Teach your students about Internet Safety

Learning Intention / Overview

Now, more than ever, protecting oneself online is very important.  There are a variety of crimes, including identity theft and cyber bullying that require us to inform our children about the dangers of the Internet.  Yes, it is a great tool that makes life more interactive and engaging, but users must be well-informed.  This discovery/inquiry lesson puts students in the driver’s seat to acquiring knowledge about cyber bullying and related Internet safety tips. 

Methods / Teaching Strategies

·        Research Project

·        Multimedia Presentation

·        Discovery/Inquiry

Assessment of Learning

·        Internet safety PowerPoint presentation

Click here to download the complete lesson for free

Teach your students about the four different types of bullying

Bullying has become a very popular word amongst school age children. 

However, this word is often misunderstood.  Bullying is action(s) repeated over and over again by an individual or group of people with the intent to harm either physically, verbally, socially (emotionally), or through cyber sources. 

This lesson will discuss and explore the different types of bullying and provide students with the opportunity to identify the various types.

Click here to download the free 5 page lesson plan.

Great cybersafety site from the FBI for Teachers & Students

With school back in session, one topic that’s on many class curriculums around the nation is cyber safety. After all, it’s a hyper-connected world—with texting, social networking, e-mail, online gaming, chat, music downloading, web surfing, and other forms of wired and wireless communication now a regular part of children’s lives.

The FBI has a new program that can help. Today, as part of its longstanding crime prevention and public outreach efforts, the FBI is announcing a free web-based initiative designed to help teachers educate students about cyber safety.

It’s called the FBI-SOS (Safe Online Surfing) Internet Challenge—and it was developed with the assistance of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and with the input of teachers and schools.

FBI-SOS is available through a newly revamped website at https://sos.fbi.gov. The site features six grade-specific “islands”—for third- through eighth-grade students—highlighting various aspects of cyber security through games, videos, and other interactive features. Each island has either seven or eight areas to explore—with a specific cyber safety lesson—and its own central character and visual theme. For example, fourth grade features Ice Island, complete with falling snow and penguins.

Click here to Access.

Great Bullying Analogy for Students

A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said …they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bullies another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

Teach your kids about cybersafety with this fun resource

Budd:e is a great site for primary and secondary students to learn about cybersafety.  It takes students throughout the process of identifying dodgy sites, viruses and malware and most of all teaches them about what information is deemed public and what should remain private. 

It also covers cyber bullying in great detail and helps students differentiate between reputable sources of information and content that is unreliable.

The Budd:e Cyber security Education package consists of two activity-based learning modules, one for primary school students, and one for secondary school students.  Both modules contain engaging, media-rich activities and resources, developed in consultation with teachers and subject matter experts. 

Here you will also find comprehensive Teacher Resources for Budd:e including background and contextual information, a video demonstration of the modules, lesson plans with learning outcomes for each activity, and curriculum maps for all Australian states and territories.

Budd:e is totally free and aimed at creating a safer, more secure online environment for all children.

Pics 4 Learning - Nice Alternative to Google Images

Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and images for classrooms, multimedia projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other project in an educational setting.

The thousands of photos in this collection are approved for use in the classroom and indexed and sorted in order to maximize their effective use by students in a 21st century classroom.

Access pics4learning here.

Crisis in Japan: Understanding Nuclear Energy and Reactors

ByJENNIFER CUTRAROandHOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO

Tokyo Electric Power, via Kyodo News, via Associated PressAt the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, reactors No. 3, left, and No. 4, center, have been damaged.

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Overview| What is the extent of the nuclear crisis in Japan following the wake of the tsunami and earthquake? What is nuclear power, and how do nuclear power plants work? What are the benefits and risks associated with nuclear power? In this lesson, students learn about the nuclear crisis in Japan, then research nuclear energy to prepare informative news bulletins.

Materials| Computers with Internet access

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Two great sites to teach students about cybersafety

I have written quite a bit about cybersafety in regards to parents, teachers and students taking ownership of the issue and not just burying our heads in the sand and hope that it goes away and in attempt to find out more about it today I came across two great resources that teach students about about cybersafety, protocol and correct use of the internet.

Hector’s World is a valuable educational resource for use in the classroom. Its cybersafety messages are relevant to younger primary school age groups, particularly 5 – 7 year olds.

Age-based lesson plans and activity sheets for each of the episodes have been designed for use in the classroom. The learning objectives are consistent with the principles set out in the national Statements of Learning for Information Communications and Technology and Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship.

At a teacher’s or parent’s discretion the Hector’s World stories may also be used for children under 5 years of age and for older primary students aged above 8 years.

Suggestions for the classroom:

• view the Hector’s World episodes with the class
• use the lesson plans as a guide to enforce key learning objectives
• install the Hector’s World Safety Button™ on classroom computers
• encourage parents to install the Hector’s World Safety Button at home
• use the downloadable Hector’s World learning activities to enhance the learning experience

Cyberquoll is aimed at older kids and looks at the issues of cyber bullying and the undesirable elements of the web and how to deal with them from the perspective of a teacher, parent and student.

Hope you enjoy them and would love to hear of any others you might know.