Internet Safety Education for School Districts

Class: Internet Safety Seminars for parents of school-aged children
Format: Lecture/Interactive, plus live demonstrations
Duration: 90 minutes
Cost: FREE
Location: Your school
Instructor: David Yarnall, CEO, IT Acceleration
Enroll: Signup your school and call 610.995.9160
Presentation: click here to open presentation as a pdf

Parents will gain insights to better monitor their child's Internet activities, such as blocking pornography, hate literature, bomb formulas, and anything else that is considered inappropriate for themselves and their family members.

Why Attend?

Technology continues to explode and rapidly change. Consider that most parents today already graduated school by the time computer education was available. Consider as well that the children of these same parents entered school when computer labs were commonplace and these students have grown up in a technological environment. Lastly, consider that the gap in technical knowledge that separates these parents from their children is vast and continues to cause problems across the nation, both legally and psychologically.

Internet safety education provided to parents from the law enforcement community typically focuses on children chatting online with unknown persons and risking assault or abduction. The risk of downloading content that is illegal or too graphic for an adolescent to absorb and process is not advertised as effectively. However, the affects can be far reaching.

Recently, IT Acceleration assisted the defense team representing a 14 year-old who was charged with 10 counts of possession and distribution of child pornography* as a result of using a peer-to-peer application to initially download music. Pornography files were included in the listing of files available for download during music searches. Ultimately, of the 500+ files downloaded with this peer-to-peer application, 21 were identified by law enforcement as child pornography. There was no evidence to show that this child searched for child pornography specifically. Aside from the distress the family has endured over the past two years, the financial impact is in excess of $25,000 to defend their child. This could have been prevented if basic Internet safety guidelines were followed and a web content application was installed and maintained on the computer.

The basic requirement to prevent this problem from happening to others is parental Internet safety education. Aside from the basic safety guidelines such as not allowing computers to be located in a child's bedroom or basement, away from parent's eyes, the concept of filtering content is foreign to most non-technical parents.

Consider that when a family orders cable television, a conscience decision and additional payment is required to subscribe to adult content offered by HBO, Cinemax, Playboy and Pay Per View. Consider that when high-speed Internet access is order by the same family, all content available from the Web is immediately available. This same family must now implement ways to limit the content from entering the home - a clear contradiction in how the two services are offered to consumers.

In an effort to Give Back to the Community, IT Acceleration has prepared a 90 minute seminar for parents on technology safety covering issues from Internet risks to cell phone use. This seminar will provide all attendees the knowledge of the risks and how to prevent the risks at home. Covered in the seminar are instructions on how to install and maintain some of the latest web content filtering applications.

* The charge is a third degree felony. If convicted, the sentence would entail that the 14 year old be (1) labeled a sexual threat; (2) mandated to attend psycho-sexual therapy; and (3) restricted from computer use to only when school is in session and only under the supervision of an adult.