Common Sense Tips

"Statistics vary, but at least 20% of our children will experience harassing, hateful, or insulting messages."

                                                      

I saw this from the Norton website and this is a pretty scary statistics.  I know this will continue to rise.  

TIP OF THE DAY:  

Limit your child's online usage to 30 minutes.  If they are to use it after that, let it be solely for homework, no social networking, IMs, etc.

Cyber World and the safety of our children

Technology has revolutionized the teaching and learning in schools.  Imagine the times that we have to lug all our textbooks in our backpacks every single day, to and from school (accounts for the many scoliosis cases I've seen) and then in many schools now, textbooks are accessible on the websites.  From lugging to logging-in, big change-huge as a matter of fact came into existence because of technology.  But in spite of this change, parents are still going back to using the textbooks instead of the textbooks online.  Why is this?  Is it because our children can by accident get into a website that might be harmful to them and the computer itself?  Indeed there is a risk of letting our children go online, but at the same time this is what the future of education--technology will be the biggest component. 

Students now are more technologically savvy than the previous generations. Because technology has been introduced in the classroom, their role as learners changed.  They are now more interactive.  They know that information can be access somewhere else aside from their textbooks.  The internet has given our children the world at a click of a button.      Students are actually more enthusiastic about a project and for some reason their learning is much richer than what the textbook can offer.  They content of their writing are far  deeper and comprehensive than what it used to be (researching from encyclopedias, magazines, and other forms of print).  Yet we are still apprehensive in letting our children surf the net.  

I truly believe that as a responsible adult, we have the responsibility to educate the students about the importance of safety in the cyber world just as we want them to be safe in crossing the street or in the playground.  The responsibility of the teacher has changed as well more so as an administrator--there is a huge accountability.  Not only do we need to educate them with information and necessary skills to be successful but we are there to protect them from things that the students do not physically see and feel but will affect them in ways that can be harmful to their success.  We have to be cognizant of what they are accessing, stay with them, watch them, and  communicate with them on a more personal way not in a technological way.  At the same we need to be the model for them.  They emulate what they see and if we are not conscious of how we behave technologically, then these children will do as they see as.  

References:  

http://www.onguardonline.gov/articles/0031-kids-privacy

http://www.onguardonline.gov/features/feature-0004-featured-net-cetera-toolkit

http://www.ctap4.net/projects/cybersafety.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/using-technology-todays-classroom-440690.html?cat=4

http://www.coppa.org/