Monthly Archives: April 2012

Cyberbullying

April 24, 2012
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlwithbutterflywings/

 

Parents and teachers need to work together to educate our students and make them aware of cyberbullying.  At school this education has to start early.  All students need clear guidelines when using technology and firm consequences when breaking these guidelines.  Students need to understand what cyberbullying is and the impact it has on others.  There are great resources to teach this available online such as commonsensemedia.org and brainpop.com to name a few. It is also important to take the time to create a classroom community where all members of the class feel respected and safe.  Being diligent about emphasizing the importance of Character Education and teaching children how to be caring, responsible citizens that show integrity is important. 

 

Parents play a key role in educating their children about cyberbullying as well.   They need  an awareness of cyberbullying and the tools and resources available out there to help them.  I have listed some websites below that our technology specialist shared with parents at a meeting about cyberbullying.  The sites share many things that will help educate parents from the teen chat decoder where you can type in things (lol or pos) and the decoder will give you the meanings (laugh out loud, parent over shoulder), a parent guide to facebook, definitions of cyberbullying, online safety tips and many more.  When equipping parents with these helpful websites it gives them more information and opens the lines of communication between them and their children even more.  The importance of conversation was highlighted in a quote from the article, Talk With Your Kids About Being Safer Online,

 Although there are plenty of tools that can be used to try to control or monitor what your kids are doing online, the best approach for most parents is that oldest of tools called conversation. Having an occasional chat with your kids about how they’re using technology can go a long way towards them safer, and learning more about actual risks can help keep you saner.

Websites for parents and teachers:

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/about-us/our-mission 

http://www.safekids.com/

http://www.teenchatdecoder.com/

http://www.netsmartz411.org/

http://www.facebookforparents.org/

http://www.brainpop.com/

So the responsibility of educating students about cyberbullying lies with the teachers and parents.  We need to begin by modeling acceptable use and coaching our students/children to do the same. 

Unclear about Copyright

April 21, 2012
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Some rights reserved by opensourceway

 

I taught in Canada for several years where copyright laws were clear on print materials.  We had big signs hanging over our photocopiers listing the rules of what you could legally copy.   Now teaching in Kuwait, my Canadian copyright rules for print materials are no longer adhered to.

I have not kept up with the copyright laws in our digital age where so much information is available quickly and easily, and after this week of reading and reflecting about copyright, I have many questions and concerns.

Why is it so easy to illegally download music, tv shows and newly released movies? How do we teach students not to do it, when it is so easily accessible?  How do we stop from doing it ourselves?  Do we stifle creativity putting barriers on everything? How do we avoid letting students use pictures from Google Images without citing?  Is sharing you tube videos in class okay when often their content source is unclear?

Copyright, giving credit, and citing sources when using technology was an area I was okay to be a bit unclear on.  Sometimes not knowing what you are doing is wrong, makes it easier to do.  Now that I am becoming more aware of digital copyright issues, it creates more work and more worry.  It took me more time to link two photos to my blog entry last week than it did to write my reflection.  I am hesitant to use photos in my blog entry, now that I know I have give credit.  I am glad to be learning how to give credit to individual’s work, but am just saying that it makes it more time consuming.    I know it will become habit and get easier the more I do it.  (I had to rewatch Jeff’s video on Adding An Image and Citing Source in A Blog Post for this blog entry too).

As Wesley Froger wrote in his blog reflection called, Understanding and Respecting Copyright is a Problem For Many:

 As educators, we need accurate and practical guidelines to follow when using and re-using media in student multimedia projects as well as our own.

The creative commons website and especially the video explaining it are valuable resources for students and staff.   Comfight.com is also a good tool and one students could use easily.  This course is challenging me and makes me want to use technology properly so I can be a positive role model for students.

Some rights reserved by laihiu

 

Privacy Online??

April 12, 2012
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocrowley/

A few years ago we were traveling in Beijing and left our camera in a taxi.  It was close to the end of our trip, so we had many pictures of our family hiking on the Great Wall, shopping in the markets, and hanging out in Beijing.  We also still had Halloween pictures on the camera and other family random shots.  Of course we never recovered our camera and although our family is quite calm, it bothered me a bit at the time that someone has part of our history and could do whatever they wanted with our photos.  Did these photos get erased?  Shared with others? Put on the internet?… (I should mention that we had two cameras with us, so we still have some great shots of our visit to The Great Wall.. thankfully!).

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/o5com/

I’ve never really been too concerned about my privacy on line.  But this course has really made me think more about the privacy issue.  I’m still not really worried about myself as much as I am about my children and students.  I don’t think there is such a thing as privacy online.  Many children have phones with cameras and video cameras in them and although phones aren’t always allowed at school, we know they are at school.  I worry about cyber bullying for our students.  The article by John Brownlee’s which discussed the app ”Girls Around Me” was eye opening. It is a good teaching tool to show our older students and children that they need to be aware apps like this are available and I’m sure more are on the way.  We need to educate our students so they are aware of their lack of privacy online.  We need to teach students to read the fine print  and carefully research privacy settings for online use.

So as we read about in past weeks, it is up to us to ensure we have positive digital footprints.  We need to be proactive and be known online to future employers and associates.  As Jeff mentioned in his blog post, Let Your Presence Be Known ,

 ”There is not only power in the knowledge, but there is also power of the presence. Get social, get connected, and let your presence be known!”

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