Internet safety Reflection

09-26-2008

We should use the internet because it contains many useful, fun, exciting, resourceful, and educational websites that me and my students can utilize in my classroom!! As long as Educators teach their students proper Internet Safety and give them the websites as needed in the classroom the Internet can be just as useful as a library! I had so much fun doing this assignment; i wanted to play on the websites i found and i book marked almost all of the websites you gave us as resources that i can use in my classroom. This has opened my eyes to the vast resources that i have through UEN to help me with my teaching!

But we should only use the internet as a tool in our classroom- "nothing can take the place of a great teacher in the classroom". Teaching still happens in the classroom and the internet cannot do all our teaching for us or do all that our students require help with. There are also many dangers with using the internet: preditors, not credible resources, un-useful websites and dangerous websites- that have content not appropriate for children to use.

We as educators should evaluate sites we use for our students safety, to give our students credibile websites to use, to keep ourselves as educators safe, and to teach our students how a good websites functions.

Questions to ask about a website

1- Does the website connect to outside links?
2-Does the website end in: .org, .gov, or .edu?
3-Does the website have a lot of advertisements
4-Does the website have a lot of pop-ups?
5- Is the website easy to use?
6-When was the site updated?
7- Can I find information about the producer/sponsor?
8-Does the Website take along time to load?

I can keep my students safe on the internet by giving them Internet Safety Games to play, showing them what bad websites look like, give them a list of safety questions to ask about the website they are surfing on, and teach them to use common sense when surfing on the internet. I can also teach them to tell their parents immediatly if they see something on a site that makes them feel uncomfortable. If they are in my classroom i will teachi them to tell me so i know what websites to block from the computers.