Please find below a wide variety of resources about internet safety, digital citizenship, and tools for parents and guardians

NetSmartz.org

One of the best free resources available for parents, children, teens and educators. A wealth of information to discuss and share as a family. If you have middle school or high school students, make sure to check out the videos section for "Real Life Stories" demonstrating the dangers and consequences of cyber-bullying and "over sharing" of information!

A Platform for Good

A Platform for Good is a project of the Family Online Safety Institute designed to help parents, teachers and teens to connect, share and do good online. Google, Facebook and Microsoft collaborated to help launch this resource.

www.commonsensemedia.org

Common Sense Media is a site that is chock full of ratings and reviews of a wide variety of media, including video games, web sites, music, movies, and TV shows. Not sure if a particular game, web site, movie, etc. is appropriate for your kids? This is a good place to look for information, as well as tips on digital literacy.

FBI: Resources for Parents

While not as flashy or visually appealing as some other sites, this site does contain excellent information for parents.

OpenDNS

OpenDNS offers both free and paid solutions for internet filtering and parental controls for your home internet connection. Even if you are not a technology expert, OpenDNS has instructions on how to implement their service in your home. The best part about the OpenDNS service is that it will cover all the devices in your home that are connected to your internet connection.

Google Family Safety Center

Google has assembled an excellent resource for parents on general online safety, as well as specific tips for enabling some of the safety tools available within Google products (Search, YouTube, Chat, Google+, etc.) The "Tips from Parents at Google" section contains some terrific short videos showing Google employees talk about how they approach online safety with their own children.

Microsoft Family Safety

Like Google, Microsoft has assembled a resource that contains general online safety tips with information about specific tools that can be used with Microsoft products. The "Use family safety settings" section is particularly comprehensive in listing how to use the tools within a wide variety of Microsoft products, including XBox, Kinect, and Windows.

Resources from Apple

While Apple doesn't yet have a "one stop shopping" site listing all their online safety resources and tools, they do have pages that cover individual products. If you have a Mac, an iPhone, iPod, iPad or use iTunes, these pages are very helpful.

iOS: Understanding iOS Restrictions

iTunes: Using Parental Controls

ESRB Setting Parental Controls

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) site has a good resource with directions on how to activate and configure parental and content controls on the most popular gaming devices.

Cox Communications: Take charge of your families digital life

Cox Communications has assembled resources and tips showing parents how to take advantage of the safety tools available within Cox products, as well as some more general resources. Helpful if you have any Cox services in your home.

Site Categories for Internet Filtering

The Smithfield Public School district uses Securly through our Internet Service Provider (ISP). This is a list of the categories that are filtered.