Parents used to know everything. Apart from knowing what was best for their children, the answers to all the difficult questions, and what to do, when and where, parents knew how everything worked.
Then along came the Internet. In the past, inventions were first adopted and brought into popular use by the adult generations who more or less understood the principles involved in the operation of TV, radio, cinema, telephones and electricity.
In the 1990s, young people began to discover a stimulating, often confusing, new world of information and entertainment on the Internet. This was a sophisticated world largely inaccessible to many of their parents, who, for the first time, didn't know how something worked. So parents viewed the Internet as the latest fad, destined to disappear in time.
However, latest research shows that "online children" spends five to seven hours a week on the Internet. In Britain, approximately 40 per cent of children between the ages of six and 17 are online, and it is estimated the figure will have grown to 60 per cent in the next six months. According to figures from NFO Interactive, almost three quarters of Internet-using children aged between five and 17 go online to do homework and school projects, while 70 per cent say they use the Internet for games.
Where are the parents who are normally so involved - often too involved, say their offspring - in every aspect of their child's education and development? Are they happy to let their child go online alone, or with peers?
Way back in the early days of Internet development, Bill Clinton put his finger on the usefulness of parents online: "As a parent, you can guide and teach your child in a way that no one else can. You can make sure that your child's experience on the Internet is safe, educational and enjoyable." Just like anything else you would do with your kids.
So how to go about becoming an Internet guide? For many the key issue is safety. Enter "parents", "children" and "Internet" into any search engine and the results are overwhelmingly dominated with best methods of ensuring your child's safety on the Internet. Important? Definitely.
Supervising your child's time online is the best protection they can have from inappropriate matter, misleading information and potentially malevolent strangers. Also helpful are a range of blocking and filtering tools including CyberSitter (www.cybersitter.com) and Net Nanny (www.netnanny.com), which work by monitoring URLs and checking them against a list of "blocked" sites.
Above all, use commonsense: don't allow your child to get involved with people you haven't met; keep the PC in a family area; explain the difference between advertising content and editorial content; teach your child not to believe everything he or she reads. A useful examination of the issues in an Irish context is available from the NCTE site at www.ncte.ie/intsafety.htm.
Once you overcome the safety issues, there's a world of education and fun families can explore and enjoy together. Ironically, a quick web search for helpful suggestions on going online with your children illustrates one of the Internet's major shortcomings: it can be hard to find relevant information.
A few US-based sites extend the parent-and-child-online brief beyond safety and are a good starting point for newcomers. The personal site of columnist Barbara J. Feldman, Surfing the Net with Kids (www.surfnetkids.com) aims to make the process rewarding, while the recently launched New York Times Learning Network (www.nytimes.com/learning/) offers good ideas for productive involvement in children's time online and very attractive "knowledge tools". Family Education (www.familyeducation.com) tests parents with quizzes on children's motivation and tips on parenting on and offline.
Most directory sites or search engines now have zones dedicated to children, the best known of which is probably Yahooligans (www.yahooligans.com) which lists education and activity sites suitable for children. Here, despite colourful graphics and an illusion of substance, the only real value is in the links to other sites on sports and recreation, arts and entertainment, geography, science, nature and technology, all presented on rather unimaginative secondary pages. The metaengine Ask Jeeves also has a childrenonly section, www.ajkids.com/.
At home, Irish portal site IOL offers kidz on-line (home.iol.ie/kidz/), suitable for the amusement of children aged six and over. More fun than educational, it offers simple recipes, instructions for making fancy-dress costumes, arts and crafts, interactive games, cartoons to print out and colour, downloads and a selection of "cool" sites weekly.
While Irish-based sites have more relevance for children in an educational context, younger children are less attracted by local sites than by theme sites derived from popular TV programmes or cartoons; examples include www.rte.ie/den2/ and www.barneyonline.com.
Many other sites combine education with entertainment (dubbed "edutainment"), particularly in the areas of science and nature. Making school subjects accessible and fun is the children's ezine developed by splendid Irish wildlife site, Wild Ireland (www.wildireland.ie/WildSchool). Equally, How Stuff Works (www.howstuffworks.com), or Cool Science (www.hhmi.org/coolscience/) will prove enlightening for both parents and kids.
Back in the environment of more conventional education, there are relatively few Irish sites offering help with schoolwork, with the notable exception of the impressive ScoilNet site (www.scoilnet.ie). Extensive subject-by-subject resources for all levels are supplemented with homework help and project work. Parents, too, are catered for here, although ScoilNet is a bit short on specifics, focussing instead on resources for adults, rather than ideas on how to help one's child with school and play.
The Internet does not have all the answers when it comes to study help, not least due to the volume of misinformation which abounds on the web. Ensure that your children are using a reliable Irish source with relevant curriculum material - and remind them not to get frustrated when they can't find what they want.
