Internet Safety for Students

Image from: www.yourfamilyshealth.com/kids_health/back_to_school/kid_computer.jpg

     As I was talking to my younger sister last night, she told me a story, that although I admit I found to be comical, was a little disturbing. Our ten year old cousin, she told me, had gotten in trouble at school for typing in the search term "Lady Gaga's boobs" while he was in the computer lab at school. Now, yes, it is kind of funny, but it made me start to think: If he is comfortable enough to type this in at school, what is he looking up at home and what is he doing on the internet (he has a facebook, which also seems strange to me). 

Someone should explain to him that what he tried to search was not appropriate and someone should also be monitoring the time he spends on the internet, as well as his internet activity. Unfortunately both of his parents work late and he spends a lot of unsupervised time at home. Whether or not you can always be there, take the time to discuss with your student the purposes for the internet and what is and is not appropriate. Consider setting up filters or time limiters if you have internet access at home. Children spend a lot of time in front of the television and computer, encourage your child to find another entertaining activity. Most importantly make sure you know what your child is doing on the internet, because there are a lot of dangers/issues that he or she could run into. 

Websites with internet safety tips: 

Internet Safety for Kids

Tips for Internet Safety for Children

QUEST TIME

Web quest are a fairly new concept to me. I don't know if they were around when I was in school, but I never had the opportunity to do one. This is a shame because I think they are a great way to build on knowledge and a really interesting activity for students in the classroom. In class this semester we created webquests and lesson plans in which the web quest was to be done within a series of days. I have a lot about webquest since then and I think it would be difficult for a teacher to take 3 or more consecutive days for students to finish a webquest. I think a webquest would be very effective it it dealt with more material, an entire unit perhaps and was worked on every other couple of days. A webquest could also be a good addition to a lesson for more advanced students to complete as homework.

If you are the parent of an elementary student, consider finding a web quest that your student would find interesting and encourage them to complete it over a long break or the summer.

Webquests can be difficult to create but they are a fantastic tool. There are plenty of them available online as resources. If you are interested go to:

Quest Garden or Zunal

The Secret Life of a Digital Story Master

Lights! Camera! Action!

I can proudly say that this week I completed my fourth Digital Story (DS). This time I created one for my technology in education class. Now I must admit after completing three DSs I thought this project would be a breeze. I should have know better because technology is not my thing and no matter how proficient I may think I am with iMovie, I always run into some sort of issue.

For this project I thought it would be effective to focus on a civics VA S.O.L. I choose the SOL 3.11 because I thought that being able to show students an example of serving the community in a video would be easier for them to understand. One of my good friends at school is in ROTC and she loves to volunteer, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to showcase her as the perfect citizen. I made her sit outside the library with me and interviewed her. It was a sunny day and there were lots of people walking by and the clip of our interview was far from perfect. "Oh I'll just edit the clip and stick it into my DS I thought to myself." I put off dealing with it for the moment, thinking I was the DS master and could handle anything involving iMovie. Well I was wrong. As I mentioned before this was fourth DS, but it was the first time I had tried using a video clip and not just pictures and audio. Not only did I have no idea how to edit the clip, but I could not even figure out how to get it into my iMovie track. Needless to say I was very frustrated.

Yes this project was frustrating but, now I think my issues with editing the clip were for the best. Because I could not edit it I only used the very end and decided to tell Alex's story myself instead. I think telling it as a story ended up making it more relatable to third graders than an interview might have been.

If you would like to check my DS out and hear Alex's story, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLhTuy3lJQQ

If you are interested in learning more about what a digital story is visit the University of Richmond's Digital Storytelling blog!

Richmond Digital Storytelling

Podcasting

I created a podcast about the life of Helen Keller and her contributions to society. I think this would be a very useful tool to front-load information at the start of a lesson about Helen Keller.

You can find it on youtube!