Would you send your children to a place unfamiliar to you? Would you let them participate in relationships, conversations, or activities that are not age appropriate? Would you let them write comments on a wall with a permanent marker or place pictures of themselves all around town? The internet is a place that our students are visiting more frequently than any other place on any given day. On the internet, our students are given access to more environments, content, and people then we could ever imagine. So how do we, as teachers, keep our students safe and responsible on the internet? We need to provide our students with resources to help inform them of the dangers of the internet and strategies to best protect themselves. We need to be teaching students about good digital citizenship. According to Innovative Learning Community (2016), digital citizenship is the “ability to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in the digital world.”
The National Crime Prevention Council’s article Mind What You do Online: Protect Yourself against Cybercrime provides several tips to adults and kids to protect themselves. Teachers can help students stay safe by encouraging the use of private passwords, personal pages set to private, messaging only people you already know, not opening emails from unknown senders and install programs to keep personal information available on your computer safe and private. These are quick and easy steps that can be encouraged and accomplished with assistance from a teacher.
Lucas (2013) brings light to the issue in his article, How to Keep Students Safe Online. He states that online safety is not achieved by blocking sites, overbearing internet monitoring, heavy online restrictions, and limited internet usage. He proceeds to say methods like this actually do not keep students safe. These methods actually lead students to using proxy websites and other methods to get to the sites they really want leading to compromised safety. Lucas points out that the key to keeping students safe online is knowledge. He recommends getting the parents involved, providing resources, and creating scenarios. With parent involvement, we can get them to encourage the safe usage of the internet outside of the classroom. Lucas provides two great video resources that will help gain the students’ interest and providing a less “preachy” method: Safe Web Surfing: Top Tips for Kids and Teens Online and Playing and Staying Safe Online. I really like the idea of creating scenarios. This allows students to see realistic examples of some danger situations that could potential seem harmless from the beginning. It also allows the students to determine what issues may evolve from the scenario and the most appropriate solution for the scenario. When the students are allowed to determine the issues and solutions, I believe they will find much more relevance in the lesson
| |
Future of Web 2.0 Technology
In a recent Professional Development day, I was introduced to EDpuzzle. I believe that it is a tool of the future. It takes watching videos to a whole new level. The website claims it is the easiest way to engage students with videos. The user is allowed to choose a video, crop, record audio, and add assessment questions to create an engaging lesson. I believe this will definitely help students engage and interact with the video content a lot more effectively than just playing an entire video from beginning to end. It is also helpful because the video stops after the question is asked. This allows students time to truly answer the question rather than rushing to write a response and hoping that they don’t miss the answer to the next question during the time they are answering the other question. This tool allows you to monitor individual student progress and understanding. This feature of the tool is a great way to check understanding on regular basis and even allow for remediation and/or extension content if necessary. The tool has access to a wide array of videos. This will allow me to choose a variety of videos to edit that will meet the needs of all my learners. If students need a video that breaks the material down to the very basics, I can find a video to suit their needs as well as construct guiding questions to help them develop understanding.
References
Edudemic. (n.d). The teacher’s guide to keeping students safe online. Retrieved from http://www.edudemic.com/guides/the-teachers-guide-to-keeping-students-safe-online/
Innovative Learning Community. (2016). Digital citizenship. Retrieved from http://connectedconsulting.com/resources/twenty-first-century-skills/digital-citizenship/
Lucas, R. (2013, September 11). How to keep students safe online. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/the-teacher-guide-to-keeping-students-safe-online
National Crime Prevention Council. (2016). Mind what you do online: Protect yourself against cybercrime. Retrieved from http://www.ncpc.org/topics/internet-safety/mind-what-you-do-online-protect-yourself-against-cybercrime