Internet Safety Week
Cyberbullying, Internet Safety Tagged cybersafety, Internet Safety May 5th, 2008Without going into specifics, a recent circumstance gave me reason to pause and consider internet safety at ISKL, prompting a couple of questions:
What are we doing to educate students, teachers and parents?
What can we be doing?
What are we doing to educate students, teachers and parents?
We have a ‘Student Technology Code of Conduct’, each student signs this document, and pretty much won’t see it again… unless they do something wrong. For parents there have been presentations during coffee mornings, but for teachers very little has been done. As Dennis Harter alluded to on his Thinking Allowed blog, ‘Online Safety is for Teachers Too’, web 2.0 technology and sites such as FaceBook and MySpace are making this a real issue.
What can we be doing?
Just as we have an ‘Earth Week’ and a ‘Sun Safety Week’, why not an ‘Internet Safety Week’?
Below I’ve brainstormed a few ideas; I’d be interested to hear from others with suggestions:
- “Internet Safety Presentation” at a faculty meeting, preferably before the week.
- Offer an “Internet Safety Evening” for parents. Vikki Davis in her Cool Cat Teacher Blog presents a detailed list of things parents can do: 11 Steps to Online Parental Supervision of your Children
- A session with students where the ‘Student Technology Code of Conduct’ is discussed in detail and signed.
- Poster competition
- Short video competition.
- Guest speaker, possibly from US Embassy.
- Article for School Publication
- Maybe a theme for each day of the week:
- Monday – Cyber bullying
- Tuesday – Plagiarism
- Wednesday – Safe Surfing
- Thursday – Protecting your online identity
- Friday – Social Networking (FaceBook, MySpace etc.)
I would be really interested to hear what people think of an ‘Internet Safety Week’. When would be a good time? How to keep the focus on Internet Safety after the week has come and gone?
May 5th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
It is certainly evident that educators need to take a proactive role in dealing with on-line issues. Instead of just reacting to events and crises, an Internet Safety Week would be one good way to address this issue.
I especially like the intensive theme over the course of a week. In addition to an assembly and dealing with the issue in Homegroup (or advisory), themes ideally could connect through the curriculum and with many of the core values (Why do we need to show respect on-line?) and School-Wide Learning Results (What does communicate effectively look like if you are on a social networking site?)
Another side issue as far as the online identity is use of our internal mail system. Far too many students have ridiculous, unprofessional, or even inappropriate signatures on their e-mails. Few realize how embarrassing this is when they use their e-mail to attach assignments and submit them to teachers.
As it relates to middle school students, the issue of Facebook is especially tricky. The irony is that Facebook requires students to be 14 years old AND in HS in order to register. Yet most of our 8th graders have Facebook and many of our 7th & 6th graders.
How do we “ethically” address the real-world situation of many students having Facebook, and co-opt it as a learning tool when our AUP requires us to adhere to terms of agreement?
May 11th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I like the idea of internet safety week, but I have to admit I would be wary of any attempt (from anyone) to engage in fear-mongering about the use of the internet (or simply for the conversations to devolve into a fear-mongering approach – I’m thinking of some of the US government reactions to internet safety in the States).
Personally, I think internet safety should be infused throughout everything that students do online, and the more we focus on it specifically, the more opportunities we have for certain “factions” to take the opportunity to focus on the negative, instead of learning “just in time” how to behave online.
I wonder if the concept of internet safety can be embedded in other topics, like bullying in general can include a discussion on cyberbullying. If there were curricular areas that focus on the larger issues, (like bullying), that would be the perfect place to bring in the technology side. These are all standard school-age problems, just using new tools, the concepts are the same.
I also like Doug’s question above:
How do we “ethically” address the real-world situation of many students having Facebook, and co-opt it as a learning tool when our AUP requires us to adhere to terms of agreement?
I think the only way to really modify student’s online habits are to:
a) start when they’re in elementary school – before they begin to pull away from teacher/parent interaction in their personal lives.
b) partner with their parents – the issue of younger students having FB accounts is just as much an issue of parenting as it is teaching. As educators, we have the responsibility of ensuring that the conversations we start at school are continued and supported at home. The only way we can do that is to educate the parents as well.
I wrote a post about this a few months back entitled Social Networking and Responsibility.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:53 am
@Doug – Seems if this is to fly you’ll be one of those leading, though definitely admin buy-in is critical. As pointed out by Kim, you are spot on with the ‘catch 22′ issue with Facebook… don’t know the answer to that one.
@Kim – Kim thanks for the feedback and the great post you did a few months ago. The point you raised on ‘fear mongering’ is well founded, and maybe a more positive name other than ‘Internet safety week’ would be more appropriate.
I also agree with you that internet safety must be embedded throughout the curriculum… I’m still mulling over ‘just in time’ learning in respect to internet safety. A recent case in point for us, was where a student was in great big pile of you know what, when the just in time learning occurred.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Yes, I think I may have heard from Dennis about your sticky “just in time” learning situation. I guess I think that’s why we have to be so pro-active about our AUPs and helping parents understand their responsibilities as well.
I totally understand that there are emergency situations that arise that must be dealt with, though. I just would like to figure out a way to be operating in the “important, not urgent” quadrant from Steven Covey’s “Habits.” Somehow it seems like, with technology, we’re always in the “Urgent, Not Important” area…
May 17th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
This kind of themed week makes sense to me and is a worthwhile endeavor, I should think. Kim makes a good point about inadvertently instilling fear in our kids, so a balance of information and knowledge of the world is key (and I imagine good teaching should cover that)
Kevin
May 19th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I think your idea for a web safety week is great. My former private school is having an Internet Safety Night presentation given by a RCMP officer from the local Community Access Policing. I am also presenting a presentation before the officer on Web 2.0. I am attempting to bridge the fear that maybe instilled by the police officer by demonstrating the wonderful educational uses of Web 2.0. This audience is elementary school parents and I am hoping that between the police officer and myself, a former teacher of this school, we will be able to form a balance of “information and knowledge”. I think the most enlightening thought I have encountered on this subject was that “the same social skills required for real life and also required for virtual life.”
August 17th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
For a fun way to teach internet and social networking safety, here’s a unit that includes an instructional video and a quiz. It’s aimed at middle school and up.
http://www.auntlee.com/safety/
The video is a selection of silly clips supposedly posted to the MySpace pages of the famous auntlee.com puppy and some of her friends. The clips demonstrate mistakes kids can make – the clips and the quiz serve as a jumpstart to further discussions.
Kids can take the interactive Flash version online, or you can download a .pdf document and print it as a handout. The 10 question quiz covers the topics of cyber-bullying, privacy, safety, dangers of spyware and malware, etc.
The quiz doesn’t really focus on stranger-danger type concerns but rather gently and humorously reminds the reader that it’s possible to hurt people’s feelings, to mislead people who don’t realize you’re joking, to remember that online postings can be seen by anybody and that postings are often impossible to remove once posted.