Staying Safe Online as explained by 4th Graders

October is Internet Safety Month.    

If you follow this blog, you have seen the posters that the 5th graders produced.  You have also seen the Acceptable Use Policy Animoto that I created.  Internet Safety is a kindergarten through grade five curriculum unit. 

(There was much emphasis on theft/robbery...interesting)

One of the resources we use to support the curriculum are the BrainPOP movies.  These animated, curriculum-related content-rich movies offer some valuable learning opportunities.  When we talk about differentiating instruction and learning experiences, I like how the students can play the movies with the closed-captioning on and can pause them for reflection.  They also offer quizzes and activities that reinforce the learning happening in the movie.  Sometimes the quizzes get a bit too silly, but on the whole, they give an opportunity to discuss the topics and concepts and to practice answering multiple choice questions.

The questions for the Internet Safety video are excellent.  We spent most of our time together this week engaged in conversations about Internet Safety that were sparked from a question or answer in the quiz.

This question gave me an opportunity to reinforce that students should not engage in a virtual conversation with a stranger or bully.

This question rocked my socks - vocabulary anyone? 

 This question allowed us to talk about the difference between personal information and private information.

This particular question prompted a lot of discussion and a realization that we are doing our students (and children) a disservice when we lead them to believe that more people on the Internet are bad than in real life. 

Here's a video that includes more of the students' rules for staying safe online.