Techlearning blog

Back to my post, in my short presentation about Internet Safety I want to share some great resources with parents, I want to share some good video clips and I want to tell parents that this presentation about Internet Safety is really about an extension of the usual parent talks regarding not talking to strangers, not getting into someones car that you don't know, ....... and what I really want to talk about has to do with 21st Century Technology tools that are available to all of us and how to get involved and why to get involved. If you are interested you can check out the wikipage with all the resources.

So here it is my "Internet Safety with 21st Century Tools on the WWW" presentation. Yeah, this is what I am talking about!

Where does a parent or teacher begin? Begin with the age group you work with, it will be most meaningful. Here is the example that got me started on this post.

Webkinz, is a culture and website I have spoken of before, but each time I see a great example I need to share it. My niece( in her 30's and her daughter age 6,) teamed up to add me to their Webkinz. It was interesting to listen to their discussion about which parts of the Webkinz games they liked, how they decided to add rooms to their house, the kinds of interactions they have while online and the safety of this involvement. The biggest aha! My niece is involved. She checks the website, checks and approves the friends and can knowledgeably converse about the Webkinz community. I am trying to stay involved and keep up with Webkinz , it is foreign to me, but she and her daughter are comfortable exploring this landscape together. I couldn't help but think that by the time Miss O is old enough to have her own webpage at Facebook, or whatever it will be called by then, she will be very Internet Savvy. If you don't have a youngster at home you can create your own virtual community by reaching out to your students or to friends of yours. You will grow from this experience.

Kindergarten through elementary school folks can join or subscribe to Webkinz or Club Penguin, a couple commercial areas, or you can join PBSkids and go through a variety of great interactive sites which extend the classroom learning. My favorite is Cyberquest, check it out. The purpose for joining these groups is so you can practice joining, creating a user name and password and to try your luck on interactive websites. Let me know your favorite game at Webkinz and PBSkids.

By middle school, you really want to branch out and join IM , or iChat . These are all free subscriptions you can make. These will allow you to have your own online community to chat with. Find some of your own friends and ask them to join with you so you have a safe group to start with. You will experience making up your user name, your passwords and creating an avatar or inserting a photo of yourself, if you want. Your middle schooler or students will be expanding their conversations to where they can leave messages and chat with up to 25 people at once. At this age you will want your network to include your child's network. Let your child and students know that you will be participating in the chats. This is a great time to have conversations about groups, IM, bullying and being a responsible digital citizen.

By high school you will have created a page at Facebook , your own blog and you will be skyping or chatting with your friends and occasionally your child or your students.

By using these tools you will be part of the 21st Century conversations that your children or your students are having. I know when our school created a Think.com environment for our 3rd and 4th graders they were constantly messaging friends and looking at the results of the surveys they created. I also know they totally enjoyed leaving a message for a teacher or assistant principal. Subsequently, they were more excited to get a message from the teacher or assistant principal than some of their friends. There is power in these virtual conversations. How often do you as a teacher get to actually speak to a student during your busy day? Well, by IM-ing or chatting or emailing you can make those personal connections.

I have overheard high school students pleading with a science teacher to "please get a Facebook account so we can chat with you!". Go ahead, some of our students want more conversations. I use my facebook account when I need to ask questions of high school students. I don't have their email addresses, but I can leave them a message on their facebook page and 100% of the time I get a response. I even have friends of my college aged son sending me requests to be in their network on Facebook. I also have another college aged son who limits my connections to his email and cell phone and I respect that too. But think of all I would be missing if I did not also live on the web.

Join the 21st Century with your children and your students, start small and leave a message about how you went about joining.