Education Investigation

The other night our ICT Cluster was offered the chance to listen to a internet safety talk presented by NetSafe. It was excellent.

The internet safety message reminded me again of the harmful potential that the internet provides. This was also hit home to Rocky, my Cluster ICT Facilitator, who wrote a post entitled: “The Problem Is Not The Technology, It Is How It Is Used”.

Something worth watching and using especially if you are a Teacher, Parent or Principal is this video that was shared during the evening.

Following this and after further discussions with my Principal we have written up some blogging guidelines for our school:

1. General safety rules must be agreed on by the whole class.

a. Only use our FIRST name when writing.
b. Only use SENSIBLE and KIND words.
c. Do not write any of our DETAILS - this includes phone number, address and personal email address.
d. Be careful when putting PHOTOS on (we have permission slips signed by parents). Photos must not have any part of a student’s name at the bottom of it. Where possible group photos are preferred over individual photos.
e. Ask PERMISSION when putting on other people’s photos - tell them what you are going to do with the photos.
f. Only display nice photos of other people (we don’t want people to be embarrassed) .
g. Be RESPONSIBLE when using and writing on our blog.

(The inspiration for these rules came from Rachel Boyd’s class blog)

2. Remove the Navbar by editing the html.

3. Edit html on widgets/slideshows/etc where possible so advertising is removed. (These advertising links lead students often to inappropriate sites.)
Note: It is easier to use Photostory or Moviemaker to create slideshows/videos and then upload this to blogger using the “video upload” button.

4. Links to other blogs or websites must be previewed before linking to the class blog. (Pages with non educational links should not be included e.g. games, advertising, social networks).

5. Comment moderation must be turned on (this will enable all comments to be sent to a designated email box to be moderated before they are published on the blog).

6. Posts must be saved by students in draft form to be viewed by the teacher before publishing.

7. Show http://www.hectorsworld.com/ to students and have this link on your blog so videos on internet safety can be viewed and discussed.

As part of my classes ICT program we created a Voicethread to discuss and highlight the need to follow the above simple safety rules while on the internet:

The internet is a tool and just like a hammer it can inflict pain or build a magnificent house. It is our responsibility as educators to make sure we have done our best to teach internet safety to our students AND their families.

We must make sure our blog is safe; is your blog’s seatbelt done up?

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Hmm - how to start I will not be long winded in my posts hence the following bullet points:

• This blog is titled “Education Investigation - Separating the wheat from the chaff” because that is exactly what I endeavour to do. There is lots of good stuff out there but also there are many “distractions” that don’t lend to enhancing teaching and learning. My goal is to find the good stuff and weed out the rubbish.
• This blog has been on my mind for a while. With the nagging help of some of my online friends: AllanahK, Jane Nicholls, Rachel Boyd and Chrissy Hellyer, together with the end of year approaching, it is timely to reflect and begin this blog.
• I hope by sharing my thoughts and experiences it will develop me into a better educator and serve to help others.

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