Internet+Safety+Lesson+Plan

=Internet Safety Lesson Plan =

Description of Assignment:
 This assignment involved reading two articles (“Meeting of the Minds” and “Delaware Schools Struggle to Respond to Cyber Bullying”) provided to the class. After reading the documents, a lesson plan regarding internet safety was to be chosen from the CyberSmart (@http://www.cybersmart.org) website or derived from the document entitled “Ideas for Integrating Internet Safety into the Curriculum” by Virginia Department of Education Office of Educational Technology.

This lesson plan must be an example of best practices when integrating the subject of internet safety into a curriculum of any kind. A lesson plan template was to be completed explaining how the lesson plan that was chosen would be an appropriate example of integrating internet safety into the curriculum. Three question were to be addressed regarding the lesson plan chosen: 1. Explain your interest and why you chose the topic, 2. Explain how the lesson can be integrated into your discipline or work environment, 3. What information, if any, did you learn from the article, //Meeting of Minds//, that will help you understand the relationship between group dynamics and the content of the lesson.

Process:
 After reading the articles assigned, I perused the CyberSmart website to see if there was anything available concerning internet safety and older teenagers or young adults. The Citizenship website I created is focused on this age range, and therefore, I wanted to remain consistent by address that same age group with the lesson plan.

I found a lesson plan entitled “Your Online Image”. This lesson plan focused on the necessity of maintaining a positive and relatively private profile on the various social networking sites. This lesson plan could be integrated into any curriculum because students are accessing social networking sites on a daily basis. The need to remind them that whenever they are perusing the web and interacting with other people (especially people they do not know) they need to be mindful of what they are posted says about them and who they are.

I addressed all three questions at length explaining how this lesson plan was important in teaching students about their online reputation. This lesson required the students to be more introspective regarding how others may view them online.

 I found this to be a great exercise in teaching students something they may not otherwise think about. It is so important to maintain privacy and be diligent regarding what is displayed on a particular profile displayed on the internet. Students need to realize that anyone can see this information and use it against them.

In doing my research for this class, I found some videos on YouTube that show the viewer how quickly and easily an internet “stalker” could find out very personal information on anyone. There are people who rob houses based on what is tweeted on Twitter. These are topics that I certainly did not think about prior to this exercise, so I am sure that there are a lot of young people out there who do not give this topic a second thought.

I could see that it is our responsibility as instructors and administrators to be certain that students understand this sometimes seedy part of the internet. That is not to say that one has to distrust everyone they meet, but they simply need to make sure that they keep information private and be aware of what is posted online.