Internet Security

Last year at our school, the IT director and I started a series of Internet safety lessons that we teach to each different grade in the school from 6th to 12th grades. We cover topics from evaluating websites for research to Social Networking.  What is always interesting is that the students almost always know more about certain aspects and features of using the Internet than we do, but rarely do they know or even think about anything regarding securing their own personal information and identity.
This week we did a lesson with sixth grade on using Facebook and other social networking websites.  The students were familiar with the workings of Facebook and helped me browse around my own site, but by a show of hands, less than half of them who have an account (which is about 65% of them), had ever visited, to their knowledge, the security section of Facebook to set up the security parameters.  This verified for us that the topic of our lesson was needed, but this is concerning.  My hope is that when students of any age 6-12 grades open a social networking account, that not only parents and adult family visit frequently, but that they also help with talking about and setting security parameters.  However, I visited many of the students' Facebook sites as a "non-friend" to discover that many of them are wide open to view and post. Scary.
We close our presentation telling the students that social networking sites are not bad, but sometimes bad people ruin good things.  They should use Facebook, Skype, Twitter and other social networking sites when their parents allow, but they must be smart about how they use them.  We highly recommend they talk with their parents about the security of their sites and encourage them to visit the security section of whatever site they use. "Go there today!" we say.  Just like everything else in education and working with kids, we know that several will not do anything.  Maybe because they think nothing bad will happen to them, maybe because they just forget in their busy day and minds, or maybe because they are not sure they really understand.  Hopefully, the lesson will get them to think about these issues and someday they will take action to protect themselves.

Virtual Gaming Education

I came across this video from the Florida Virtual School on Scott McLeod's Dangerously Irrelevant blog. Watch the video, for someone like me who loves computer games (I realize calling them computer games dates me) and a digital native, this is exciting.

The concept of video game as education, which meets reading standards and encourages critical thinking skills, is like finding "the answer." The cost probably takes most districts out of the running to take it out of the dream stage, but what about a classroom application? Here is a simplified blueprint of how this could work. A teacher has certain material to teach in a semester or even quarter, lets say in an English classroom there is literature, writing, grammar and vocabulary. Perhaps there is a mystery/story line/plot that could over-arch the semester and use all of the skills the students need to solve the mystery. Maybe there are clues in the literature that students could gather as they read Shakespeare or Gatsby; communication in the form of memos or letters, with the students could use the vocabulary words; grammar or the poor use of it could scramble messages or students might need to recognize the adverb killer, or a character the students interact with might write only in simple sentences with the lack of adjectives. I don't know, but I feel pretty confident to guess this is what the tech folks and curriculum directors at Florida Virtual School did. This "video game" concept that ties together skills really shows the possibilities in education.

This would take a monumental effort to plan, prep, execute and assess, but that is why schools should be promoting collaboration. That means giving teachers time to work. Not 45 minutes at the beginning of a day once a month, but time to think, discuss, disagree, plan, test, reflect and rewrite. Amazing things happen when that time is given. Also, most schools have librarians who love projects like this. Let's get thinking and make education effective, fun and interesting.