Changing behaviours online: Surfing safely
Ilanit Gerson, Geoffrey Lautenbach, Jace Pillay · 2013
Surfing Safely is an educational initiative designed to equip learners at a Jewish Orthodox Private School with sufficient knowledge to appreciate benefits and risks of electronic media at school. The initiative dealt basically with Internet safety. An aim was to empower children to take control of their use of the Internet, to cope with unwholesome exposures online, and to report incidents to appropriate authorities. The programme was created to address the topic at a school that prescribes the set ethos and values of Judaism. This paper analyses change of awareness and behaviour as they use the Internet. Changes were measured by a post-test questionnaire. Initial findings show that learners are impressionable and the programme has a tremendous impact on them. Overall, learners had no problem changing behaviours with regard to settings and privacy issues. There was less change in areas that they didn’t see as applicable to them – such as virus software or filters. BACKGROUND: TIMING THE TIDES FOR SURFING SAFELY In South Africa, research data on “online crime” is limited. Not many prior studies have been conducted in South Africa on the extent of the problem, and it is important to stress that the full reality may never be known, given the clandestine nature of crime on-line. Adding to the problem, many teenagers do not disclose uncomfortable experiences on-line. However, we do know that South African children using the Internet are at risk of unwanted exposure to objectionable material to the same extent as children in other countries (Film and Publication Board, Research Report, 2006). As more and more schools move towards establishing the Internet as part of a school’s learning environment, often without adopting strategies to minimise the risks of unwanted exposure, even more children are placed at risk. Societal changes worldwide related to online activities, especially the blurring of real and virtual worlds, were already identified as far back as 2008 as highlighted in the following extract: “The traditional types of online environments are now merging as social networking, online gaming, instant messaging and photo-sharing technologies are becoming component parts of large ‘social sites’. Even where the boundaries can still be identified, children are using these environments with little or no distinction between them and the line between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred. Whereas last year we stated that the terms ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds should no longer be used, this year we should accept the complete integration of online activities into the lives of children” (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, 2008). Taking the pervasiveness of technology in schools into account, strategies and measures to minimise the risks of unwanted exposure need to be adopted (Flood & Hamilton, 2003a). Regarding the pervasiveness of technology in teacher education, Lautenbach and Batchelor (2012) reported that the government of the day have “responded with a flurry of policy statements and national development plans to galvanise educational change and to remedy the education system”. One example is the National Planning Commission (2011) who drafted the National Development Plan. The Department of Education (2011) also stated that although the aim of the government initiative is to improve professionalism, teaching skills, subject knowledge and computer literacy of teachers throughout their entire careers and to increase access amongst learners to a wide range of media to enrich their