Internet Safety

The issue of online safety is an issue that needs to be addressed in Education, as the internet and digital devices provide connections with the world outside the classroom. While there are many positives in making connections, training our students to develop good habits and to discern unsafe situations is both a concern and a need each time they go online.

At our last Professional Development Day on Blogging, there was discussion around this issue. There were some great ideas and resources shared through the course of the day.To introduce the day we looked at a Primary Tech post on Teaching Children about Digital Footprints. Kathleen Morris discusses how many of websites and lesson plans focuses on the negative aspects of digital footprint. While this is a concern, Kathleen maintains that there needs to be balance in the way we approach our teaching of digital footprints. Students need to be shown appropriate ways to use the internet and to be aware that their behaviour can have consequences even when it is online.

In our discussion, some suggestions were made to help students be accountable for their behaviour and to ensure students are staying within the guidelines that they have been taught.

• having peer monitors for blogs, who check each others posts and comments.
• have a checklist of what a blog post or comment should contain. 
• discussing and promoting good quality comments through sharing and discussion.
• having a specific purpose for blog posts and comment which is using them for an academic purpose not a social one, 
• identifying good Netiquette in blog posts,

Listed below were some of the resources identified as being useful to teach Internet Safety. 

Do you have any ideas for teaching Internet Safety? Do you know of any great resources to share?