Internet Safety

The internet is a great tool to use in the classroom. There is so much information that is readily available at your students fingertips! There are so many great tools that students can use, and are familiar with. Every kid growing up in this day and age uses the internet, and they most likely know how to use it better than we do. Like we have learned from the videos that we've seen for this class, students spend so much time chatting, surfing, etc. It only makes sense to use the tools that they are good at and interested in to help them learn!

Sites that we might use need evaluation because of all the garbage that is available online. You can find anything you want as well as anything you don't want; these things might pop up unexpectantly and we need to be prepared for them. We need to research before we allow students to access these certain sites. We also need ot make sure they are credible. Students need accurate facts, not opinions that others have posted online! As we are evaluating these sites, we should ask ourselves the following questions:
1) Who wrote the article, and are they an expert?
2) What is the purpose of the article?
3)When was the article created? When was it last updated?
4) Where do the sources come from? Are they credible?
5) Why is the information useful?
6) Look at the URL. Is it a personal page? Is it .com, .gov, or .edu?
7) Are there access to other links on the page for more information?
8) Is the article bias?

Using these questions will ensure that your sites are accurate and reliable. This will keep your kids safe from false information. Making sure the students are educated in internet safety is a must. They should know the warnings and what they need to look out for. They need to be alert on the types of questions they ask and the searches they perform. Informing them of good key words will help them find more reliable sources. The information through Pioneer Library guides students to the right path for finding correct information.

Video Blog
This video was so, so awesome! I thought it was so interesting, I want to watch it ten more times, and then some... That's a great introduction to so many topics. You could have students pick out something they don't know about and research that topic, you can give them a time period to research, or have them create their own song like that for our day. That song made me want to research all those things that I didn't know they were singing about, it made me excited to learn about them! We need more of things like this for our students, because I thought it was really great. If I could come up with something interesting like that for math, students would love it.