Internet Safety

When you work with middle school aged kids, there is bound to be some Internet safety and computer ethics issues.  I have decided to dedicate a lot of my lessons and professional development to awareness this month.  I will be presenting two workshops at my school - the first for parents and educators of students in Kindergarten through grade 5.  The second will be  for the parents and educators of students in grades 6 through 8.  

Some of my material is based on my own personal experiences with kids and teens with technology as I am a parent who has been through this with my own kids who are now adults.  I also reached our to my PLN (professional learning network) and have compiled ideas to create what I hope will be an informative presentation that will benefit my audience.  My goal is to work together with the community to help the students use technology in a safe a productive way without harming others or how to safeguard themselves from harm.  At the same time, I need to express how beneficial technology and the Internet can be - even with it's faults.  Not such an easy task.  It is so much easier for presenters to just scare the parents into thinking that their children should NEVER go online.  This does not benefit anyone in the end.

Once the workshops are completed, I will share the presentations here with anecdotes on the successes (or failures) of the events.