Cyber-Safety for Kids

I am very passionate about teaching my students how to be cyber-smart. Since I have taught the students about so many great website and introduced them to blogging, I feel obligated to teach them so that they are protected. Many teachers skip over teaching the students how to be safe on the internet because the school district has a 'fantastic filter' that it used so that it never puts the children in harms way. However, what about when they go home and get onto the internet? Or what if the filter is down one day? Why not teach children from the beginning how to use it properly so that when they encounter something in the future (which they will!), they will know how to handle it. 

I recently heard some DJ's on the radio station talking one morning about these new bad things going on in middle schools. One lady was describing the meeting that she had attended the night before. It was a meeting hosted by parents of current middle school girls to inform parents who have children about to be in middle school. One thing they described was how the color of the lipstick or lip gloss a girl wears tells boys what she is willing to do. They went on to describe numerous scandalous 'things' that could happen to your daughter and the DJ who attended was saying how she was so freaked out to send her daughter. Then, the other DJ pointed out that there are a million situations that could be presented to your child at school and that it would be impossible to sit your child down and go through them one by one. However, if you have raised your child with firm values in place they should be able to handle any of those situations thrown at them. So, why am I blabbering on about middle school scandals? I believe that it relates so well to the topic of cyber safety. If we can teach our children the real 'values' with using the internet then they should be able to handle anything that encounters them. We all know how vast the internet is. There is no way that we will be able to visit each website to let children know what is and isn't appropriate. Let's teach them the 'values' to protect themselves!

OK...off my rant. When I first began my class blog with my students I required each of them to watch the following video that I created. It went through the key points that I believe children should know when blogging. I even posted this as my first blog entry and asked my students what other rules we should follow.

Another great website that I had my students play with is Internet Safety with Professor Garfield. This is an interactive ‘choose your own fate’ site that allows students to act out several situations that they might encounter online. There are lessons on online safety and cyberbullying. It is very kid-friendly and presents the information in a easy to understand way. 

Also, I really enjoyed the attachments that were in this module. I liked them so much that I sent shared several with the parents of my students, such as the Netiquitte Family Plan. I really hope that they take the time to create a family discussion on this topic.