking a Facebook break (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project)