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By Danielle Paine Reminder Assistant Editor EAST LONGMEADOW In a local response to the cyber war against sexual predators, a free seminar is slated to arm parents with the tools to fight on the front lines of this battle, their home computers. "This is another way to help parents do the best they can do in raising their children safely," said East Longmeadow Chief of Police Doug Mellis about the program. State Police officials of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force will lead this training session for adults. Together, parents and experts will explore potentially dangerous web sites such as MySpace, a target of recent controversy because of its unrestricted access to blogs, pictures and personal information. "People may not know that their children have posted images online," Mellis said. "You don't know who they're talking to online either, it could be anyone in the world." Last year's public school survey found that more than 90 percent of school-aged families in East Longmeadow had home Internet access. "That alone tells me that this training is needed here," Costa said about the report. This effort of local and state police, combined with school department officials, has a three-fold mission. Participants will leave with the awareness of the dangers in unsupervised web-surfing, knowledge in how to better protect Internet-savvy children and resources to increase security in their home computer. "Web sites are like TV," Costa explained. "There are programs that are appropriate and inappropriate for school-aged children, except that computers have two-way communication." A similar workshop, hosted by the East Longmeadow Police last Spring, drew more than 200 concerned parents. The upcoming training is an advanced and refined version of the previous program, created through feedback from that session. This program is available to 800 adults of any area town or school district and will take place at 7 p.m., Nov. 20 at East Longmeadow High School. For more information, call 525-5450. |