Safe Internet Usage in the Classroom Lynne Schalman The Original Teaching Company
Avoid Net Recreation In school, Net use should be limited to educational pursuits Ban recreational activities including fantasy baseball, shopping, chatting Web use should be restricted to the school’s system: no use of AOL or Earthlink accounts
Issues to Consider: An Overview Who should make these decisions? Who will be updating the approved sites? Do you want to rely on third party decisions? What kinds of content is the issue? –Pornography, violence, hate groups, weapons How to use Teaching Moments
Don’t Fence Me In Students need to be fenced in Create a safe home page Create a safe list of favorites Investigate kid-safe index pages and search engines –Kid Safe Search SitesKid Safe Search Sites Surfing rather than directed activities –Grade level variations –Using Software Links
Be Proactive Faculty meetings to discuss what ifs Guidelines for consequences in AUP Educate parents
Educate Students Rules about privacy for oneself and others Definitions of appropriate and inappropriate content and behavior Guidelines for what information can be shared Being careful about strangers and no Chat rooms Post the rules What to do if they arrive at an inappropriate site Develop critical skills: Internal Filtering and Blocking Grade Level Appropriate Internet Usage Licenses
Monitors On Where are your Monitors? Teacher Monitoring? –Supervised Internet Usage –Behind the Scenes checking In Netscape: about:global Check History Check Cookies Software Monitoring?
To Filter or Not To Filter The Problem with overblocking The Challenge to underblock Filtering Software –Safe Surfin’Safe Surfin’ Enable Browser Content Controls
Curriculum Integration is the Key Webquests Specific Research projects and activities Limit number of Web Sites allowed for bibliography Integrate Web as a magic whiteboard tool
Other Issues Plagiarism netiquette Time Wasters Gender Matters Evaluating Web Pages