Parental Control Software

http://www.tuki.com – We offer a free parental control software program in teh form of a kid safe browser. We also offer educational games to teach children how to e safe online.

Happy Fathers Day

http://www.childrenseducationalnetwork.com – Children’s Educational Network is a software company that empowers parents to provide children a safe platform and meaningful tools to accelerate their children’s education, and entertainment on the Internet.

Parenal Control Software To Protect Kids

http://www.tuki.com – Keeping kids safe online is paramount for all parents and in this interview the CEO of Children’s Educational Network describes what he believes is the solution to keeping your kids safe online.

McGruff Helps Families, Schools, and Law Enforcement Take A Bite Out of Internet Crimes Against Kids

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) April 22, 2008 — In an effort to take a bite out of Internet crimes against kids, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and Children’s Educational Network (CEN) announce the launch of McGruff Kid Safe Browser(www.McGruffBrowser.com).

Using CEN’s The Ultimate Kids Internet (www.TUKI.com) technology, this new “keep kids safe online” software will come complete with easy-to-use parental controls that allow children to surf the Internet in a safer and more educational environment that is the perfect tool for schools, law enforcement and families. Approximately 53 million American youth, ages 4 to 16, access the Internet from their homes each day. Few use computers enabled with systems (parental controls) that protect them from accessing websites with pornographic materials or being vulnerable to Internet predators.

Greg Writer, founder and CEO of CEN, watched as the number of online-related crimes against children began to rise in the late 1990s. But he didn’t sit on the sidelines and complain. As a father of five with a background in investment banking, he created CEN and its parental controlled software for private labeling. “I am excited to work with NCPC. This makes an incredible statement as to where we are as a company and where we are going as a Nation in the fight against Internet crimes against children,” he explains. “With McGruff we can reach youth audiences and the crime fighting community, offering a McGruff branded browser and educational tools that address this very important issue,” Greg states.

With one glance at the most recent Internet safety statistics, most will agree this is a problem that needs a lot of attention and advanced tools offered by CEN & NCPC to keep our kids safe.

* 79% of sexual solicitation incidents happened to youth while they were using their home computer

*  43% of youth report that they have experienced some form of cyber-bullying in the last year. The incidence of cyber-bullying is most prevalent among 15- and 16-year-olds, particularly among girls.

*  56% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send photographs of themselves to the solicitor and 27% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send a sexual picture of themselves
“The McGruff Kid Safe Browser (www.McGruffBrowser.com) provides parents, schools and law enforcement with the tools they need to protect children from inappropriate web content while encouraging children to utilize the Internet’s educational resources,” said NCPC President and CEO Al Lenhardt. “Protecting children is a top priority of NCPC and we are pleased to be partnering with CEN to make this free browser available to parents, educators and others striving to keep our kids safe in our communities.”

The McGruff browser comes complete with parental controls that allow parents to adjust security settings, program animated McGruff with reminders about chores and encouraging words, and add or remove websites from the master include list with the click of the mouse. The browser comes preloaded with themes, all of the best kid sites on the Internet, and a mass of educational content, including access to ClubTUKI (www.clubtuki.com), an online portal where kids get rewarded with virtual money for playing educational games and then get to bid in an auction on real merchandise such as laptops, Xboxes, movies, skateboards, and more.
About the National Crime Prevention Council

The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is a private, nonprofit organization whose primary mission is to be the nation’s leader in helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime. NCPC manages public service advertising under the National Citizens’ Crime Prevention Campaign–symbolized by McGruff the Crime Dog® and his “Take A Bite Out Of Crime®” slogan–and acts as secretariat for the Crime Prevention Coalition of America, more than 400 national, federal, state, and local organizations representing thousands of constituents who are committed to preventing crime. NCPC is funded through a variety of government agencies, corporate and private foundations, and donations from private individuals. For more information on crime prevention issues, visit www.ncpc.org .

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CEN Gets National News

Here CEN is features on nationally syndicated Mike and Juliet Show as a premier product to protect kids online.

Parents Are Your Kids Duping You?

If you have never checked your kid’s cell phone messages, history or voicemail, or internet history, you should. In this technologically advanced time, kids are catching on to the tricks and clicks that erase their communication tracks.

When spouses are cheating or engaging in behaviors that they do not want anyone to find out about, what do they do? They erase phone calls, emails, text messages and begin to stay away from home longer than they had previously. Kid’s behavior, if you are paying attention, that are doing things they don’t want parents to find out about looks frighteningly like a cheating spouse.

Call me RoboCop, Inspector Gadget, or overprotective mom, but I am all about snapping up my daughter’s phone when she least expects it to take a peek at her text history or log onto her MySpace to be sure the conversations and content she has, and others she is communicating with, is appropriate. I recently read some statistics that back up my choice to investigate on a regular basis.

A recent study shows that 30 percent of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents. Kids are smart and in many cases, much more Internet savvy than their parents. Kids go online at a friend’s house (this is how my daughter set up her first MySpace that I stumbled on), an Internet cafe, or school.

Many kids accidently or unintentionally accesses dangerous material online outside of the home. In these cases they will be unprepared to deal with the emotions that follow, including feeling as though they may have done something wrong, something bad and not tell their parents for fear of being punished.

The biggest problem facing parents, and the media, is that they, for the most part, are in denial. Parents are not as Internet safety, kid tricks for duping them literate as they could be. They don’t have a handle on using popular online software and chat programs, and tend to have no clue about what is really happening online or on their kid’s cell phones.

This lack of awareness or “head in the sand” attitude on the parents’ part may be no different than the situation before the technological explosion we know as the Web. Parents that chose not to know what their kids were doing before the infusion of the Internet were at greater risk of their children getting into trouble or put themselves in harms way without even knowing it. The same holds true for parents of the Internet generation who choose to not know what is going on with their kids on their tech devices.

The old, “but it’s my room” has been replaced by “it’s my phone” or “my computer”. Well, I say whomever is paying the bill is the rightful owner. Therefore, you have every right to take a stand for your kid’s safety or emotional well being and take their phone for 5 minutes or but right in while they are online, especially when they are instant messaging. Make sure they don’t suddenly sign off when you enter the room. If they do, think red flag and sign back in to see where the conversation left off. If you notice your kids cell phone is always void of Any text messages, again, think red flag and let them know you will be checking their text messages on a weekly basis. If they are erased, they lose their “privilege” of having the phone at all.

Be your kids hero by taking a stand for their well being. Heck, you may even want to take their phone for the day and see what kid’s of texts come through. Yes, I have done that too and believe me, it was shocking, heartbreaking and a great opportunity for me to do what was right for my daughter in terms of getting her back on track and teaching her how to respond to inappropriate text messages and the importance of expressing self-esteem in every area of life, even online or over the phone.

Sweeping “Keeping Kids’ Safe” Under the Political Rug?

Hillary Clinton’s camp came up with an impressive Internet Safety Guide that no one really knows about.  Why?  She isn’t talking about it.  Barack Obama lists the topic of Internet safety for our children and states this issue as one of importance in his technology issues section of his agenda, while McCain has previously  been vocal about his support for this issue of national, even global, importance for families everywhere.  So, why are they not discussing Internet safety and education issues, the increase in Internet crimes against kids’, and media literacy efforts on the 2008 campaign trail?

It is safe to say that if the motto “Educate Not Regulate” was actually implemented it could create lasting, concrete results when it comes to Internet safety and media literacy efforts.  For example, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was passed by Congress in 1998 in an effort to restrict minors’ access to adult-oriented websites. Now 10 years later, it was recently struck down again by a lower court. Just think about all the money that has been spent litigating this case that instead could have been spent on media literacy and online safety awareness campaigns that would have reached children and families around the world.  Here are some recent facts:

• 64% of teens post photos or videos of themselves online, while more than half (58%) post info about where they live.
• 32% of all teens and 43% of teens active in social networking have been contacted online by a complete stranger.
• 69% of teens regularly receive personal messages online from people they don’t know and most of them don’t tell a trusted adult about it
• 23% of children have had an encounter with a stranger on the Internet, including 7% of children who reported having met someone in the real world from the Internet
• 79% of sexual solicitation incidents happened to youth while they were using their home computer
• 40% of solicitations began with a solicitor communicating with a youth through an instant message or IM
• 56% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send photographs of themselves to the solicitor and 27% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send a sexual picture of themselves
• 34% of youth have encountered unwanted sexual material while online

Education is a vital part in online child protection efforts.  In fact, parental control tools that incorporate education as a key component in product offerings, such as Children’s Educational Network (CEN) (www.childrenseducationalnetwork.com ) Shrek, McGruff, Miss America and soon to be launched Loral Langemeier-The Millionaire Maker Private Labeled Browsers, are making big statements in the Internet safety education world. 

For parents, combating the problem of unwanted online media exposure means they must rely on a mix of technological controls, informal household media rules, and, most importantly, education and media literacy efforts. Pioneers and experts in the Internet safety field, such as CEN Founder/CEO Greg Writer, use a compelling metaphor to explain why education is the most important tool on which parents and policymakers should rely:

Internet safety, when thought of in the form of fences around pools, pool alarms, and locks, can help protect children from drowning in swimming pools. However, teaching a child to swim and when to avoid pools or other bodies of water, not simply focusing on what is only in our own backyard, is a far safer approach than relying on locks, fences, and alarms to prevent him or her from drowning. Locks, fences and alarms provide substantial benefit. But parents cannot rely exclusively on those devices to keep their children safe from drowning.  Furthermore, teaching a child to exercise good judgment has relevance far beyond a single swimming pool.

Sadly, we often fail to teach our children how to “swim” in the deep end of internet waters. It is clear that a serious media literacy and Internet safety education agenda is needed in America. Government should push media literacy efforts at every level of the education process and our Presidential candidates should be talking about it during every phase of the election, and post election, process. And those efforts should be accompanied by widespread public awareness campaigns to better inform parents about the parental control tools, rating systems, online safety tips, and other media control methods at their disposal.

A good example of an effective awareness campaign is one that began in the early 1980s, when the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) developed its popular “McGruff the Crime Dog” campaign .  The McGruff campaign, which included the “Take a Bite Out of Crime” motto, offers publications and teaching materials on a variety of topics; programs that can be implemented in communities and schools, local, regional, and national training programs; public service announcements broadcast nationwide starring McGruff the Crime Dog; and support for a national coalition of crime prevention practitioners. The NCPC reports that “now 25 years after McGruff’s first TV appearance, more than 75 percent of children recognize McGruff and over 4,000 law enforcement agencies own a McGruff suit.” www.ncpc.org/about.  CEN is now partnering with NCPC and launching the “McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Internet Crime” via the McGruff Parental Control Browser using CEN Technology. 

This same type of effort, as listed above for the McGruff original campaign, needs to be emulated on the Internet safety front.  Government officials should seek to incorporate these examples, using Private Label Browsers with their image, as McGruff has done with CEN, if they want to construct a seriousl public awareness campaign about parental controls and online child protection efforts.

If policymakers want to encourage more widespread awareness and adoption of parental control tools and online child safety methods, they will need to expand their current efforts considerably and look at a bill introduced by Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) entitled the “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and Reorganizing New and Efficient Technologies Act of 2006,” or “SAFER NET” Act (H.R. 1008). The measure seeks to better coordinate and expand online safety education and efforts at the federal level by creating a new Office of Internet Safety and Public Awareness at the Federal Trade Commission that is explicitly responsible for improving public awareness and education about Internet safety.

If the legislation she introduced were ever implemented, the new FTC Office of Internet Safety and Public Awareness could co-create plans and materials for other lawmakers and communities.   Officials from that office, along with experts such as Greg Writer who can speak out from personal experience and share the importance of the educational aspect of CEN’s technology, might be available to assist lawmakers or even accompany them on speaking tours to discuss parental controls and online child safety.

I say someone needs to light a fire under these candidates and get them talking about an issue they say, except on the campaign trail so far, is important to them. 

New Ipods in Club TUKI Auctions

Club TUKI adds 30 new items to teh clu tuki auction for kids to win for playing edcuational games. go to www.clubtuki.com and win an ipod today!

30 New Items listed in our auctions

We added 30 new items to our TUKI Auction at http://www.clubtuki.com