Teenangels Training



Teenangels Training

How long does the training take?

The localized Teenangels training is comprised of six meetings, each taking place approximately once a week for approximately three hours. (You could speed it up slightly, but since independent work & group work is expected to take place between meetings, to put the learning into practice, it usually cannot be compressed into fewer than four weeks.) Some additional online sessions will take place among the Teenangels & WiredSafety volunteers, once the training is almost complete off-line. These will include role-playing with WiredSafety volunteers posing as online cybercrime victims & a class helping them to understand the person on the other side of an online communication.

What kinds of things do they learn?

The whole concept of Teenangels is to enable the teens to learn things completely & prioritize certain issues they believe have the greatest impact. The program is loosely structured to allow them to develop their own unique priorities. This means that while one group may focus largely on law enforcement issues, another may focus more on cross-cultural or other issues. The teens decide their own direction, & the mix will change from time to time as the makeup of the group changes. But all Teenangels must undergo certain basic training. That, along with certain suggestions for additional training, is set forth below & on adjoining pages.

How does this all start?

We locate a local sponsor or group of parents or teachers who are part of our existing programs. (Sometimes we combine the two.) Generally an initial recruitment meeting is held. This may be a group presentation to a school or community group, or merely gathering together teens whom have indicated an interest in learning more about the program. The teens who indicate an interest in being involved, following the meeting, submit a form, completed by the student & signed by the parent, applying for the program. All Teenangel recruits must be in good standing at school or in an approved home schooling program. The application also provides that the Teenangel program holds all copyrights & other rights in their work as a Teenangel, & that the parents are authorizing Wired Kids program administrators to sign media releases on their child's behalf. It also includes the terms & conditions of the Teenangels program, including our privacy policy.

What's the next step?

Following the recruitment initial meeting & receipt of their completed applications, each recruit is asked to submit three safety tip lists - one for parents (on their child's online experience), one for teens & preteens, & one for children ten years old & under. (We aim for at least ten tips in each category.) The recruits must work independently in compiling & submitting these lists. (Working independently helps us come up with novel & creative ideas that the group can later expand upon.) They submit the lists to Parry Aftab & the local Teenangels sponsor. They are them combined into one master list, which is used for most of the training, to help structure the training & make it unique to the group. The combined list is sent to all recruits who have submitted the tip lists for their review. (Expect some recruits to fall off at this point. Don't try to rehabilitate them. We have learned that those who do not bother to submit the lists are not willing to commit the time & effort necessary for the Teenangels program & training. As long as at least five recruits remain, the program will work.)

The First Meeting:

Have the teens attend the first meeting of the group ready to discuss the master list of tips. The sponsor/parent/teacher leader asks each teen to introduce themself & explain why they want to be a Teenangel. This helps the leadership get to know each teen & help spot special interests among the individual teens, such as equitable access, accessibility for specially-abled children, free speech, cybercrime prevention, hacking & ethics, hate, violence online, etc. Later this can be used to set up special training for certain members of the group in the areas of their strongest interests. (When the media or group calls looking for a teen to discuss instant messaging, you will know who is passionate about this, & who knows the most. Their individualized training may include a visit to AOL to talk to the head of their security, or discussions with law enforcement on the difficulty of tracking instant messages, for example.)

Each tip on the list becomes an issue for discussion. And no statement is permitted without challenge. For example, if the master tip list contains the tip that "No one should ever share personally identifiable information online with anyone." (Usually a popular first tip) the group should be polled on what constitutes personally identifiable information. The discussion would typically go like this:

Leader: Okay, the first tip on the list is "No one should ever share personally identifiable information online with anyone." Who wants to explain what that means?

Teen A: It means that you should never give out your name, telephone number, address or other personal information online to anyone.

Leader: Good. Does anyone have anything to add on that?

Teen B: Well, I think it's okay to give out your first name, just not your whole name.

Leader: That's interesting. Why?

Teen B: Because people can't find you in real life if they only have your first name.

Leader: Does everyone agree?

Teen C: Actually, I think it might be dangerous to give someone your first name, especially if you are young. It might make younger kids think they really know the person if the person knows their name. It might make it harder to think of them as a stranger, & they may let their defenses down.

Leader: That's very interesting. What do the rest of you think?

[group discussion]

Leader: If we tell younger children not to give their real first name out online, what are they supposed to say when someone asks them for their real name?

Teen A: They could just say that they aren't allowed to give their name out.

Leader: They could do that.

Teen B: But they wouldn't. They'd be too embarrassed to admit that they aren't allowed to do something like that online.

Teen C: Right! Maybe we could tell them to give out a fake name instead.

Teen A: But that would be teaching them to lie!

Leader: Is it? What if it helps them stay safer? Who has a younger brother or sister who may be willing to talk to us about this? Perhaps we can ask a child psychologist about this. I'll make arrangements for one to join us at one of the next sessions.

That's how the training works. A statement, questioning & breaking the statement out to see how valid it is, & what needs to be softened or modified, or explored further. Then the right experts are asked to join the group for a session to provide first hand expertise on the issue & be available to the teens for questions & discussions. The experts volunteer their time, & those who are too far to visit in person participate by phone or via e-mail. They are usually asked to be a part of the advisory group for this Teenangels chapter. This gives them a wonderful community project, & the teens access to reliable & helpful expertise whenever they need it & new questions arise.

Each recruit is given a copy of Parry Aftab's book, The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace (McGraw-Hill, 2000) at the end of the first meeting. They are asked to read it before the second meeting.

The Second Meeting:

This meeting is a continuation of the first meeting, & the group works at pulling the tip lists apart & making them both simple & accurate. They are asked about the issues they encountered in the book, & what they agreed & what they disagreed about. They are asked for personal experiences of their families, friends & themselves where things may have gone wrong online. These stories are explored to make sure that solutions to these problems are contained in the tip list, or have been set aside for further research & training.

The second meeting is where the training starts to become unique to this group. What are their special interests? Are they bothered by something? Is there a risks they consider more important than others? How can they address that risk? How real is that risk? By laying out these questions, the other meetings can be scheduled to include those with the answers. Parry Aftab will assist in locating the right experts to address each question.

Sometimes the recruits may want to do some research on the topic & present a short report to the group to help guide their training. (This is where they become passionate about what they can do. We rarely lose a Teenangel after this point in the training. It is essential that they are allowed to express their own ideas & interests. Too much structure at this point will take the steam out of the group.)

The Third Meeting:

This is where the fun starts. The FBI local Innocent Images task force is usually happy to join the training session, teaching the teens what they need to know about real Internet predators, cases, victims & risks. Typically the state police, county prosecutor or district attorney is contacted & invited as well. The local police department usually sends their Internet resident expert. Everyone benefits from the mix. The FBI is a member of Wired Kids, the nonprofit group that runs Teenangels, as is US Customs, the Department of Justice, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children & others. The teens are asked to think about questions they have for these law enforcement groups.

If we have local teens who have been involved with online predators, we try to get them to join this meeting as well to explain it from their perspective & how easy it is to be fooled. Many times, when they are not available locally, we have them join the group via phone or video conferencing. Learning the real life stories first hand is a great way to be able to communicate the fact that anyone can be caught by one of the ploys used by online predators. This is the most important message we can give to teens & preteens when it comes to online safety.

At the end of the meeting the teens should be thinking about messages that can be delivered to other children, preteens & teens about online predators. How can this message be delivered without frightening parents & children? How do we keep it a top priority & still keep from blowing the risks out of proportion? How often does this occur? (They should be asked to obtain these statistics from the FBI Innocent Images & local law enforcement, & compare this to how many minors are using the Internet in the US.)

In preparation for the next meeting, the teens are asked to interview three others - a parent, a child under ten & a teen, about filtering, parental control & what they think should be done to help children & teens avoid the bad stuff they can find online & fine the things they enjoy more easily. They are also assigned the task of searching for certain topics that children may search for on the leading search engines, as well as filtered versions of those search engines & child-sized search engines such as Yahoo!ligans & Ask Jeeves for Kids. They are expected to bring in written notes of the interview & the printed results of their searches on at least two full-sized search engines, two filtered search engines (by applying parental controls to the full-sized search engines by using their customized settings) & on Yahoo!ligans & Ask Jeeves for Kids. They are also asked to try setting the parental controls on AOL, by pretending they are a parent & don't know much about the Internet, & by using them at various settings, such as Young Teens & Just for Kids & see what they can & can't do.

The Fourth Meeting:

Typically, the teens are ready for information about solutions at this point. This is generally when we introduce information about parental controls, filters & monitoring, as well as ratings & branded site lists. The teens usually have strong opinions on this topic. We try to bring in leaders in online filtering. Surf Monkey & Net Nanny have been particularly helpful in training the teens. AOL is as well. We also bring in people from ISPs & search engines, such as Yahoo!, Lycos & Excite@Home. They explain in depth how search engines categorize information, & give the teens information about meta tags& keywords that can be used to mislead the search engines. If you can find a local intellectual property law firm, experts in Internet issues, they are a helpful addition to this meeting as well.

At the end of this meeting, the teens should know more about searches & problems with meta tags& keywords that cause children & others to be mislead when they are searching for "chinese dolls," "girls' toys," & even innocuous topics such as dinosaurs & the white house.

They are asked to interview three people about any experiences they may have had online in which either they found themselves acting out in ways they knew were inappropriate & different from their normal behavior off-line., or where they were victimized by online harassers, flamers or stalkers. These will be presented at the next meeting.

The Fifth Meeting:

This meeting is focused on free speech, the laws as they apply in their country & in others, hate speech, violence & cult speech, bomb building & bomb threats, cyberstalking & harassment & flaming, as well a defamation online. The free speech advocacy groups are invited to explain the legal issues. A defamation & right of privacy lawyer is usually helpful to this meeting as well. If this is in the US the FTC or local consumer protection groups are invited. (The FTC is a partner in Wired Kids.) In other countries the governmental agency charged with protecting consumers from online fraud, & in charge of advertising & privacy regulations is invited to instruct the group on this topic.

School administrators & technology administrators are invited to explain this from a school's point of view. School policies are discussed. Local & national regulations are reviewed & the teens are encouraged to discuss & explore alternatives to regulations.

If a local victim of cyberstalking is willing to attend, this is particularly helpful in understanding the terror experienced by victims of online harassment & stalking. Usually a member of WiredPatrol attends as well to discuss how cyberstalkers & predators are reported & tracked online when a victim comes to WiredPatrol for assistance.

The teens are encouraged to invite friends & others whom they know from personal experience have been victims of online harassment, defamation & stalking. If available, a videotape of a cyberstalking victim is shown to the teens & discussed.

The teens are asked to interview friends about what they do online, & what things their friends do online. They are asked to search for sites that allow people to purchase weapons, buy alcohol, tobacco products, teach you how to invade the privacy of others, how to hack or send trojan horses & report back on what they discovered.

The Sixth Meeting:

This meeting is all about ethical surfing & things that children & teens do online that may be illegal, or unethical. This includes hacking, purchasing weapons, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs, gambling online, sending viruses, password theft, identity theft, building hate sites about groups or individuals, piracy & misinformation & hype.

Members of the software piracy organizations & recording industry organizations should be invited to explain the issues. Members of the high tech crime units should be invited to discuss hacking crimes.

Special Training:

Once the basics have been taught, the teens can decide if they want more training in special areas. These, in the past have included meetings with other advocacy groups, web site design, Internet security, media training, speakers training, understanding the digital divide & equitable access for specially-abled children, meeting with regulators & legislators, & training in child education. But anything the teens, individually or as a group want to learn can be arranged.

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