Website Layout

The layout I will most likely be using is the partial network structure type. By using this layout, users will be able to navigate to where they want to go in my essay, and not necessarily follow chronological order. This particular layout is also beneficial because i can link the organizations that i mention in my essay into my website, so that users can access these sites, if desired.

As far as the section titles, I don't have a concrete title names just yet, but I wanted to go with a little something like this:

On the main page, I would like to do a brief introduction on the purpose of my essay. I'll keep it to a short paragraph, as the tutorial says, "Keep it simple"! It will talk about the influence of the internet on child abduction. I hope to cover and what my goal is for making this site.

The different sections I am thinking about doing is:

Section #1- The content on this page will address the potential threats posed to children on the internet. There are news articles, where I will draw some of my information from, and these articles will be linked on that page.

Section #2-

Wikipedia Entry

My Wikipedia username is Maracot. Unfortunately, I have been away for Spring Break and was not able to post and monitor my entry before coming back, but i have posted it, and so far, its still there :)

It can be found here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abduction

and the my contribution was the portion title Child abduction and the Internet. What i wrote is as follows:
Child abduction and the Internet

The internet has become both a danger and an aid in the subject of child abduction. It is a place where online predators can communicate with potential victims. 1 in 25 youth receive sexual solicitations that included attempts to contact the youth offline.[2]

Because of the threat these predators pose, there have also been efforts to use the internet as a resource to prevenchild abduction or to help the families of those who have been abducted.

Organizations have set up websites where uers can go to gain knowledge or contribute help to stopping child abduction. Among these are the organizations Enough is Enough and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which have partnered with the online community Myspace to help keep the internet a safe place for children. In addtion to donating new database technology to Sentinel Tech[3] that enables websites to locate, remove and block convicted sex offenders, Myspace is also a sponsor of Enough Is Enough 's Internet Safety 101:Empowering Parents Program.

Myspace also features pages and groups dedicated to helping find missing children.

In external links, I also added the links for Enough is enough and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Hopefully my addition stays up there, but if it doesn't I have learned from this experience that the information that we put on the internet is very important because it is viewable by anyone. Which is why wikipedia takes entries so seriously, and has strict guidelines for what can be posted.

Wikipedia Assignment

Since the focus of my research project is how the internet has changed child abduction and how the internet helps find missing children, I thought that focusing on a popular networking website, like Myspace might be beneficial.

Currently on Wikipedia, Myspace is comprised of about 17 headings explaining thoroughly what the website is about. I plan to add a heading to the entry, particularly under Child Safety. I am not quite sure what I'm going to title the heading yet. Probably something along the lines of Myspace and Missing Children. The sources I will use for my entry will be news articles found on the internet explaining partnerships and what Myspace has done to help make the networking websites, like itself, or the internet in general,be a safer place for children.

For example, Myspace and Sentinel Tech donated new database technology to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help with their online safet investigations. The article is available on the website for The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I have included the link:http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3045

Myspace has also formed a partnership with a non profit organization called Enough is Enough, whose main priority is to make the internet safer for children. They deal with child pornography, child stalking, and sexual predation on the internet. The article is available on the organization's website:http://www.enough.org/inside.php?id=13BGG1DG8


I am still getting the hang of the posting process on Wikipedia though, but I'm sure I'll get it! :)

Research Plans

For this project I am planning to do something that involves the internet (internet communities, missing children websites) and missing children cases. Although I do not have a specific research question yet, I plan to investigate what is being done on the internet to help find missing children, but also how the internet helps pedophiles and other online predators locate victims.

In my research, I hope to show the efforts that are being made by online communities and internet users to help find these missing children, I hope to show the progress of these efforts.

Information that I need to gather would be to find sites on online communities dedicated to missing children. I've found a couple on myspace and there are groups that you can join, but I definitely will search for more

examples:
http://www.myspace.com/theyneedyourhelp
http://www.myspace.com/helpfindkids

and I have also found a helpful website dedicated to internet safety for children:http://www.enough.org/

On the Website it talks about a partnership with myspace and district attorneys to help keep kids safe online.

I will be looking for more websites and looking through news articles to find cases of missing children that are linked to online encounters.

POTENTIAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS: My topic deals with how the internet helps find missing children on the internet, but also how some have gone missing because of encounters on the internet..

I HAVE POSTED SOME RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

How is the internet changing the future of child abduction?
What is being done to stop online predators from abducting children on the internet?
Are websites for missing children effective?
Contrary to helping the cause to find missing children, the internet also increases the amount of access that online predators have to finding potential victims. What can be done about that?

Topic and Descripton

Originally I wanted to write about the topic of locative narratives, but instead opted to go with another topic.

With many online communities available (Myspace, Facebook, etc.), communication worldwide has become almost effortless. The internet is effective at connecting people, but also there are children that go missing because of pedophiles using the internet to connect to them. Internet communities help you find who is in your town, or who is in any town. On myspace, there are groups dedicated to finding missing children. There are also websites that help alert the public for missing children. On http://www.amw.com/, it keeps the public updated on whether there are any amber alerts. They also have archives where you can search for cases of missing people as well as captures. On The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website, they offer resources for parents as well as give you the option to be able to help and get involved.

It's an interesting topic because thousands of children go missing everyday.So the internet becomes both a positive and negative.It can be used to help find missing children but it can also be a cause of them.

On http://www.wired.com/, there was an article telling about how an online predator was planning to use Myspace to meet underage boys.

The link is :http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/10/71948

But where can online communities draw the line to keep out online predators? Is it possible? What can be done?

There would be many users that I would potentially be writing for. Mostly concerned adults, or anyone concerned about the dangers the internet poses (as far as online predators).

Johnson-Eilola 1-20

In this reading, Johndan Johnson-Eilola brought up some interesting points. He starts off the article by posing a question about who websites are written for. That is an interesting question that we never really take the time to think about. Because the internet is so accesible as far as information and who can obtain it, I believe that a website is written for whoever is willing to look it up. He illustrates this point by giving an example of a student who logs into her university's website in order to locate information. She has trouble locating the information and he points out that when the website was created, she was not the user that the creator specifically had in mind.

I also liked the point Johnson-Eilola makes about a website not being a document that is read, but used. Therefore, we are not readers of a website rather users, because we engage with what is in front of us (use links, navigate through the website).

There are three crucial issues of websites:

Usability- who views this site? and what are they going to do with the information?

Structure- linking the sections where users can go on the site.

Navigation- crucial to structure, this is the "how and what" to use to move from one part pf a website to another.

Knowing these three things makes sure your site is effective and fulfills its purpose.

Johndan JOhnson-Eilola ends the article by bringing up the topic of print vs. online texts. He compares the navigation through a print text (reading the pages line to line and turning pages) to navigating through text on the website. There were interesting comparisons like how we read words on a page when they are in a book, but when a website is too text heavy we tend to lose interest. The issue of print vs. online is an interesting topic that is relevant to this course. It often comes up in our class discussions and I'm interested to see what will happen to print media as technology becomes more advanced.

Response to fan fiction websites