Finding Common Ground

Intermediate level students in my district had the opportunity to hear about being safer while online from Chuck Favata this week. Our sixth grade students were faced with information about cyberbullying and online predators, while the seventh and eighth grade students heard mainly about online predators. I haven’t attended many middle school presentations, but even I thought it was remarkably quiet for such a large group of teens in one place.

I’m hoping they were really listening and they take the time in the next week or so to apply some of tips from the presentation to keep themselves safer online. I don’t honestly believe that we can keep students from social networks, nor do I think that’s the answer. I believe that arming the students and their parents with information about what can really happen if they don’t get safe and then actually showing them what to do is the route the schools should be following.

Tips from the presenter:
*keep your profile/space private
*never put your school name online
*never put your friends’ screennames in your profile/blog/away message
*be able to put a face with every screen name on your buddy/friend list
*don’t post things you wouldn’t want your parents to see
*remember the Whole World is Watching (www)

There were other tips, but if each student remembered these few, and practiced them, we’d be on the road to a safer online presence for our students.

A one hour presentation is a good start, but if there were more access/use of social networking type activities in school we could actually be teaching this type of online responsibility.  Shouldn’t we be doing that?

Technorati Tags: education technology safety

Filed under: Learning From and