Web 2.0 Chapter 7: online safety and security

Prevention, prevention, prevention.

It is all too easy and convenient for students and adults to publish untrue or exaggerated statements using social networking tools. I would imagine that most of the tools were made to create better and more efficient ways of communication. Although they are effective, there are those like predators who take advantage of students and even adults that don’t think about how much personal information they provide, giving the predators all the information they need to get their “fix.”

“Protecting children and personal data online is a legal responsibility (pg. 138).” The book addresses two major ways of doing so. In preventing students and others from being harmed, we must learn and talk about ethics. A step toward this is informing students about copyright issues. Technology these days makes it easy to share files which is becoming, if not, already becoming a major issue. People are illegally downloading music, videos, and programs on a regular basis. Granted some do it innocently. Within the schools administrators and teachers should pay close attention to legal issues and copyright laws and model them within their own examples. Like the book mentions, students just don’t know about all the legalities of copyrighting and files sharing. Teachers and administrators don’t know them either. That is why we should read up on them and pass them onto our students as we go along. Knowledge is power and it can keep you out of trouble, most of the time.

As a future teacher, one of my goals and standards will be to teach students how to correctly site information in a paper. This will provide me with the opportunity to go over, maybe review copy right laws with my students.

Another way schools try to protect students’ safety is by filtering and blocking potential unsafe material. Although the internet can be a wonderful tool to use, it has its dangers. Many sites are not appropriate for adults, let alone students. These sites are inundated with violence and drugs and pornography and should be blocked by schools. With the rise of cyber bullying, schools are blocking social networking and IM sites, and rightfully so. There is also the risk of blocking sites that could be helpful to students while blocking the ones that are harmful. But it is always safer to block too much than not enough when it comes to the safety of students.

Another point the book makes is to inform parents about Web usage, maybe by giving them tips about how to protect their child as well as themselves when using the internet, like signs to look for if being bullied on the internet, red flags that come up and lets them know something might be wrong, ways to contact the proper authorities, etc.

With the proper education, training, and even just being aware of these issues will help students, teachers, parents, and administrators become better and safer consumers of the internet.