Great Power, Great Responsibility: Being Safe on the Internet

I felt that the four group presentations for online safety were very well done and very informative as well. I had heard about all four of the topics and knew some basic information about each one, but it was very insightful to get a little bit more of an in depth view of what each was about. As an educational unit, the four presentations were great. They were all very educational. These presentations could even be meshed into one big presentation that could be used to help high school and undergraduate university students as well, via some type of online safety presentation or workshop.

When designing lessons to teach Internet safety, I will definitely integrate everything I learned from each of these presentations, depending on what I am teaching them first. I feel that the cyber bullying and sexting lessons could go hand in hand. I would want to present those two as one and I would also want to teach them about phishing and pharming. One lesson would be to keep them safe, and the other would be to keep their information and computers safe. It is important to provide awareness for students with the emergence of such helpful technology. With the rise in the availability of computers and internets in school (and out of the class as well), students are having more and more positive attitudes toward using the internet for school (Hong, K.-S., Ridzuan, A. A., & Kuek, M.-K. (2003).

As far as the use of Wiggio goes, I feel that is a great technological tool, but does not serve the culture and community of Guam. Living on such a small island, it is a very uncommon thing for people to video chat with one another. A majority of the people I know with video chatting tools such as Skype or even FaceTime only utilize this tool for communicating with people who are not on island. For us, I feel that it is easier to just contact each other via phone, What’sApp, and the “old fashioned” meeting face to face. As you might have noticed in class when we were all experimenting with our conferencing tools, everyone seemed a bit awkward and apprehensive with having to video chat with one another. I will say though, that this might be good for high school students who may not be as mobile as adults.

The assignment overall, as a whole, was great. I feel that my classmates gave great presentations and that everyone was able to learn from each one of them. It was very cool to be able to focus on something like the Internet, which is a very powerful tool that sometimes gets taken for granted. I feel that some people are unaware of some of the dangers of the Internet, so as an educator, we should use our position to inform everyone. The Internet has drastically changed the way that children interact with the world (netsmartz.org). With that being said, we should encourage students to use this wonderful tool safely.

Hong, K.S., A. A., & Kuek, M.K. (2003). Students’ Attitudes Towards the Use of the Internet for Learning. Malaysia Educational Technology and Society, 6(2). 45-49

Net Smartz. Basic Internet Safety. Retrieved from www.netsmartz.org