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:
  1. Monday – Cyber bullying
  2. Tuesday – Plagiarism
  3. Wednesday – Safe Surfing
  4. Thursday – Protecting your online identity
  5. 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?