Thursday, October 11, 2012

Keeping Students Safe Online: What Works__Review

The article made it clear that bullying and harassment are the most common risk students face when using technology. It makes complete sense that this is most commonly occurring between peers and not strangers. It is foolish to ignore the risk of sexual predators, illegal content, and identity frauds, but educating students on how to protect themselves from these phenomena is much easier. One of the biggest keys that I pulled from the article was acknowledging that students who are at the most risk online are also at the most risk offline.
I found many great ideals in the Netiquette section and several specific strategies towards teaching students how to refrain from risky online behaviors. There were also many ideals that I had a hard time visualizing a course of action for. Offline bullying, harassment, and character fraud is an epidemic that's hard enough to prevent. I'm afraid tackling these issues online are going to be way harder to objectify. Even with those great ten tips, we as teachers are in for a challenging battle that shouldn't be idealized or generalized. We are taught in Woodring not to use broad statements like "help students to understand _____". With something as powerful as the internet, I think our standards should be raised not lowered.
Overall, this article was very useful. I think its an awesome tool for raising awareness and preventing the potential dangers our students face on a daily basis. I loved the application of: turning away from scare tactics, focusing on reinforcement, teaching skills to sort information, and using appropriate social interactions.