Cyber-safety and educational technology

Recently The Columbian ran an editorial entitled, "Online Vigilance". As one who has fully embraced the use of educational technology, I also realize that we must be prudent in its use. Here are some tips from the NetSmartz Workshop, an organization sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Tips to Keep Your Children and Teens Safer When Using Social Networking Sites

1. Discuss the dangers and future repercussions with your child.
2. Enter into a safe-computing contract with your child about his or her use of these sites and computer use in general.
3. Enable computer Internet filtering features if they are available from your Internet service.
4. Install monitoring software or keystroke capture devices on your family computer that will help monitor your child's Internet activity.*
5. Know each of your child's passwords, screennames, and all account information.
6. Put the computer in a family area of the household and do not permit private usage.
7. Monitor what your child's friends are posting regarding your child's identity. Often children and their friends have accounts linked to one another, so it's not just your child's profile and information you need to worry about.
8. Know what other access your child has to computers and devices like cell phones and PDAs.
9. Report all inappropriate non-criminal behavior to the site through their reporting procedures.
10. Report criminal behavior to the appropriate law-enforcement agency including the NCMEC CyberTipline at http://www.cybertipline.com/ or the Internet Fraud Complaint Center at http://www.ic3.gov/.
11. Contact your legislators and request stronger laws against Internet crime.
12. Visit the NetSmartz Workshop at http://www.netsmartz.org/ for more information.
13. Remember that every day is Halloween on the Internet. People on the Internet are not always who they appear to be.

*For information about monitoring software, visit http://www.getnetwise.org/.

The blog that we use in class is NOT used for social networking. It is used as an educational tool that allows students to post their writing and get feedback from other student authors or teachers. All postings and/or comments must be approved by me before I allow them to get published. I have to read each and every posting and comment and select it for publishing or not. I chose this service expressly because it had these features that I wanted for elementary age students: no exposure to any advertisements, no email requirement, free for my students and the fact that all postings/comments must be seen by me first. A colleague of mine whom I met at an educational technology workshop some years ago has his third grade class on the same blogging service as do about 190, 000 other student and teacher bloggers.

Many of my students have already been posting their writings on the blog, it is exciting to see them using this new medium for their writing. Soon, I hope to have partner classrooms in our building, district, state, nation and beyond that we can collaborate with.

Blogging is just one more part of our educational technology along with the on-line access to Pearson Successnet, and Edline. We will be expanding our use of educational technology as it becomes more useful and again prudent to use.