Download Safe Internet Usage in the Classroom

Safe Internet Usage
in the Classroom
Lynne Schalman
The Original Teaching Company
[email protected]
Avoid Net Recreation
 In school, Net use should be limited to
educational pursuits
 Ban recreational activities including fantasy
baseball, shopping, chatting
 Web use should be restricted to the school’s
system: no use of AOL or Earthlink
accounts
Issues to Consider: An Overview
 Who should make these decisions?
 Who will be updating the approved sites?
 Do you want to rely on third party
decisions?
 What kinds of content is the issue?
– Pornography, violence, hate groups, weapons
 How to use Teaching Moments
Don’t Fence Me In
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Students need to be fenced in
Create a safe home page
Create a safe list of favorites
Investigate kid-safe index pages and search
engines
– Kid Safe Search Sites
 Surfing rather than directed activities
– Grade level variations
– Using Software Links
Be Proactive
 Faculty meetings to discuss what ifs
 Guidelines for consequences in AUP
 Educate parents
Educate Students
 Rules about privacy for oneself and others
 Definitions of appropriate and inappropriate
content and behavior
 Guidelines for what information can be shared
 Being careful about strangers and no Chat rooms
 Post the rules
 What to do if they arrive at an inappropriate site
 Develop critical skills: Internal Filtering and
Blocking
 Grade Level Appropriate Internet Usage
Licenses
Monitors On
 Where are your Monitors?
 Teacher Monitoring?
– Supervised Internet Usage
– Behind the Scenes checking
• In Netscape: about:global
• Check History
• Check Cookies
 Software Monitoring?
To Filter or Not To Filter
 The Problem with overblocking
 The Challenge to underblock
 Filtering Software
– Safe Surfin’
 Enable Browser Content Controls
Curriculum Integration is the Key
 Webquests
 Specific Research projects and activities
 Limit number of Web Sites allowed for
bibliography
 Integrate Web as a magic whiteboard tool
Other Issues
 Plagiarism
 E-mail netiquette
 Time Wasters
 Gender Matters
 Evaluating Web Pages