Youth and Online Safety

This past week, I have been teaching our 5th and 6th graders my school district's Acceptable Use Policy. Basically, I go over the expectations and give the students some information, and then they have to sign a contract agreeing that they can follow the rules. Believe it or not, this actually comes in handy when 6th grade boys google search "big boobs." It is pretty easy to point out to them that they have agreed to use technology appropriately for educational purposes--I will assume that no teachers are assigning the kids to look at pictures of breasts online.

A couple of thoughts have been percolating in my head as I have been going over the curriculum with my students:

• Using technology is a privilege not a right.

Is it? I'm not so sure anymore. In the age of digital literacies--is it okay to not have some of our students using technology as a tool? If a kid was drawing pictures of breasts--would I not let them use pencil and paper anymore? Technology is becoming more and more prevalent in our teaching (at least it should be).

I have never completely banned a student from a computer before--but the privilege has been revoked for a short time. In this digital age--I think educators really need to start thinking about the ramifications of this.

• The issue my students have been most fascinated by is the issues of online privacy and and your identity online. (I really enjoyed reading the articles Rebecca posted regarding this topic--as it fit right into the work I was doing with my kiddos this week).

In a short library class--we were barely able to touch on these topics--and we will do more this year as we have authentic experiences.
My students were very intrigued with the idea of password security and not sharing information with friends or boy/girl friends. The ideas of people getting into your online accounts was new for many of them. Sharing real life examples of myself and people trying to get my information via email/facebook and stories of people I know who had shared their passwords and then "broken up" and had their accounts destroyed were very meaningful to my students. They asked meaningful questions and we talked a lot about appropriate people to share passwords with (parents) and how to keep them private.

In our lesson we also talked a lot about posting images and words online and the lasting effects it can have on you and others.  Time flew by--I feel like I could teach multiple lessons on this stuff. Here are a couple of video clips we watched (as well as a couple I will show them at a later time) that helped my students understand these topics. We had great discussions following each one.