Internet Safety

What: Before teachers let their students fire-up a computer they must teach them how to safely use the Internet. From the simple rule, never give out personal information to the more advanced, watch out for cyber bullies, the safety of the children online is as important as their safety on the playground. We as teachers and future teacher must do all we can to make sure our student know all the rules and can use the Internet with security and confidence.

Now what: I did not realize how much Internet safety has changed in the past few years. As the mother of two children I see this week lesson as the most important our class has had so far. As parent, future teachers, and student I need to keep up with the changing ways of technology. I am grateful for the opportunity to see the new danger that out in cyber space. I will be able to take this new information in to my home and teach my children how to properly use the Internet.

More than personal safety was talked about this week. I also will need to teach my students how to proper search for information on the web. They will need to ask themselves many questions before they use the information found on a website. Questions like, who is the author of the site, when was it last updated, is it an ad masquerading as a factual site, is it a blog, and many others. I have to be able to answer those questions and guide them to safe and factually correct websites.

So what: Before I use a website in a lesson plan in my future classroom I will need to ask myself the same questions, plus many others. I cannot get overwhelmed by all the information out on the web. The Internet can be a wonderful tool for educators, but I have to realize that I cannot just pick a website and plan to use it as part of a lesson. I have to check and make sure it is appropriate for use in school, are there copyrights, does it fit with the core curriculum, does it load quickly. You would think that using the Internet would make our jobs easier, but really it has just made them harder.

Video: I liked the Internet safety rules talked about in this week's video. Problems with Internet safety have changed drastically from the days when parents and teachers needed to worry about child predators and porn. As if that was not bad enough. We still have to also deal with those plus, cyber bullying, identity theft, plagiarism, Myspace, Crag's List, viruses and many more web dangers. It has become so easy to make ourselves vulnerable to all kinds of predators on the Internet. We have to educate ourselves and our students how to play safely online and this video is a good straightforward way to do that.