Internet+Safety

Internet Safety
 * __Description__**

For this assignment, we developed a lesson/project/unit plan that had students engage in Internet Safety. As individuals, we researched a component of Internet Safety, then create that plan that would cover it for our students. Again, the task was a sandbox environment, allowing us to use whatever creativity we had to develop our lesson. It was to come out engaging and authentic, but not too preachy as to turn the students off.

My lesson involved the use of facebook.com and online communities to educate students as to the appropriate behaviors to use when dealing with others on the Internet. Online Interaction and safety had become more of a forefront of discussion, with there actually being recorded suicides that resulted from cyber-bullying. Students need to be informed about the possible outcomes, responses, and repercussions of their interactions on the Web.


 * __Process__**

If I can gather anything from middle school students, it is that they love to talk. And they love to be able to do it virtually. Myspace, Facebook, AIM... whatever it is, they enjoy doing it if it involves social interactions. However, many of the students are not completely clear as to how they should behave online. This is also easily picked up by listening to their conversations, and especially present in those lovely occassions where their cell phone is confiscated because they get caught texting in class, and then the administration finds all the crazily dumb stuff they have sent that is highly, highly inappropriate.

This lesson was meant to address those issues. It can be found through the following download-link:


 * __Reflection__**

This was another interesting lesson to write. However, the breadth and scope of it seems to have gotten away from me a little bit. Just encompassing all the ideas I wanted to address through this lesson became more and more as I thought of additional content I wanted to include. I loved creating this concept of a virtual community through Facebook that would maintain a life of its own, basically running itself through an authentic situation. Having "hidden moderators" that placed students in situations to see if they knew how to react and what was available to them, or had student groups engage in fun activities was a really cool concept. It still remained, though, that the more I planned, the larger the project became, and the less clear the expectations were.

All in all, it was a fun project to create, but I would definitely have to pare down what is entailed, lest it becomes too much of a behemoth to be moderated in the way it needs.

__**References**__

Savage, Doug. (Artist). (2005). //Savage chickens//. [Web]. Retrieved from http://training.sd42.ca:16080/~cyberschool/cyberdays/internetsafety1/index.html