If you believe the media today, the Internet is full of pornography, child abductors, and get rich quick schemes. And unfortunately it is. But remember that these questionable sites represent less than .001% of the entire on-line collection of material called the World Wide Web. Before we ban or censor the Internet from ourselves and our children, let's develop some good strategies to make our kids' on-line experience positive and rewarding.

Most people who use the Internet have positive experiences. But to the unknowing or naive, there are some risks and potential hazards. The Internet, like humanity, is made up of a wide variety of people - some honest and respectful; others rude, obnoxious, and exploitative.

Whether it is for school assignments, communicating with pen pals in other countries, or for pure fun, children can gain a lot from going on-line. But they can also be targets of crime and exploitation in the same way they would if they were walking alone in their local communities. Children and teenagers need parental supervision along with some common sense advice on how to be sure that their experiences in cyberspace are happy, healthy, and educational.

Although there have been some highly publicized crimes involving computers and the Internet, reported cases are relatively infrequent. The fact that crimes are being committed on-line, however, is not a reason to avoid using the Internet. To tell children to stop going on-line would be like telling them not to walk around the neighborhood because they can be victimized or abducted.

A better idea would be for us to teach our children how to be "Web-smart" in order to better safeguard themselves against any potentially dangerous on-line situation. The best way to assure that your children are having positive on-line experiences is to stay in touch with what they are doing. Spend time with your children while they're on-line.

Have them show you what they do, who they communicate with, what sites they visit and ask them to teach you how to access the Internet on the computer they use. While children and teenagers need a certain amount of privacy, they also need parental involvement and supervision in their daily lives. The same general parenting skills that apply to the "real world" also apply while on-line.

To receive a copy of Child Safety on the Information Highway, a full report on how to make your children's online experience safe and fulfilling, call the New York Branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 716.242.0900 or view the on-line version at http://www.missingkids.org/childsafety.html.

The following child-oriented or kid-friendly Web sites are good places for you to start exploring the Intemet with your kids.

Yahooligans!
Yahooligans! (http://www.yahooligans.com) is a searchable, browsable index of the Internet designed for Web surfers ages 7 to 12. It is organized like its parent site Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com), so that children can search by keywords (birds, baseball, camping) or browse by topic (Around the World, Sports and Recreation, School Bell). Since Yahooligans is a search engine, most pages carry company sponsored advertisement on them banner advertisements included. However, they are used solely to promote and link to kid-friendly sites.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
As the nation's resource center for child protection, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (http://www.missingkids.com) spearheads national efforts to locate and recover missing children and raises public awareness about ways to prevent child abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation. A private, nonprofit organization established in 1984, NCMEC operates under a Congressional mandate and works in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (http://www.ncjrs.org/ojjhome.htm).

NCMEC's objective for its Web site includes having parents and children visit the site together to learn more about child abduction prevention. The site contains many educational brochures and reports available, as well as success stories, a listing of services the Center provides and upcoming events. The most important section of the site is the Missing Child Database which is an up-to-date record of all known missing kids from North America. The database is searchable by multiple criteria and search results provide full statistics of the missing child including a photo and contact lead information.

Kids' Chronicle and On the Move - The Catholic Courier
The Catholic Courier of Rochester (http://www.catholiccourier.com) has developed an on-line edition of its weekly publication. Among its stories and services are two sections entirely devoted to kids. Kids' Chronicle is an interactive Bible-study page for children ages 6-12. It consists of a story rewritten for children from timely Sunday readings, a brief profile of a saint, illustrations, a puzzle, trivia and essay questions. Users can enter contests via e-mail and try to win prizes. On The Move strives to help teens live as Catholics in today's world. Written for, rather than about teens, it emphasizes their feelings and opinions on a wide range of topics - some light and some serious - and presents Catholic teachings about these issues.

The Museum of Science and Industry
Opened in 1933, The Museum of Science and Industry (http://www.msichicago.org/) is the oldest science museum of its kind in the Western Hemisphere and attracts approximately 2 million visitors per year. In 1996, over 400,000 children in school groups and youth organizations visited the museum. It is known as one of the most popular tourist destinations in the City of Chicago, and is one of the seven most visited museums in the United States.

It was the first museum in North America to develop the idea of hands-on, interactive exhibits. There are over 800 exhibits and over 2,000 interactive units located in over 350,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Some of the museum's highlight include a cantilevered Boeing 727 that visitors can walk-through, a working coalmine shaft elevator from 1933, a 3,000-square-foot model railroad (one of the largest in the world), an acoustically perfect whispering gallery, a baby-chick hatchery, and the Apollo 8 Spacecraft (the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon).

On-line exhibits include AIDS: The War Within, The Big Dig Construction Site, Communications, Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle, Fantastic Machines, and Animated Industrial Gears. There are also many Quicktime Virtual Reality movies of exhibits to view or download.

San Diego Zoo
The 100-acre San Diego Zoo (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/) was founded in 1916, by a colorful and extremely enterprising local physician, Dr. Harry Wegeforth. He gathered a collection of 50 animals from various local menageries and hired a single keeper named Army, "who had one arm but it was all he needed." Today the zoo cares for 3,800 animals (800 different species) and employs 115 individuals to care for them. The total staff numbers more than 1,000.

The zoo has opened several new natural habitats in recent years: Tiger River, Sun Bear Forest, Scripps Aviary, Gorilla Tropics, Pygmy Chimpanzees, Raptors, Australian Birds, Hippo Beach, and Polar Bear Plunge, and the Panda Research Station.

The Web site contains visitor information, a calendar of events, zoo programs and animal collection highlights including photographs of douc langurs, okapi, hornbill, and galapagos tortoises.

On the site, kids can fill out and send electronic postcards to other web users that depict zoo animals. They can also play Zoogames, a series of interactive trivia games testing their knowledge of the zoo and the animal kingdom.

Benny Goodsport
With the slogan "Promoting Fitness is Fun for Everyone!", Benny Goodsport (http://www.bennygoodsport.com/)offers a series of interactive adventure stories starring the Goodsport Gang. It is the creation of Sondra Arbeter Webber, an On-line and multimedia designer from Bothell, WA. The leader of the gang is Benny the clown and the other colorful characters of the Goodsport Gang are familiar sports equipment pieces - Sneaker the shoe, Fast Ball the baseball, Strike Out the bat, Dribble the basketball and Puck the hockey puck. The site promotes healthy sporting activities for kids of all ages by presenting interactive stories promoting good sportsmanship among team players and the importance of keeping fit.

If you have your own personal Web site or know of any sites that would be of interest to other Lake Affect readers, send e-mail to andrew@dimino.com. I look forward to visiting your world and including them in my next column.