Internet Safety

The Internet in Education

The internet can be both wonderful and scary for everyone. As teachers and students we can use the internet for so many wonderful things. We can quickly have large amounts of information on any subject we want to learn about, but not all of it may be accurate. We must train our eyes to be able to recognize professional or scam websites. Things I would do to evaluate a site would be to look at the URL (that is the numbers and letters after the http: in the white bar up top). If we see a persons name or a ~ or % sign, these are good indicators of websites that might give false information. Looking at the domain will help as well, meaning is it a .com webpage which isn't very reliable or is it .org or .edu that is much more reliable? I would also make sure to take the information that I get and compare it with other similar sites. You can look and see if the site looks professionally designed or if some random person slopped it together? This you can do by looking at the pictures and checking the links on the site to see if you can move through quickly. Definitely find out more about the author of the site; is it a professor of a University that is writing information that he has researched or is it a 17 year old kid who was just playing around on the internet?

The internet is also helpful because it allows us to keep in touch with friends and coworkers. We can chat with and email them and work together on projects with them. This allows us to have good communication, to hear other peoples creative ideas and to keep in touch. Along with these good things there are also things we must watch out for. People form everywhere can access our email and send us mail that may be disturbing or can even damage our computer. We can also meet some very interesting people on chat rooms that may not be safe. Make sure to never give information to anyone you do not know and trust. It is also a good idea to change your passwords often so that others wont be able to find it out.

The internet however should not be over used. Kids like to move around, they want to see and feel things for themselves. We may have tons of information on the internet but so does a good library. There may be constructive games on the internet but board games in the classroom allow you to interact and get to know your classmates. We can email a close friend or get information from a colleague but it can also be done by speak face to face.

There are so many resources for educators on the internet, games such as math or spelling activities, typing assessments, there are lesson plans and sites meant for organizing all the information you collect. Today more then ever media is a great tool for teaching. Once we know how to work safely on the internet we can have access to all these wonderful things.

Movie Review:
The video went through a lot of the same things that stuck out to me as I did the internet webquest. These are very important facts to consider whenever search for or doing things on the internet. At times it was hard for me to read some of the words. At one point they had the words very large rolling across the screen and I got bored and dizzy watching. I liked the visuals and was reminded again that children of every age are using the internet. They are being exposed to it younger and younger which means that sooner in their life they could come across something that may make them uncomfortable. I think that internet safety should be encouraged to all parents. They need to know where their children are spending time on the internet.