How Hard is it to Target Kids Online?

Comment

Comment by Dana Dukic on May 12, 2008 at 1:19pm

I agree with Dianne about engaging librarians in school internet safety program. At the time I worked in a primary school library I developed a webpage with some basic internet safety rules and a number of interactive activities for kids to learn how to apply these rules in their daily surfing on the internet. I used to discuss internet safety with my students during their class library time. The page with internet safety activities got very popular with kids. They continued to explore it at lunchtime break, after school and during the weekend. Here is the link to the page:
http://clc.esf.edu.hk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=31307

Comment by Dianne Mckenzie on May 11, 2008 at 9:45pm

you can have a look at this page of the ALESS HK wiki (Association of Librarians in English Speaking Schools HK) there are a lot of links to more of the youtube safety on the internet videos. http://aless.wikispaces.com/Internet+Safety+resources

You need to include your schools librarian or teacher librarian in any sort of internet safety program you plan or implement. They have a whole school perspective and are able to help with resources and support and also usually have a lot of contact with the students outside of classroom time.

Comment by Clive on May 9, 2008 at 11:48am

I agree Paul, we do need to teach these skills (and not just to pupils... we all have our own digital footprint), but my concern is we can overstress the dangers and then things get blown out of proportion.

Before we know it, we have LAs, School Districts etc banning all sorts, including Youtube, Google etc.. oh, we already have that!!?

Comment by Paul McMahon on May 9, 2008 at 8:21am

Good Points Clive but I still maintain that we need to overtly teach this stuff, not just hope kids will pick it up. You have a good programme of ICT instruction at your school. I would be willing to bet that the majority of teachers out there would be left wanting when it came to assisting students to ensure that they do not put too much information on their social networking profiles.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is just the teachers that I work with who are needing to learn these skills for themselves. Interested in what others say.
Paul

Comment by Clive on May 9, 2008 at 8:16am

Facebook pledging to toughen up it's stance;

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2008-05-08-facebook-safeguards_N.htm?csp=34

The safety stuff on Bebo is also pretty good.

Comment by Clive on May 9, 2008 at 8:10am

But is this happening in the real world? Research into online predators; http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp632111.pdf suggests at it's most serious this is not happening and is completely blown out of proportion by the media. Those students who are likely to receive sexual approaches are those who engage in unsafe convesations & behaviour on the web.

We do need to teach good and safe conduct but it's important we do it in a sensible, balanced way. We are currenlty writing modules for delivery to years 3-8 on two levels. Firstly a 'Safety' level concentrating on SMART behaviour, but also a Digital Citizenship module looking at net conduct, cyber-bullying etc.

We're currently awaiting delivery of the lesson resources produced by the Ryan Halligan Trust; http://www.ryanpatrickhalligan.org/ - will post here when I've had chance to look at them.

There are lots of resources out there, it's just a case of finding the time to sift through them. One which I do look for older pupils is the 'Think Before You Post' stuff coming out of the US.