"Each and every parent out there should create a Google alert with their child's first name."

Are you Joking ? Or do you get paid for each new alert???.

This is so sycophantic I had to check it twice.

A little education goes a long way. I agree that wrapping the kids up in cotton wool never works, prevention is always better than the cure. Yes, it is unfair that you can be judged on what you post/say/do/look or how you act, but in the real world actions have very real consequences. It is one of the reasons we teach our children how to interact socailly in an acceptable fashion. The ones who fail to learn this, life brings up to speed real fast. In the end, all our children have to go on is what we teach them, so I suggest we teach them well. In real life you don't get three lives, there are no respawns, and once something is done, its permanence is etched into history. Knowledge is power, so lets empower our kids. No shield exists that can hold back reality.

Taking the kid's perspective, why are you letting them be cotton-swathed so that no damaged can come to this? Kids that aren't censored have made successful businesses by 12, and if you can teach your kid common sense then they'll be fine at 8. I was. I don't see how it's so horrible.

It is my opinion that digital records should have no part in the recruitment of jobs. Someone should not be deemed to have lost their credibility because of a post they made when they were 14. Social networks create artificial interaction. None of it is communicatively rich and, ofcourse, anything on the internet is interpreted by the reader which screws up meanings etc. Therefore, anything posted online is not a fair representation of the person. I think this will become less of an issue in the future. The older generations have a degree of maturing to do when it comes to this topic. Not that posting porn or bullying should be accepted. Its completely unfair to judge a persons value by a bit-part block of information on the internet. Unfair and, quite frankly, its an archaic idea that someone would be punished for taking advantage of a tremendous tool.

This is high handed nonsense. With childeren aged below eight, I could understand the need to watch what they see on the internet, but monitoring everything your child does just because some self proclaimed 'expert' in another continent is technophobic seems petty and obsessive. Childeren need a certain degree of freedom, and while there may be dangers on the internet, I really do not think that a future boss will be interested in something their prospective employee said when they were five years old.

Seriously. Just warn your childeren not to post private information, rather than involving yourself in a Big Brother-esque plot to monitor everything they do.

Maybe we (society) should be bringing our kids up with proper values so they're not posting half naked pictures of themselves online.

As someone who was at this speech this is a very poor write up of what was said. In particular when you put info to print and make an error that was so glaring. If you typed in a childs first name to Google alert as if you are going to find info on your child unless you have an extremely unusual name. This was an amazing speech on where education is headed and this is what you come up with. What a shame for NZ.

Rachel   #11   via mobile 07:04 pm Jan 28 2012

Would be good if Kevin was actually quoted correctly! I was at the conference, the instruction was to set up the google alerts using your child's FULL name inside speech marks. The instructions from Dee above are great - parents, go do this!

Most stuff isn't on the internet forever. How many 10 year old websites haven't been revamped with all the content lost forever?

This is just another fear-mongering article about "kids these days". 100 years ago they were sent down into the mines as soon as they could crawl!

@ Amanda #8 I'm not sure what's on your FB page that would put you out of contention for a job when a potential employer is scrutinising your CV. Personally I don't have anything that I believe would jeopardise my job propects or anything I'm ashamed of to be honest. I'm not saying I'm perfect - far from it - but I certainly don't put my private details, many negative thoughts about people or splash my personal life around online!