I haven't been teaching computers this semester, so I've been slow to post stuff here (sorry!) this lesson isn't so much for the kids but for the parents. E-MAIL! Why let the kids have email? Pros: They practice typing, reading, spelling They become more familiar with computers They might get to talk with far away relatives more often You could get an e-pal for them (much the same as a pen pal) Cons: spam Advertising There are probably more pros and cons I missed but those seem to be the biggest things. This little post will tell you how to get the email pros without spam and with a minimum of ads. Really, there are 3 choices for Child safe email. The first one is a paid subscription to a childsafe email service. These services have really cute email programs. Some even have the addressbook with pictures of the people so kids can find it fast. My only problem with these services it the cost. Some charge per kid, most charge a monthly fee, the quality of service may vary... Here are a couple that I thought their websites/services look good compared to the price, I haven't tried any of them: www.safe2read.com, http://www.zoobuh.com/features/, http://myweb.com, http://surfbuddies.com (reccommended if your kids aren't reading yet), and http://www.kidinnovation.com (the one I'd pick if I just ahd $30) The second one is to use a Kids email client. An email client is a program that allows you to read email. The kids ones are cuter. Some of these restrict who can send kids email and some don't. Some are quite fancy and some very simple. there is one called kidzmail where the kids can use a paint type program to draw their emails, another one that is a voice recorder and emails the recorded messege to only one allowed person, one I saw is simply outlook with diffrent buttons to look more like stuff kids like! These usually cost a one time fee. the average price of those I wsaw was around $30. The third one is my choice to filter a regular free email account to make it safe for kids. The advantage of this is (other than the freeness of it) that kids will be already familiar with real email setups from the beginning and won't have to change email addresses just because they are now older than the age limit some services impose. I chose Gmail (google's email) because it has only text ads and the ads displayed are based on email content.. this means that only people reading inappropriate email will see inappropriate ads. The ads are all also text ads and off to the right side out of the way... Kids may not ever even see them. So if you pick the third option, you still have the spam to get rid of. I have talked to many parents that let their kids on hotmail or yahoo mail or even google with no modifications to it. This can be a real problem, you don;t know what sort of ads they will be exposed to... Viagra, get rich quick schemes, ads for porn sites, ads to tell them how to make their genitals bigger and who knows what else! The ones that tell them they won something always get their attention, and they get suckered into giving out their email so they can have the "prize". This is actually very easy to stop! End ALL spam in kids email box: 1. Get them a Google account. (If you need an invite, tell me I have 96 of them and on the first of the month, it'll go back up to 100) Be sure the email address they choose does NOT have their real first or last name in it. Do NOT check that you want in the directory. 2. It will log you in to the new account right away. Click 'Settings'. (It's in the top right corner) 3. Click 'Filters'. At the bottom of the filters screen is 'Create a new filter', click there too. 4. Here there are 5 fields to fill in, you will leave three of them blank. Don't check the check box. Fill it in like this: From: Has the words: To: yourchildsnewaddy@gmail.com Doesn't have: you@isp.com OR dad@isp.com OR grandma@aol.com Subject: You can add as many emails in "Dosn't have" as you like, just be sure to put OR in all caps just like my example. To make it clear the "dosn't have" box is the email addresses you give permission to email your child. if you don't fill in the box.. the child will never recieve any email at all.. even from you. Click 'next step' 5. Now you have a list of checkboxes. Check 'Skip the inbox', 'Forward it to:' (add YOUR email address), and check 'Delete it' Click 'update filter' and you are done! 6. Test it out. send your child an email from your own account, and one from an account not on the list. The one from an account on the list should get to the child's inbox and the other should land in YOUR inbox (or spambox if it gets caught by your spam blocker). With it in your box, you can decide if the kid should be allowed to see it. If it's their uncle you forgot to add you can foreward it to them and then add him, or if it's spam just delete it. There is a Google search box in the email account. Go to http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe and set it to not include search results with bad language etc. I also reccomend you keep an internet filter on and a "whitelist" filter for when the kids are online. If anyone is interested in that I'll make my next post on internet filters and whitelists.
And several months later I answer the question! Web searches aren't too hard.. Take your question as an example: how to research and look up things first you want to drop out all the "unnecessary" words... "how" "to" "and" so you have: research look up things now if you put that in Google you get the first answer out: obviously that's not what you were looking for so we have to think of alternate words to use. (the teacher in me is formulating grand plans for lessons in thesaurus use and synonyms now!) so you do a bit of brainstorming... It dosn't matter if you're guess is really wrong, no one is grading you, just try again. Many people give up on the first try when it makes no real sense (like above!). Giving up isn't allowed. So let's try: research online ohhh now we have an improvement.. if it's working don't fix it! But we have a slight problem still... these sites are researching a specific subjects. the subject we wanted was research itself.. as in how to do it so let's brainstorm again for a moment and try: tutorial research online Viola! the first result now is: What made me choose "tutorial" instead of some other option? Just practice. I have hunted for how to do something enough times to learn that "tutorial" is a popular keyword that will almost always yeild results. There is no magical keyword list though.. they change periodically. the internet is too dynamic to be able to remember a few keywords and them all stay the same. the only way to get fast at internet surfing for real information is practice, practice, practice. That's where WebQuests come in. A quick web search just for WebQuest will get you tons of them on every topic imaginable! Most of these will be on a specific topic and they get kids to learn the skill of "finding" the relevant information within each website." I like to make my own with search engine skills as the focus (Like the one I posted) because it forces this brainstorming process to go from the whole internet to an exact website based only on a "clue". Both skills are important when teaching kids to research .. the right way.
for creating websites.. there is just too much information on that to post it all here but if you have specific questions feel free to ask. Here are a couple of websites to get you started: http://www.lissaexplains.com/ This one was written especially for kids so it seems rather easy to understand. http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/frontdoor/beginners.html Web monkey is well known over the years to have the best tutorials for websites, but they stopped adding to it a couple of years ago. Wired took over hosting it so that the info is still around for new generations of web designers to learn from. This is where I learned from! When other explainations just confused me.. these guys made it make sense. (Frames are a picnic helped me go form TOTAL confusion to "oh that's easy!") For lessons in making a really nice layout and design for your site.. there's nothing like studying the things that are bad. Paragraph upon paragraph would not get across what one glance at these sites can. Study them for good lessons in what to never try. http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/main.htm what NOT to do... http://www.somethingawful.com/angelgurl/index.htm eek a RL example of what not to do http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ and http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/suckframe.htm (despite it's name and language it is a very good design resource!) if you gotta have it PC try http://www.nonprofittips.com/category/your-web-site/daily-design-discussion/
Syele, my kids have an e-mail account (though the youngest doesn't know it, lol!) Our server allows us up to 6 accounts, so DH set up one for everyone. Rachael is the only one who uses it, for the most part. She gets e-mails from her cousins out of state, for a while she was writing to a gal I met her who was a missionary's kid in China, and she also has a young lady she met while we were on vacation in New Hampshire. This young lady and her family came through last summer, and the girls got to spend time together. It was very nice! We have it set up so she cannot receive or send mail from anyone whose address hasn't been "approved" by my husband (who is the "controller" of the account). This has actually proved a problem, as for a while she couldn't get anything from me!!! Also, recently Brio magazine has been running a contest, and she found it easier to send e-mails through my account, rather than to get it approved to where she can send from hers. She receives no spam. We have a filter on the one machine, but not on "mine". (We're a multi-computer family because Carl's a "computer geek"!) I found that, with it on mine, I couldn't access the sites I wanted to for history. It would not allow me to do a Google Image search, which I constantly use to pull up pictures to put on our timeline.
There is a point where whitelist type filters start to be more of a pain than they are worth. At that point the kids are usually old enough/responsible enough to follow the rule "if I see someing that makes me uncomfortable or I know my parents would disapprove of, I will turn off the monitor and find an adult right away." My step-sister at 13 was allowed a regular email and regular access to the internet and snuck around to form a dating relationship with a way older guy of a diffrent race. Even after beiing forbidden to see him again she snuck around to talk to him online. She hadn't given anyone any reason tobelieve she'd do something like that before she did it. Kids get enticed by strangers online.. it's scary! For the younger kids I think the inconvience of approving myself would be worth it to shield them... but as they get older we have to release some of those restrictions so that they can learn and grow up. The approval system I set up on Google for sami seems easier than what you described though... to subscribe to a magazine.. the mails would just come to me and I'd foreward them to her (makeing it come from my email untill I got around to adding their address to the approed list). There is a program called iprotectyou that I have used.. the filters are not very restricitive for the websites and they seem to keep the bad out most of the time.. plus it has some other nice features... like you could hae with just a password and a min added your fav. website to the list of always ok places. Kids over 12 or so shouldn't be on a whitelist anymore (approved only) unless they are grounded or are untrustworthy... they must learn how to handle the bad of the internet with the good. There will simply be too many things for you to approve all the time for it to even be reasonable. All filters are not created equal.. some are set up ONLY to catch porn... some catch almost anything anyone could ever object to for any reason at all. If you are using one that you have to turn off to go to history sites and you can't just add that site on an approved list... I'd switch filters asap. Part of my feeling so strongly about filters is that I have VERY young children allowed online. THey become technologically literate at very early ages. Sami started being allowed two websites at age 2. 4 year olds will have lots of questions that they aren't ready to understand any answers about if they accidentally run across porn or violance! A thirteen year old on the other hand... may seek these things out out of curiousity about them. With teens you might even advance to just a random screen capture emailed to you when they are online without you... Just to check on them now and then... the object then isn't to read all their correspondance but to check in and make sure they aren't planning to run away with a stranger based on weird storys or who knows what else. the google image search is not allowed because it includes ponographic pictures.. and pictures like that don't have to be titled or named anything special to designate them. every time you do a search there is a risk of some of them showing up. little kids would have issues. You are an adult and could skip over them. teens are somewhere in between. you have to judge what they are and aren't ready for... filters and whitelists are jsut tools to make parenting easier when they are exposed to everyone in the world throught the internet.
I am new here and realize this is well, really old LOL but....I came across some nice printables for teaching younger kids about computers. http://www.velsoft.com/pages/free.html and http://www.velsoft.com/pages/elementary.html ~ami~
