What do you get when you combine the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A organization with Microsoft and Parry Aftab?

Answer: You get the best website on Internet Safety for teen age girls, by teen age girls. Now, I was in the Girl Scouts for eleven years and had the opportunity to participate in a lot of great adventures all across the U.S. and I was glad to see that the organization is still doing great things with and for girls across the U.S., and now the organization has embraced cyberspace as well.

The website is called “Let Me Know (LMK), Life Online,” and its mission is simple:

“LMK was created by the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. in partnership with Windows to help you change the world every time you go online. Empower yourself so that you can educate others on the reality of being a teen online and help adults understand the real issues that affect you every day.”

What I really like is that the girls (ages 13 – 17) are the contributing editors to the site and to the newsletter. They talk about such topics as: Privacy, Cyberbullying, Online Sexual Predators, Social Networking, Mobile Devices and more.

At the bottom of each article on the site, girls who belong to the site (membership is free) have a chance to write comments about the article and share their opinions as well.

Parry Aftab contributes on the topics from within the site, too. Who is Parry Aftab, you ask? Parry Aftab is an Internet Privacy and Security Lawyer who works closely with the teen editors on this site to guide them through the “ever-changing maze of online safety.” She’s awesome! So check it out!! Let Me Know (LMK), Life Online.

Internet Safety Presentation

Friday I had the opportunity to give an Internet Safety Presentation at my old stomping grounds. It was great to see my jr/sr. high school students again and to spend time talking with them about how to keep safe online. I know that a lot of them are starting to use sites such as Facebook and Myspace, and I wanted to remind them about what they should and should not post on their sites.

I started by showing them the video on Internet Safety put together by students in Commack posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZHq4CQekTY). We then discussed "what was wrong with this picture," i.e. a ten year old girl having a computer in her room with internet access is just asking for trouble. We then talked about what is considered to be private information.

Next we talked about protecting their reputations online. I showed them a video on that very topic so that they would get a better understanding of how the internet search engines work and how once they post something they can't take it back. A little lesson on think before you post.(http://www.commoncraft.com/protecting-reputations-video)

I then took a look at their Facebook accounts (on the big screen) to show them what I could see, not being on their "friend" list. Some of them were surprised to see that I could see everything (along with millions of others using facebook). I showed them where and how to set their privacy settings and gave them a homework assignment (set your privacy to "friends only").

Our final "food for thought" video was Digital Dosier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79IYZVYIVLA), to show them that even when they are in their mothers' wombs, digital information about them is being collected and stored and it continues throughout the rest of their lives until they die. It is their responsibility to manage what information is made public and to keep their online reputation, well, reputable.