How to Choose a Safe Social Network for Your Kids

Your children can meet new online friends, have fun and learn a great deal from taking part in online Social Learning Networks. These are a new breed of social networks, restricted to real children and dedicated to helping their learning.

You need to know just 4 things to help your children get the very best from this exciting new educational development:

1. What can my children do in Social Learning Networks?
2. What can my children learn?
3. How can I help to keep my children safe?
4. Where can I find a safe Social Learning Network?

Children can have fun sharing their interests and at the same time they learn all sorts of things. They learn personal skills that will help them now and in the adult lives and mostly they learn by doing. Here are the kinds of things they can do:

• Email friends – They can email their online friends and learn how to express themselves, carry on a conversation and build a relationship. They might also learn how to format their text and send email attachments.
• Home pages – They can build their own home pages about their interests – music, books, fashion, sport, TV, films, pets or school subjects. They try to write interesting stuff that other children will want to read. They learn how to use html codes, create and upload images, sounds and videos.
• Creative Writing – They could write articles and submit them to the editors for inclusion in the community magazines or clubs. They can even run their own online clubs, groups or online magazines on something that interests them and get other children to send them articles.
• Discussions – Take part in discussion forums on fun and important stuff, like daily news forums on what’s happening in the world, or perhaps a media forum about the latest books and films, or an animals forum about threatened wildlife.
• Competitions – They can enter competitions like Home Page of the Week or the Best Animal Photo competition.
• Awards – They can do online courses like How to Be Safe Online or How to use Multimedia on your Home Page and they can win awards to celebrate their achievements.

The most important thing children need to learn in any online community is how to be safe and in good Social Learning Networks this is a strong focus.

• How to be safe online – They learn how to look after their passwords, what they should or shouldn’t say in emails, what personal information it’s safe to give out and what to hold back.
• How to behave – They learn how to behave respectfully online, for example: no swearing, no bulling and no sex talk. Good online communities like good schools or clubs, create a friendly atmosphere and a positive, mutually respectful ethos and they have mediators who look after the children and make sure they all behave.
• How to understand others – Children make friends and work with others from all religious, cultural and economic backgrounds and every one is equal online!
• How to communicate – Communication is a really important skill for adult life and children learn how to communicate in different ways – in emails, in forums and on their home pages. They learn to communicate with different audiences of people.
• How to do – Children learn best by doing and in online communities they learn a host of useful IT skills like creating images, formatting text, using html codes on their home pages and a whole lot more.
• Every subject under the sun – In the forums, magazines and clubs children can learn about every school subject as well as making sense of what’s happening in the everyday world.

In a good Social Learning Network your children will be safe, but you need to help them select a safe network. Before they join, you can ask a few important questions:

Who runs this community? Make sure the organization running the community is one you can trust and has a good reputation for child safety. Ask these questions:

• Do they publish their telephone number and address?
• Do they have a good track record of running online learning communities?
• Do they have any awards for child safety?
• Are they endorsed by people you trust – the government, child safety organizations
• Are they approved by your child’s school or other parents?

How are members validated? If just anyone can join a children’s community, then unauthorized adults could join and try to harm your children. So there must be a validation system to make sure applicants are real children of the right age. If pupils join through school the teacher can confirm they are genuine. If children join from home they should have their parents permission and the parent should be asked for full contact information that should be checked by the community organizers to make sure it’s reliable.

How is communication monitored? – All communications between all members of the community should be automatically scanned to stop people using bad language and to alert the mediator to anyone trying to insult, bully or find out personal information that could make a child vulnerable. Every word of every message should be recorded and saved so the mediators can check back on anything suspicious.

How are members looked after? – There should be trained human mediators online during the times when the children can communicate live - to keep them safe, to make sure they are behaving well and to help them with any questions. Make sure there is an emergency button your children can click if they see anything that worries them – it should send an urgent alert so the mediators pay attention to your child straight away.

How are parents and teachers informed? – The mediators should be able to contact teachers or parents if they have any concerns about a member, so make sure they ask for full contact details. Make sure there is a telephone helpline number and an email address you can contact if you have any worries.

After your children join – here are a few things you can do to keep them safe.

• Be on call - Make sure your contact details, like email address or phone number, are up to date so the mediators can call you if there is a problem.
• Be on hand - Encourage your children to use the computer in a room where you can keep an eye on them to make sure they are behaving well, keeping safe and they can turn to you for help.
• Be on guard - Don’t let other family members use your children’s passwords, because if they do anything outside the community rules – your child could be kicked out. So make sure others respect your children’s privacy, encourage your children to keep passwords safe (not lying around on a scrap of paper) and make sure they “log out” every time they leave the computer.
• Get help - If you have any worries – call the community helpline or email the mediators.

Check out the two safe Social Learning Networks below, created for children by Intuitive Media, a UK organization, which provides children’s online learning community for government and has a sound track record for child safely and a dozen awards for their work for children.