Weekly Post - Internet Safety

Although there is access to many inappropriate materials on the Internet, the Internet is an invaluable resource. The Internet gives us access to oceans of information at our fingertips that would otherwise be limited to the resources within our physical reach. We no longer have to spend countless hours searching through libraries to find information we need, with the click of a button we have millions of resources set before us. Another great thing about the Internet is it is or can be immediately updated whereas with books it takes time to revise and republish information. As well as having instantaneous access to informative resources, the Internet allows people around the world to share ideas. This is especially useful for teachers because they can share ideas and lesson plans with each other and not have to do everything on their own. People can work collaboratively on the Internet because it is can be accessed almost anywhere in the world, you no longer have to be physically in reach in order to work on the same project. The Internet is an incredibly valuable resource and great time-saver.

Because there is access to just about everything on the Internet, it is important to evaluate sites to make sure they are appropriate for students. There are many dangers on the Internet and as teachers we need to make sure we are doing everything in our power to steer children clear of those dangers. Another thing to evaluate sites for is making sure they are worthwhile and useful to the students. If they are not valuable to the students there is no point in using them. An important thing to evaluate is accuracy. Everyone can publish things on the Internet so it is important that you check the sources of information to make sure they are accurate and reliable.

To evaluate websites I’ve adopted Kathy Shrocks’ 5 W's.

WHO wrote the pages and are they an expert? Is a biography of the author included? How can I find out more about the author?

WHAT does the author say is the purpose of this site? WHAT else might the author have in mind for the site? WHAT makes the site easy to use? WHAT information is included and does this information differ from other sites?

WHEN was the site created? WHEN was the site last updated?

WHERE does the information come from? WHERE can I look to find out more about the sponsor of this site?

WHY is this site useful for my purpose? WHY should I use this information? WHY is this page better than another?

I also as myself other important questions like:

What domain does this site use? Is it a prefffered domain such as .edu, .gov, .org, .net?

Does the URL include a personal name or a tilde (~) or a percentage symbol (%) which indicates a personal page.

Does the page have a lot of advertising? Is that its perpose?

Are the page author’s credentials relative to the material?

What other sites link to this page?

Does the page cite reliable sources?

I can try to keep my students safe by sharing my Internet safety tips with them and their parents. By letting students and parents know how to evaluate websites they can use the Internet more to their advantage. Knowing what to look for in websites will help students to eliminate the bad websites and use the good. With teaching preschoolers, I would focus on educating parents on how to evaluate websites. I would post these tips on my blog or send it out in a newsletter. I would also inform parents of the educational websites that I have evaluated and approved by my standards for their consideration.

Video Post
I thought the video outlined very good Internet Safety tips. This would be a good video to present to a class before giving out an assignment that uses the internet, although the class would need to know how to read beforehand so I'm kind of out of luck with the preschoolers. Although this video was good, I think the presentation could vastly be improved. It wasn't very interesting; it laid out all the information but that's about all. Also some of the effects were not very well thought out, like in the rule #6 how the words scrolled across the screen in a huge font; it was really hard to keep track of the words let alone the whole sentence. All in all, it was a good video to introduce Internet Safety tips.