Online Safety

            During the project presentations I feel that I have gained a better insight of how to protect, avoid, and solve problems that may arise when we make use of the Internet. I have learned that we may inadvertently put ourselves into compromising situations if we do not take into consideration the actions that we make when we utilize the Internet in our daily lives. The four topics I felt fit cohesively into an educational unit because all are issues that we must take into consideration when using sources that come from online. It teaches me important step in how to combat and protect myself from problems that may arise. I would add the privacy section to the presentations, which I would add to the Fair Use Practice (FUP) and Copyright Issues, because it would fit perfectly along with these same topics. I personally would not delete anything from the presentation. In fact I would rather add to it because everyone today have come to relay on the Internet as an important tool, which we use to purchase, communicate, share, etc. so we must all become more proficient in the legalities in order to eliminate the negative problems that happens during its use. As stated by Chen and He (2013) that as more people use and depend on the internet there have also an increase of illegal activities and security threats taking place on the Internet. So we must become more educated in how to protect ourselves from such problems.

            It is important that my students learn about online safety in order to make it effective I will design it as a cooperative learning group lesson. This is not just to increase and promote positive social interaction but also for them to share their individual knowledge or experiences of the problems that happen with their use of the Internet. The other reasons are that there are limited resources and time. I would most likely introduce the biggest issues first that they usually will encounter, which is Cyber Bullying, Textual Harassment and Sexting because I know that these are the most rampant problems among adolescent. I will have them create an online presentation with the use of Google drive for its simplicity and because it is free. But I will have to make sure that the presentations follow strict guidelines in order to minimize problems, such as plagiarism and various risks. As stated by Ranguelov (2010) that the Internet opens a world of possibilities for children to expand their knowledge but it also exposes them to risks, such as giving private details and sexual abuse. As the teacher I must first educate them about safety and proper use of online research so that they and I are not compromised by any problems that come with use of the Internets as an educational tool.  

            For this project as a group we decide to use Wix and Google Drive and Apps to complete our project. We decided against the use of Wiggio because we felt it was easier to use Google Drive to share the work and Google Hangout to communicate with one another during the planning and creation of the project presentation. We also ended up using Wix to create our template for our presentation because we wanted to try something that we felt would be fun to know and learn as a new tool for presentations.

            Overall the importance of this presentation about online safety for my personal knowledge is significant. But it is also invaluable knowledge for everyone else to know because today everyone uses the Internet for almost about every activity that they do, either paying bills or sharing pictures. It is also important that we educate our students about these problems so that they can properly protect themselves. When we use the Internet it is important to keep in mind that we put ourselves at risks to all the issues that comes with it. So it is only proper that we must at least have a basic knowledge of how we can minimize or eliminate the threats.

References

Chen, Yong, He, Wu. (2013). Security  Risks and Protection in Online Learning: A Survey. Retrieved June 2014 from; http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1017552.pdf

Ranguelov, Stanislav. (2010). Summary Report Education on Online Safety Schools in Europe. Retrieved June 2014 from; http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ966666.pdf