4 April: Internet Safety

In class I learned about three major areas of internet safety; cyber ethics, cyber bullying, and sexting. We also discussed about what our roles as parents and teachers are in teaching our students about these three areas. I believe it is every parent’s responsibility to teach their children about internet safety, but unfortunately not all parents take on this responsibility. As a teacher I believe that it is my responsibility to teach my students about internet safety. I know that many of the topics (especially sexting) in internet safety are controversial, but I believe that our students need to be informed about what internet safety is and what the consequences are of not being safe. I believe that cyber ethics is going to be the easiest for me to teach as a history teacher; when we write our research papers I will be able to take the time to teach students about triangulation and about how to find reliable sources. One way of doing this is to use a protected search engine through UEN. Cyber bullying will probably be the second easiest internet safety aspect to teach; I know that I am a history teacher but I believe it is my responsibility to teach my students about this. I could do a current event about bullying and we could cover cyber bullying along with it. I also feel that sexting can be covered the same way. I do not believe that it needs to be a sex talk but you can cover the ramifications of sexting with your class without having to talk about what sex is. In the future I as a teacher need to keep up on the technology because in ten years the issues with the technology maybe different; it is important as a teacher to be aware of what the internet safety needs of my students are and to teach them how to be safe.