At our school, we have compacts for Acceptable Use Policies that are signed by the student, their parent, and the teacher. Yet we don’t sit down and have a discussion with the children, I suspect because we thought they were too young. However, after reading Richardson (2010) I agree that we need to take extra precautions as students are using the Web at younger and younger ages. We need to teach and model for the little ones surfing the Web in safe ways. I found an entire lesson plan on Edutopia titled “Protecting Private Information Online” geared just for kindergarten. The author says we have done a great job teaching “Stranger Danger” now we need to apply that to online use. This lesson asks the students questions like “what is a stranger?” and “what kind of things should we not tell a stranger?”
Next I found a YouTube video created by The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre which uses a game format to teach children about not giving out your personal information online. I liked this video because for a moment I felt like it was only children playing the game until one of the game characters starts being too nosey. This video also dealt with netiquette as one of the characters is very rude to the children during the game. This video would be a great introduction to talk to children about cyber bullying. If you are interested, watch the video below this post.
NetSmartz Kids was another good website that had short safety videos geared for young children. This site seems to be maintained on a regular basis as it has seasonal activities. For October they discussed Halloween safety tips. Another video they have produced is Bad Netiquette Stinks. This video deals with children being rude to each other and the main culprit is Potty Mouth Pete! The solution is a short quest the kids take to disable Potty Mouth Pete’s computer. It incorporates music that has lyrics that deal with netiquette and after a few viewings I’m sure the students would begin to sing along, and this would help them memorize the cyber rules.
After visiting some websites and watching some of the tutorial videos geared towards young children, I was left with these few points. Even young students can be taught about important internet issues such as; cyber bulling, netiquette and stranger danger. These topics are not just important to online safety but are important to their safety in everyday life as well. I plan to introduce these topics very soon in my own classroom.
Next I found a YouTube video created by The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre which uses a game format to teach children about not giving out your personal information online. I liked this video because for a moment I felt like it was only children playing the game until one of the game characters starts being too nosey. This video also dealt with netiquette as one of the characters is very rude to the children during the game. This video would be a great introduction to talk to children about cyber bullying. If you are interested, watch the video below this post.
NetSmartz Kids was another good website that had short safety videos geared for young children. This site seems to be maintained on a regular basis as it has seasonal activities. For October they discussed Halloween safety tips. Another video they have produced is Bad Netiquette Stinks. This video deals with children being rude to each other and the main culprit is Potty Mouth Pete! The solution is a short quest the kids take to disable Potty Mouth Pete’s computer. It incorporates music that has lyrics that deal with netiquette and after a few viewings I’m sure the students would begin to sing along, and this would help them memorize the cyber rules.
After visiting some websites and watching some of the tutorial videos geared towards young children, I was left with these few points. Even young students can be taught about important internet issues such as; cyber bulling, netiquette and stranger danger. These topics are not just important to online safety but are important to their safety in everyday life as well. I plan to introduce these topics very soon in my own classroom.