District 203 Board Learns About Internet Safety for 'Digital Natives'

The “thumb generation” has been texting, e-mailing and using the Internet almost from the moment they were born.

They are also known as “digital natives” because technology has always been at their fingertips.

Officials from made a PowerPoint presentation during this week’s school board meeting highlighting the district’s approach to its Internet safety education program.

The state of Illinois mandates that school districts provide Internet safety education to students, but it doesn’t offer guidelines on how that is done or the amount of time that should be spent.

As it continues with its safety program, the district wants to take a collaborative approach. Collaborating within schools, collaborating with parents and collaborating with police.

Because students want to be creative, connected, productive and multi-task, the district has to assess what they know and how they use technology, said John David Son, one of the presenters and director of institutional technology at the district.

The district is striving to help its students become digital citizens who understand how to use technology appropriately, learning the various aspects of technology including commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette and the legal implications, said Tim Wierenga, assistant superintendent of secondary curriculum and instruction. 

The ultimate goal is to improve learning outcomes and improve performance in a 21st Century classroom environment, they said.

“This is a partnership. It is not the sole responsibility of the school to educate students about Internet safety and use,” Son said.

The district needs to partner with parents, community groups and religious institutions, he said.

Rich Wistocki, a detective with the Department’s Internet Crimes Unit was invited to offer his perspective to the board. He said there have been a number of cyber-bullying incidents recently.

“We have done a good job talking to kids about what predators look like,” he said. “We have done such a great job to educate them, kids are adopting those actions to cyber-bully other kids.

"They are creating fake accounts, e-mail accounts. That is what predators do. Our kids have learned how to take on that role and try to become anonymous online.

“My platform is now—the cyber bullying is so bad—my platform is no one online is anonymous,” Wistocki said. “What we have to do as educators is tell them that no one online is anonymous.”

The second part of his platform is that parents need to be educated and realize they are responsible for their children, Wistocki said.

“Getting parents involved is the biggest No. 1 issue,” he said.

Wistocki said he gives presentations at school districts all over and that often those events are purposely mislabeled specifically to try and get parents to attend, because in many cases few parents attend the Internet safety programs. A recent event in Lisle drew five parents, he said.

He asked the board if there was some way to get mandatory parental involvement, “because they have mental attitude that their kids would never do that,” he said.

Wistocki said that he would like to see the district build a partnership with the police department and specifically his unit.

He acknowledged that the school resource officers do a great job, but they aren’t dealing with the types of situations Wistocki and his colleagues handle on a regular basis.

Bonita Slovinski, a teacher in the district, said that because of funding cuts in recent years at the police department, the district has taken over some of the instruction.

At the middle school level, the education takes place at a variety of points throughout the curriculum, including health class. Students learn about not giving out information, bullying, safety and digital footprints, Slovinski said.

At the junior high level the teachers have found natural places for the instruction, she said. In applied technology there are classes where it takes place. Also, the student resource officer and assistant principal discuss Internet safety at the beginning of year.

Anytime students have to do a research paper, there is discussion about copyright law and using resources, Slovinski said. Curriculum was crafted based on grade level, she said.

Josh Mika, a learning resource director at , said that the education starts early with the kids, beginning in third grade. They discuss what a digital footprint is and use Google to search their names to see what is out there.

He said it is not uncommon for kids to share that they have uploaded videos to YouTube. Then larger discussions take place.

Though there are three lessons per grade level for the Internet safety instruction, Mika said that when questions arise, more time is spent and often it is necessary to return to the topic for more discussion.

At the high school level at , a lot of the instruction is rolled into other projects, such as when students are working on term papers, said Lee Applegate, the learning resource director. Freshmen also have instruction during orientation at the beginning of the year.

Presentations to students change over the years. As they move through Internet safety, the school reassess what students need to know and every year they revise a video presentation for students.

“We are careful about providing updated stats and hit subjects we need to hit,” Applegate said.

Board members asked Wistocki what problems he sees most often.

He said he currently has 10 cyber-bullying cases, but those are only his cases and that doesn’t include all the other cases in his unit.

Wistocki said it’s imperative to get parents involved. He told the board of one district where parents appear in droves for meetings. In that district a girl committed suicide after being cyber-bullied.