I came across something interesting last week in the fallout of the draconian closure of Al Upton’s Mini-Legends blog. (We're all behind you, Al!!!)

It was a link to a research paper in the journal “American Psychologist” which has the following citation:

Online "predators" and their victims: Myths, realities, and implications for prevention and treatment.
By Wolak, Janis; Finkelhor, David; Mitchell, Kimberly J.; Ybarra, Michele L.
American Psychologist. 2008 Feb-Mar Vol 63(2) 111-128

Link here

Unfortunately, it is a subscription article. If you want to read it, you have to pay for it. LiveScience has a synopsis here.

It’s important to realise that the paper was written by researchers at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Centre, rather than some journo at A Current Affair and uses real research methods and real statistics to draw its conclusions. Some of the conclusions may surprise you. For instance ...

“From 1990 to 2005, the number of sex abuse cases substantiated by child protective
authorities declined 51%”

That seems very different to what the media would have us believe.

or

“In the year covered by the N-JOV Study, more online molesters were arrested for soliciting undercover investigators posing online as adolescents than were arrested for soliciting actual youths”

Maybe our youths are more able to spot the dangers than the police undercover officers.
 
or

“Posting personal information online does not, by itself, appear to be a particularly risky behaviour”

There are many more conclusions, or myths as they are referred to in the LiveScience article.

   

Before I open the discussion of the article, I want to state my position here. I recognise that the dangers posed by communicating with strangers using ICT are real. There have been cases of kids being abducted, raped and murdered by strangers they met on the Internet – just not very many. Research (real research, that is) shows that the overwhelming majority of child abuse of all kinds occurs in the family home with a trusted adult. Yet according to the media, there seem to be no paedophiles out there – only Internet paedophiles. At least they are the only ones who seem to get media coverage.

I smile and shake my head when I watch the news. Whenever anyone gets arrested – for anything – the footage always seems to be of the police carrying their computer out into the van. Technology gets a raw deal from the press – technology sells. But is it another case of us looking in the wrong place again?

And it carries into the classroom. The vast majority of student “technology” issues I am asked to deal with aren’t really technology-based. Mostly, they’re caused by ineffective classroom management or poor pedagogy. Construct rich curriculum that is engaging and relevant using technology and you won’t have to worry about kids playing games and visiting inappropriate websites. Have a proper policy with clear goals and appropriate consequences (and enforce it rigorously) and you can allow students to grow and develop their skills in a supportive environment.

DrJim

Image citation : http://www.flickr.com/photos/marice/157762586/