Program Teaches Parents How to Keep Kids Safe Online

Parents who want to protect their children from online threats can learn about Internet safety at a series of free workshops across the country this summer.

The Smart Surfing workshops, sponsored by MCI and the National Education Association, offer parents individual training by MCI technicians on how to block their children's access to objectionable sites and the online chat rooms where, in some highly publicized cases, child stalkers met children before kidnapping or assaulting them.

The workshops will "show families who go online how to avoid the bad and be enriched by the good," of the Internet, said Diane Strahan, who runs MCI's community relations effort.

Safety Seminar

At the inaugural seminar in Washington, some of the Internet's luminaries answered parents' questions. "We want to help make the Internet safe and want people to feel comfortable with their children using it as a tool to learn," said MCI vice president Vint Cerf, who is widely considered the father of the Internet for inventing the original TCP/IP Internet protocol.

Goodie bags handed out at the seminar included mouse pads with helpful online tips and free copies of The Internet Kids and Family Yellow Pages by Jean Armour Polly, who reportedly coined the phrase "surfing the Net."

MCI also unveiled its own Internet safety Web site, where parents can go to find Internet handbooks and kids can link to "Homework Helpers" for, as the site describes itself, "emergency info for kids who need quick facts for homework assignments."

"In a way, we are repeating what phone companies did 50 years ago," Cerf said, referring to public relations campaigns to teach people how to dial a phone.

Parental Concerns

Many parents who attended the seminar in Washington clearly were concerned about what their kids will find online. "I've been using AOL for five years, and I am terrified to let my kids go online," said Sandra McColloch, a mother of two children in elementary school.

Some of the panelists suggested parents think of the Internet in the same way as they would a public library: Kids should go to it to do research but not without supervision, and they should be warned never to talk to strangers or give out their names or addresses.

The next seminars will be in Los Angeles (June 13), Chicago (July 18), New York (August 1), and Atlanta (September 12).