Online Safety - Videos that get 'em
Clarence Fisher of Remote Access is starting his year off with some assignments on Internet Safety. It is great to see a classroom teacher take responsibility for the online safety of their students by talking about this new wild web. Talking about Internet safety is easy, but is it affective?
Having a classroom discussion about how to be safe on the Internet is a good thing and if you can engage students in the conversation without sounding like a mother breathing down their neck, I think you will get more bang for your buck.
I am excited by the amount of video I have been seeing in the classroom these first couple of weeks of school. Our students are visual learners and what I love most is when you tell them you are going to show a YouTube video how excited they get. YouTube is an amazing resource for teachers when it comes to almost any subject area. If you are looking for something specific, try TeacherTube another resource of videos created by teachers and students for use in the classroom or for trainings. Face it we all loved watching movies in school when we were kids, but in today’s world, you have a library of short video clips at your fingertips that our teachers never had.
So back to my point: There are some great videos on YouTube that talk about Internet Safety. Below I have listed the two that Clarence used with his middle school students and two found by Christopher Sessums that you can use to start a discussion in your classroom around Internet Safety and Cyber Bullying. On Remote Access, Clarence even gives you the questions he assigned his students after watching the videos and a class discussion.
I encourage you to take 1 lesson, or even 10 minutes over a couple of lessons to sit down and talk with your students about this issue. Even if you are not having your students producing work online via blogs, wikis, or another online site, Internet Safety is a subject we all need to be teaching.
From Remote Access:
Brad Paisley-Online
Bulletin Board
From Christopher Sessums:
Cyberbullying-Talent Show
Cyberbullying-Kitchen
Comments
I think you make a very valid point this week Jeff. I also think we need more training in this area. I personally think it should be mandatory for teachers to have training on cyber ethics, safety, and related topics before they should be allowed to take their class on the Internet.
I advocate for a "drivers" license for the net for all students and school personnnel.
Posted by: Scott Meech | September 14, 2007 2:13 AM
Internet safety is an extremely important issue that should be addressed in every school. Starting from the time students begin to explore the internet, it should be mandatory for them to have at least one or more class periods per tech class dedicated to this topic. I think it is awesome that they are coming up with new ways to share this information with students. Many students turn off their easrs when it comes to preaching. I agree with scott's comment above
"I advocate for a "drivers" license for the net for all students and school personnnel."
Some schools (including my former high school) rarely talk about this issue. our school blocked certain websites on school computers and never gave a lesson. This is an issue that we can't leave students in the dark about.
Posted by: Amanda Maycroft | September 22, 2007 6:01 PM