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Children Online

© Cheryl Lewis

As we begin teaching our children to use the computer many of them will announce their desire to get "online". I know when my children showed an interest in getting on the World Wide Web I was not sure that I wanted to allow it just yet. I was concerned with the overwhelming number of adult sites and of course child predators.

In order to deal with this concern I told my children that I would look into some things before I allowed them free use of the Web. At the time I had America On Line or AOL as it is commonly known. I checked all their parental controls and tried it myself to see if it was acceptable. Once I determined that the parental controls our ISP provided were acceptable I told my children to pick a screen name for themselves. I gave them a few days to think on it because I didn't want to have to take the time to set up all the controls and then change it two days later.

I decided that the best way to teach the kids to get online was to do it one child at a time. I wanted to be sure that they had my full attention and I had theirs. I began by showing them how to get to the ISP. For us we have a little icon on the desktop as well as in the start bar. I made sure that they were aware of both buttons. Once the sign on screen appears I showed them how to select their screen name and click sign on.

Once we were online we stored their passwords so they wouldn't have to remember them and the process of signing on went more smoothly. If your ISP provides this option I highly recommend that you do this. We decided that with our passwords they would all be the same so if there was a problem we could get help from each other.

Once online I began showing them the different features of our ISP. ISP's tend to differ in their features so it might be a good idea for a parent to sit down and make a little list of these before showing your children. Of course the one item my kids were most interested in was the email feature. We spent a great deal of time going through the email options that were available. I helped them build their address books online and their buddy lists. As well as how to store important emails that they wanted to keep and how to delete the others.

The copyright of the article Children Online in Teaching Computer Skills is owned by Cheryl Lewis. Permission to republish Children Online in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.