Friday, June 6, 2008

Ten Tips for Internet Safety!

Protecting students from Internet dangers and distractions while still reaping its benefits is on every educators' tech priority list.

  1. Get technological safeguards in place.
  2. Put together a cyberspace safety curriculum for parents.
  3. Take advantage of already available Internet safety education programs.
  4. Have an acceptable use policy for all employees as well as students.
  5. Put an “early-warning system” into effect.
  6. Encourage teachers to become a part of the virtual world.
  7. Use the many Internet offerings that can contribute to educational creativity, but do it inside a “walled garden.”
  8. A picture is worth a thousand words. Include an image library in your “walled garden.”
  9. Create a repository for information about what works.
  10. When it comes to social networking sites like MySpace, educators should encourage the critical element—parental involvement.

**Adapted from Ten Tips for Internet Safety by Sheila Riley, June 1st, 2008 Edition of School CIO: K12 Technology Leaders

1 comment:

Aunt Lee said...

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.