Parents received an eye-opening look at the promise - and peril - the Internet can hold for their children during a Parent’s Internet Safety Night event Tuesday at T.C. Cherry Elementary School.

As part of Bowling Green Independent Schools’ Internet Safety Week, parents of T.C. Cherry students got a chance to work with the same classroom technology that students are able to use, while also learning some valuable advice to share with their kids to protect them while online outside school.

“We want to make sure that we’re responsible in teaching kids the safe way to use the Internet,” said Allen Martin, district technology resource teacher.

The parents safety event was one of numerous events planned by the district’s Internet safety committee for this week, for which the idea was hatched at the end of the previous school year and formulated over the summer.

Martin said each school in the district is holding some activity this week related to Internet safety - members of the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office visited Bowling Green Junior High School earlier this week to discuss online safety and Bowling Green High School students will do the same when they travel to Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School this week.

During the first half of the two-hour event Tuesday, about 50 parents gathered in the school’s computer lab and its media center to use technology that students and teachers use, such as wireless Internet-enabled Netbooks that can be checked out from the media center.

Also, six classrooms are equipped to use Skype, the software application that enables users to engage in video conferencing over the Internet, and 18 additional classrooms will soon be capable of using the technology.

Parents also learned about some of the more commonly surfed Web sites at the school. Students use the search engine netTrekker, which is geared toward use at schools.

“There are restrictions in place so that a student searching (on netTrekker) won’t be surprised or disappointed,” said Monica McCoy, administrative assistant for technology at Bowling Green Schools.

McCoy said that the idea for the parents safety event came in response partially to parents who were curious about what restrictions the district had in place to keep students from viewing inappropriate material.

“Some parents are very interested in the procedures we have in place and some parents are oblivious, unfortunately,” McCoy said.

The second half of the event was devoted to educating parents about how many of their children might be members of one of numerous social networking sites and how to protect them from harm, in a forum hosted by Martin and Officer Barry Pruitt of the Bowling Green Police Department.

Coincidentally, city police arrested two North Dakota men Monday for their role in an alleged kidnapping attempt of a 14-year-old Henry Moss Middle School student.

Pruitt said the girl had been interacting with the men on Facebook for a year, and she had arranged to leave school with them and live in North Dakota with the 14-year-old son of one of the men arrested.

“The girl’s father had no idea how close she was to getting off a bus and going with those folks to Fargo, North Dakota,” Pruitt said.

In an interactive presentation, parents were asked several multiple-choice questions about children’s Internet use, learning that among other things, 47 percent of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 admitted to using the Internet inappropriately or illegally, 66 percent of teenagers mark their social networking pages as private, one of every five students in grades five through 12 have physically met someone they first met on the Internet and cyberbullying has been observed among children as young as 9.

Facebook has more than 1 billion users, including Pruitt, though he is not online under his own identity.

Rather, Pruitt and other officers have set up accounts on Facebook, MySpace and other networking sites to attempt to find and catch sexual predators.

“I have over 260 friends,” Pruitt said. “Those people have no idea they’re friends with a police officer and I assure you I look nothing like the 19-year-old girl on my Facebook page.”

Pruitt told parents to ask their children questions about online social networking sites, while Martin reminded parents that college scholarship committees and potential employers are looking at those Web sites as part of their assessment of job and scholarship candidates.

“It’s very important to know who your children’s friends are online,” Pruitt said.

Lisa Howard, the mother of four children - two of them T.C. Cherry students - said the event was very informative and helped her understand how her children use the Internet at school.

“At home, one of my kids likes to get online a lot of the time,” Howard said.