E-safety in my classroom

In support of Safer Internet Day, my students and I did some of the actitivies I wrote about in my last post.

After seeing the video clip about parental protection and online dangers, my students took part in a walking debate. The idea for this activity came from the Debating the issues activity, which I downloaded from the excellent Think B4U Click Click website. However, unlike the suggested procedure, I decided to go paperless, so I created a short Power Point with five issues to be discussed. After reading out loud each of the statements, they took a stand and explained why they agree or disagree with it.

What really surprised me was the fact that most of the students feel safe on the Internet. Some of them supported their feeling of safety with the fact that teachers and parents constantly talk about it. Others explained that they are very careful about the stuff they publish on their blogs or on Facebook. Only some of them think that adjusting Facebook privacy settings keeps them protected.

I was taken aback when I heard that most of them think that cyberbullying is not as big an issue as bullying, mostly because one can switch off their computer or mobile phone and thus not be cyberbullied. It's obvious that we need to delve deeper into the topic of cyberbullying.

Finally, I asked them to think about advice that they would give to their peers and share it on the Wallwisher which you can see below.



(Click here to see our wallwisher Safer Internet Day by msblazic)

This one is my favourite, although I'm a strong supporter of social networking sites:

Talking to a friend
and reading a good book
is better than Facebook.
(by Norma)