Digital CitizenshipI wanted to first say, that I am very impressed in the way that my school teaches and facilitates the use of the Internet throughout the school / classroom. Secondly, I want to also state that "locking down" the Internet, is not always the best way to teach ethics, reliability, and the "etiquette code" to the world wide web.
Fortunately, because my librarian does such a phenomenal job in guiding students with reliability, I feel certain that most of the "recommended" sites that we use are accurate. If in doubt, I ask! That is what I encourage my kids do too. If you guide them as they are learning, and give them pointers to teach to that moment, then the process of validity becomes seamless in their search for knowledge. Keeping that in mind, I always tell my kids as they begin to do a google search, if you happen to come across an inappropriate site, close it immediately and do not make a big deal out of it.
One issue that I think needs to be visited more, is that of a cyber-bully. When Gmail became open for social networking (Google Buzz), we had some issues where students were bullying others - and, unlike Facebook, conversations were open for all to see... And, the user cannot have "selected friends" like that on Facebook. Although this specific issue was conducted off of school premises, it was a springboard for future expectations in acceptable use policies and as a means of communication that we were going to have zero tolerance for bullying! Again, our librarian conducted some trainings with the 3rd, 4th & 5th graders and revisited our community agreements.
Fortunately, I teach 2nd grade and have been doing so long enough to know if the sites we are using, (with many of million of thanks to our librarian and the library resources page) are appropirate for 7 and 8 year olds!
