Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Safeguarding a Child’s Mobile Device From Pornography
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: January 11, 2012
Many teenagers recently opened a new iPhone, Android or iPodTouch, immediately downloaded textPlus, a popular free texting app, and headed for their bedrooms.
The app is rated 12+, for “infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity.” This may have confused anyone searching recently for certain terms in the Community section, which bristled with chat rooms like “Hothornyandbi” and others bearing a crude phrase for people trolling for sex popularized by the cast of “Jersey Shore.”
The description on one such chat room read: “Anyone that is done (sic) to talk dirty and send nudes are welcomed.”
Perhaps more troubling to a parent is the fact that anyone can join, assuming they tell textPlus they are at least 13 years old when they register. Members can also be contacted privately by anyone, and judging from the posts, such private communications are common.
Of course, parents who are uncomfortable with such content already have their hands full with apps that come installed on most mobile devices, like mobile Web browsers or YouTube, where laughing babies are a few steps away from oral sex tutorials from pornography stars.
For such parents, it takes less than an hour to safeguard a mobile device from most offensive material. This involves changing the device’s settings and replacing the standard browser with a version more suitable for children.
But it also requires some tough decisions, especially with YouTube videos. Apple’s devices are automatically set to filter videos deemed “mature” by Google, which owns YouTube. But if users post a sex-related video, viewers can watch it until someone reports it to Google. At various points last week, a YouTube search using certain terms returned videotaped discussions of sexual techniques and other mature content.
For parents who are uncomfortable letting children browse such content on an Apple device, the first step is to tap the Settings icon.
From there, choose General, then Restrictions. Press Enable Restrictions and enter a password your children won’t guess. Next, under the Allow section, switch Safari to Off. On the same page, you may also wish to disable YouTube.
Next, under the Allowed Content tab, change the settings for Music & Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows and Apps to your preferred level. Set Apps to 12+ or less, to prevent children from installing unfiltered browsers, which are rated 17+.
Remember that even the 12+ setting will allow an app like textPlus. If you tap the Require Password setting and choose Immediately, you will have a chance to review any app before it is loaded.
Ilan Goldman, the chief security officer of textPlus, said the company had not been aware of the sex-trolling chat rooms until I asked about them, and the company was working this week to close such chat rooms.
Mr. Goldman said textPlus also screened the service for nudity and inappropriate content, but this week the limits of that screening process were on display, as chat rooms devoted to sexting teenagers continued to appear.
If your children want a free texting app, try TextFree Voice + on Apple, or Pinger Textfree on Android.
For Apple devices, install the free K9 Web Protection Browser. Unlike many other alternative browsers, K9 is fast and versatile, with pinch-and-zoom, copy-and-paste and bookmarking features.
Channeling my inner 13-year-old, I looked for loopholes in K9 and found nothing. For instance, it stopped me from navigating to Blinkx.com, a video search site that can show pornography when the “safe search” option is switched off.
Owners of Android tablets and phones can set restrictions with a PIN. (In Settings, scroll to the Set PIN feature.)
Next, click on the Content Filtering tab, and change the Android Market settings so that only apps of certain maturity ratings are displayed. Apps that “include suggestive or sexual references” are rated “medium maturity” as characterized by Google. TextPlus, for instance, is rated medium maturity.
While in the Settings section, parents may also consider clicking the Notifications option so they know when any app has been downloaded. Apps for competing browsers, like the Opera Mobile, can be used to circumvent a filtered browser.
Next, hide the browser that was included with the Android device. To do this, drag the browser icon from the home screen to the trash. This moves the icon to the screen reserved for all apps that don’t appear on the home screen.
When you find it, press and hold your finger on the icon until options appear. The last on the list will be Hide.
If you want to offer your child a filtered Web browsing option on Android, try Ranger Pro Safe Browser (free), at least until K9 introduces an Android version in the coming months. Ranger Pro wasn’t as nimble as K9, but an updated version released this week was good at screening pornographic Web sites, and the browsing experience was adequate.
With Android’s YouTube app, users can filter objectionable videos, but in my experience the filter wasn’t completely reliable. I set the filter to Strict, which blocked most of the sexually related videos that had appeared on my Apple devices, but on the home page appeared a video with an unprintable title.
This is still better than what parents face with the Kindle Fire. The device lacks the internal parental controls of other Android devices, and the only browser filtering app I found for the device, Webnanny ($4), was marginally effective in blocking pornography.
Kinley Campbell, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company was working on improved parental controls but she offered no details on timing. Until then, children who play with the device unsupervised may well be playing with the informational equivalent of fire.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Anti-Bullying Information
While bullying is a pervasive problem in many schools, Three Rivers Charter School staff are taking specific steps to improve the school climate and encourage positive interactions designed to reduce or prevent bullying. Schools using a social and emotional learning (SEL) framework can foster an overall climate of inclusion, warmth, and respect, and promote the development of core social and emotional skills among both students and staff. Because bullying prevention is entirely congruent with SEL, it can be embedded in a school’s SEL framework. The aims of this brief are to (a) provide a basic description of a school-wide SEL framework, (b) illustrate the relationship between social and emotional factors and bullying, and (c) explain how an SEL framework can be extended to include bullying prevention.
Read the Guide at: http://www.promoteprevent.org/webfm_send/1298
Thursday, August 25, 2011
ED Secretary Duncan announces plan to override NCLB accountability standards by granting states waivers
THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2011
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced that he is unilaterally overriding the centerpiece accountability provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that requires students to be 100% proficient in math and reading by 2014, reports the New York Times. Duncan stated that he was revising NCLB requirements because of Congress’s failure to act. He stressed that waivers of NCLB’s proficiency requirements would be for states that have adopted their own testing and accountability programs and are making other strides toward better schools.
Melody Barnes, director of President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, who joined Duncan in the announcement, said that all states would be encouraged to apply for waivers from the law’s accountability provisions, but that only states the administration believed were carrying out ambitious school improvement initiatives would get them. “This is not a pass on accountability,” Ms. Barnes said. “There will be a high bar for states seeking flexibility within the law.”
Currently under NCLB, every school is given the equivalent of a pass-fail report card each year, an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve, and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students. Last year, about 38,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools fell short of their test-score targets under NCLB, and Mr. Duncan has predicted that number would rise to 80,000 this year.Although critics have dismissed Duncan’s predictions as exaggerated, a huge number of schools are falling short under NCLB’s school rating system. For example, 89% of Florida’s public schools missed federal testing targets, even though 58% of Florida schools earned an A under the state’s own well-regarded grading system.
Rep. John Kline (R-MN), chairman of the House education committee, has questioned Duncan’s legal authority to override NCLB. Citing provisions of NCLB, Duncan argues the law itself gives the education secretary broad waiver powers. In response, Kline said, “I remain concerned that temporary measures instituted by the department, such as conditional waivers, could undermine” efforts by Congress to rewrite the law.
Kline’s committee has yet to produce any bills rewriting the law’s crucial school accountability and teacher effectiveness provisions. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate education committee, on the other hand, said he understood why Mr. Duncan was pursuing the waiver plan, since “it is undeniable that this Congress faces real challenges reaching bipartisan, bicameral agreement on anything.”
In their joint announcement, Duncan and Barnes said the U.S. Department of Education (ED) would issue guidelines next month inviting states to apply for the waivers. For a waiver to be approved, they said, states would need to show that they were adopting higher standards under which high school students were “college- and career-ready” at graduation, were working to improve teacher effectiveness and evaluation systems based on student test scores and other measures, were overhauling the lowest-performing schools, and were adopting locally designed school accountability systems to replace No Child’s pass-fail system.
Those requirements match the criteria the administration used last year in picking winning states in its two-stage Race to the Top grant competition. Ms. Barnes said states would not be competing against one another with their waiver applications.
Critics of the plan, however, expressed unhappiness with it. ”It sounds like they’re trying to do a backdoor Round 3 of Race to the Top, and that’s astonishing,” said Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. He called Mr. Duncan’s plan “a dramatically broad reading of executive authority.”
Meanwhile, the plan appears likely to gain broad support from state education officials. According to Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, more than a dozen states have already asked the department for changes to their No Child school accountability plans, or are about to do so. He also said, “Many states feel that we need major changes in the law, because it’s identifying such an outlandish number of schools that it’s losing credibility.”
Melody Barnes, director of President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, who joined Duncan in the announcement, said that all states would be encouraged to apply for waivers from the law’s accountability provisions, but that only states the administration believed were carrying out ambitious school improvement initiatives would get them. “This is not a pass on accountability,” Ms. Barnes said. “There will be a high bar for states seeking flexibility within the law.”
Currently under NCLB, every school is given the equivalent of a pass-fail report card each year, an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve, and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students. Last year, about 38,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools fell short of their test-score targets under NCLB, and Mr. Duncan has predicted that number would rise to 80,000 this year.Although critics have dismissed Duncan’s predictions as exaggerated, a huge number of schools are falling short under NCLB’s school rating system. For example, 89% of Florida’s public schools missed federal testing targets, even though 58% of Florida schools earned an A under the state’s own well-regarded grading system.
Rep. John Kline (R-MN), chairman of the House education committee, has questioned Duncan’s legal authority to override NCLB. Citing provisions of NCLB, Duncan argues the law itself gives the education secretary broad waiver powers. In response, Kline said, “I remain concerned that temporary measures instituted by the department, such as conditional waivers, could undermine” efforts by Congress to rewrite the law.
Kline’s committee has yet to produce any bills rewriting the law’s crucial school accountability and teacher effectiveness provisions. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate education committee, on the other hand, said he understood why Mr. Duncan was pursuing the waiver plan, since “it is undeniable that this Congress faces real challenges reaching bipartisan, bicameral agreement on anything.”
In their joint announcement, Duncan and Barnes said the U.S. Department of Education (ED) would issue guidelines next month inviting states to apply for the waivers. For a waiver to be approved, they said, states would need to show that they were adopting higher standards under which high school students were “college- and career-ready” at graduation, were working to improve teacher effectiveness and evaluation systems based on student test scores and other measures, were overhauling the lowest-performing schools, and were adopting locally designed school accountability systems to replace No Child’s pass-fail system.
Those requirements match the criteria the administration used last year in picking winning states in its two-stage Race to the Top grant competition. Ms. Barnes said states would not be competing against one another with their waiver applications.
Critics of the plan, however, expressed unhappiness with it. ”It sounds like they’re trying to do a backdoor Round 3 of Race to the Top, and that’s astonishing,” said Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. He called Mr. Duncan’s plan “a dramatically broad reading of executive authority.”
Meanwhile, the plan appears likely to gain broad support from state education officials. According to Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, more than a dozen states have already asked the department for changes to their No Child school accountability plans, or are about to do so. He also said, “Many states feel that we need major changes in the law, because it’s identifying such an outlandish number of schools that it’s losing credibility.”
Source: New York Times, 8/8/11, By Sam Dillon
Student Immunization Q&A
Question: Do charter school students need to be immunized against pertussis
(whooping cough)?
(whooping cough)?
Answer: Yes. Beginning in the 2011-12 school year, students are required to be
immunized against pertussis, or Tdap. For the 2011-12 school year only, all
students entering 7th through 12th grades will need proof of a Tdap booster shot
before starting school. Three Rivers Charter School DOES provides a Parent opt-out
authorization, which is authorized by the State of California.
immunized against pertussis, or Tdap. For the 2011-12 school year only, all
students entering 7th through 12th grades will need proof of a Tdap booster shot
before starting school. Three Rivers Charter School DOES provides a Parent opt-out
authorization, which is authorized by the State of California.
Due to concerns from schools having difficulty implementing the pertussis
immunization requirement, the Governor recently signed SB 614 (Kehoe), which
provides a 30 day extension after school begins for a local education agency to
verify a student's pertussis immunization, under certain conditions, for the 2011-12
school year only. Beginning July 1, 2012, and beyond, all students entering the
7th grade will need proof of a Tdap booster shot before starting school.
immunization requirement, the Governor recently signed SB 614 (Kehoe), which
provides a 30 day extension after school begins for a local education agency to
verify a student's pertussis immunization, under certain conditions, for the 2011-12
school year only. Beginning July 1, 2012, and beyond, all students entering the
7th grade will need proof of a Tdap booster shot before starting school.
Get more information from the California Department of Education:
www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/pertussis.asp.
www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/pertussis.asp.
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