A new movement is afoot, writes Dr. Perri Klass in The New York Times, to give bullies and their victims long-deserved attention, of the kind they have received in Europe. Americans are moving past the idea that bullying is a normal part of childhood, and are recognizing it as a long-term risk -- in the case of victims, for suicidal thoughts and depression; for perpetrators, reduced likelihood of finishing school or holding down a job. In its policy statement on preventing youth violence, the American Academy of Pediatrics will include a new section on bullying. This will recommend that schools adopt a prevention model developed by Professor Dan Olweus of Norway, which focuses attention on the largest group of children, bystanders. "Olweus's genius," lead author Dr. Robert Sege said, "is that he manages to turn the school situation around so the other kids realize that the bully is someone who has a problem managing his or her behavior, and the victim is someone they can protect." Through class discussions, parent meetings, and consistent responses to every incident, a school broadcasts that bullying is not tolerated. A pediatrician can be a first line of defense in this process, notifying schools when he detects or is told of bullying by his patients.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html
Friday, June 12, 2009
New recommendations for a problem as old as time itself
What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet?
| What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet? HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- If you like to search for "music lyrics" or "free" things, you are engaging in risky cyber behavior. And "free music downloads" puts 20 percent of Web surfers in harm's way of malicious software, known as "malware." A new research report by U.S.-based antivirus software company McAfee has identified the most dangerous Internet search words that place users on pages with a higher likelihood of cyber attacks. The study examined 2,600 popular keywords on five major search engines -- Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL and Ask -- and analyzed 413,000 Web pages. "Just in the past year, we've seen a pretty dramatic shift in what we call malware," David DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee, told Richard Quest for CNN International's "Quest Means Business." "It went from a hacker in a basement, to organized cybercrime to now, literally, terrorism and other forms of organized geopolitical attacks," he said. Categories that had the highest risk of run-ins with malware: screen savers, free games, work from home, Olympics, videos, celebrities, music and news. Riskiest terms: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire. The study shows how cyber criminals are increasing in sophistication. "We can have massive outages with a hacker in the basement. We saw that recently with the 'Twitter worm,' a 17-year-old in his basement basically perpetrated tens of millions of (computer) outages. Or, we can see an organized attack bringing down infrastructure," DeWalt said. Antivirus software companies lag behind the latest developments by cyber criminals, he said. "We've been way behind, that's true for the entire world, the global infrastructure of the Internet has grown dramatically -- 50 percent of the world's PCs are unprotected," DeWalt said. Despite the increased risk, DeWalt doesn't believe there will be a "cyber Armageddon" causing widespread destruction of computers and Internet infrastructure. "Last week, you saw President Obama in the United States talk about a major cyber-security initiative sponsored by the government, other governments are sponsoring this as well," DeWalt said. "I think we're learning this can happen, and if we get ahead of it, we can prevent it." |
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Monday, June 8, 2009
Woogi World - Teaching kids Internet safety, life values, and fun!
Recently, the iKeepSafe Coalition partnered with Woogi World, an educational virtual world for kids that combines standards-based learning with a format and virtual platform that resonates with today’s children. The program offers K-6 standards-based curricula presented in a Club format for individual subjects: Reading, English Language Learning, Math, Science, Music, Health and Fitness, and Global Citizenship for classroom/summer school/after-school programs. Woogi World is already used in over 57,000 schools with a reach of 6 million students.