Digital Safety in the Classroom

Today we live in a world where everything is becoming more technologically advanced—classrooms have smart boards, most establishments have Wi-Fi-, and Google is working on a self-driving car. Along with all the technological advancements, younger generations are gaining access and being exposed to technology devices at a faster rate, so I believe digital safety is an important subject that needs be taught and discussed in all schools and all grade levels. I think that if we start educating students about digital safety at a younger age, we can protect more students from the dangers they may come across online and encourage better online citizenship.

       I feel that if a teacher chooses to have their students use the computer and access the Internet for resources, assignments, or educational games that it is the teacher’s responsibility to educate their students about digital safety before doing so. As a future special education teacher who is interested in working in the elementary level, I would use BrainPopJr.’s video “Digital Safety with Annie and Moby” to teach my students about digital safety. The video covers the dangers of chatting with strangers online, sharing personal information, and downloading content without the permission of a teacher or parent. The video covers the major areas of Internet safety, but teaches it in a way that is easy for kindergartners to understand. BrainPop Jr. also has assessment tools the teacher can use. After the video, there is an option for the viewer to take a short quiz. After the viewer has taken the quiz, there is an option to print out a certificate with their score that verifies that they were able to comprehend the lesson in the video. Below is a YouTube video titled "Using BrainPop  Jr. to teach about internet safety," form BrainPop Jr.'s channel that shows educators how to incorporate the internet safety video into a lesson. The video also highlights the activities and resources below the video that can be used in different teaching strategies. As a student who does not have any experience of teaching a class, I found this video to be very helpful. It gave some really good tips about what to go over before playing the video and it also showed viewers where they can access lesson plans that would go well with the video and the topic of teaching internet safety.

       
       I would also refer to Richard Byrne’s article titled, “Five Good Resources for Teaching Digital Safety and Citizenship for Elementary School Students” (2014). The sources in this article are fun and age appropriate that teaches students about responsible digital behavior and how to spot dangers on the Internet. This article is a good resource for all elementary teachers to have so when they need ideas on how to teach digital safety to their students, they have at least five in mind and ready to use.

       For this assignment, my group and I used Emaze as our presentation tool and we used iMovie to create a video to help the class identify copyright infringements and issues. I really enjoyed using Emaze because they had really fun and exciting templates. Emaze was very similar to Microsoft PowerPoint so it was simple for us to use. I was not aware that I could download the presentation to my desktop so I could present without having to be online, but that is something I will keep in mind when I do future presentations with Emaze. The only thing I did not like about Emaze was that the user was not able to share the project and collaborate with others. This made it difficult for us to edit our individual parts at our convenience. We had to list down all the adjustments we needed to make on our Google Doc and assign one person to fix everything. It was not too much of an inconvenience; it just made the process of finishing the project a little longer. My group also used iMovie to edit our short skit. IMovie is a tool that I had never used before and it took some time for me to get the hang of it. At first I tried to navigate through the tool on my own, but it was a bit confusing so I ended up looking at tutorials to help me finish editing the video.

       My group and I tried to use a different communication tool while putting together this project, but it did not work out the way we hoped it would. At first we tried to use Join.me. Each of us downloaded the application to our desktops and set up a time to hold the meeting. Once everyone was logged on and was in the meeting, we started to have some issues. The audio lagged really badly and the video kept freezing. Since Join.me was not working for us we tried to use OoVoo again, but the audio and video started to lag as well. I think we were having issues with lag on Join.me and OoVoo due to poor Internet connection at our locations. After a while, we gave up on trying to video chat online because it was taking too long, so we ended up calling each other to assign our individual parts.

       Digital safety can be a very dry subject with a lot of information for students to take in, but I think the class did very well. Each group covered all the basic content areas for their topic and their audience interaction made the lesson fun and exciting. I really think that all five topics of Fair User Practice and Copyrights, Digital Safety and Privacy, Cyberbullying, Textual Harassment and Sexting, and Phishing and Pharming should all be included when teaching digital safety for secondary level students, post secondary students, and educators. Many of these topics are correlated, so it makes perfect sense to go over all 5. For this assignment I would add at lest 10 more minutes to each group’s presentation. I feel like each topic had a lot of information to cover that many of the groups were rushing towards the end so they could stay within the time limit. I feel that by allotting an extra 10 minutes to the presentation would allow the groups to give a smooth and proper conclusion to their presentation and it would allow a few more minutes for the class to completely understand and appreciate the interactive activities. Another adjustment I would add to this assignment would be a digital pamphlet or a handout with the basic information of the groups’ topics along with the links to their resources. I feel like it would benefit us as future educators to keep this information in our personal file so we can reference them when we need to. If we have the resources on hand, we can share them with other educators and we can send the digital pamphlets to our students at the beginning of the school year so they are aware of the dangers on the internet and they will know what behaviors are expected of them when they are online and when they use other peoples’ works.

       In conclusion, I feel that the digital safety project was very informative and that each group did a great job. The two main adjustments I would make to the project would be to add more time to the presentation and to have the groups create a digital pamphlet with the major points of their topic along with the links to their resources. I feel that digital safety should be taught in all school and all grade levels. If students are educated on digital safety at an early age, they will be more cognizant of the dangers they may come across while online and they will learn how to have better online citizenship and treat other people online with respect.

BrainPop Jr. Digital Safety with Annie and Moby. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2016 from https://jr.brainpop.com/artsandtechnology/technology/internetsafety/

BrainPop Jr. Using BrainPop Jr. to teach about internet safety. (April 10, 2015) Retrieved April 26, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VnatA-Xdk0

 

Byrnes, R. Five Good Resources for Teaching Digital Safety and Citizenship for Elementary School Students. (August 5, 2015). Retrieved April 26, 2016 from http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/08/five-good-resources-for-teaching.html#.VyLlJj-9e9g