Internet Safety – iLearn Technology

Be Internet Awesome: Tools to teach online safety

September 29, 2017Kelly Tenkely4 Comments80636 views

Be Internet Awesome: internet safety game

What it is: Be Internet Awesome is a fantastic new way to help your students make the most of the Internet by being prepared to make wise decisions as they navigate and interact online. Be Internet Awesome helps teach students the basics of digital citizenship and safety online. This outstanding collection from Google includes: Interland, an online adventure that puts digital safety lessons into hands-on practice with four games; the Be Internet Awesome Curriculum, that will help you teach online safety; the Be Internet Awesome Pledge, to help connect parents and encourage continuity between home and school.

How to integrate Be Internet Awesome into the classroom: With Be Internet Awesome, Google gives you a complete set of tools to empower you to encourage digital citizenship and safety online. There are lessons and curriculum you can download, games for students to play, and a pledge for students to take home so that parents are on the same page.

At the core of Be Internet Awesome is the Code:

Share with Care- teaching students the importance of communicating responsibly.
Don’t Fall for Fake- teaching students how to discern real from fake online.
Secure Your Secrets- teaching students how to protect and safeguard personal information online.
It’s Cool to Be Kind- teaching students how the Internet can act as an amplifier, and they have the power to create positive impact for others.
When in Doubt, Talk It Out- teaching students how to seek out a trusted adult when they come across something questionable.

Interland is such a beautifully designed game with important lessons about how to mindfully use the Internet. I love the way the lessons learned in the games can transfer seamlessly to real-life as well. Students can play individually in a one to one setting or as a class with a projector-connected computer. Stop to reflect as you play. If students are playing individually, you might have them reflect in writing and come back together to share reflections as a class.

Tips: The Be Internet Awesome Curriculum meets ISTE standards for students and ISTE standards for teachers. Under the Resource link, you’ll also find a lesson poster, certificates and badges, a Google for Education Teacher Training Course, the ability to share Interland directly to Google Classroom, great resources for parents, and an Internaut Papercraft Activity.

6 Days and 78 Resources for Digital Literacy Internet Safety

September 15, 2013September 15, 2013Kelly Tenkely7 Comments33693 views

At Anastasis Academy we are a 1:1 BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school with EVERY student using technology throughout the day every day. Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship are important topics for us because it is so integral to what our kids do while they are at school. Whether or not you have a 1:1 program, these are topics that shouldn’t be overlooked! Don’t assume that because your students are fairly savvy when it comes to learning technology, that they will automatically pick up on digital literacy. Digital Literacy isn’t a topic that should be relegated to school either, it is essential that parents learn about digital literacy so that they can echo and enforce good technology use at home. This week we will have a week of intensive digital literacy training for our students. Being a BYOD school means that these topics come up as we go through the year often, it is nice for us to have an intensive week to refer students back to throughout the school year. So much of digital literacy echoes good safety practices in “real” life. As such, we spend time discussing online and offline safety practices during this week and have our local school deputy join us. When I was a technology teacher, I would end this week with an Internet Driver’s License, students had to pass a safety quiz in order to get their license. This was their ticket to being able to be online in my class. Students could lose their license for inappropriate online behavior. This was always popular for kindergarten through fifth grade students! Below are our favorite resources to use. We choose a different digital literacy topic for each day of the week, follow along or mix it up to meet your own needs!

Monday- Online Identity

Students tend to assume that if something is online, it must be true. This is especially true of people they “meet” online. Students believe that anyone on a social network, blog comments, forum, etc. are who they say they are. It is important to help students understand that not everything and everyone online is what they seem.

Elementary: Faux Paw the Techno Cat: Adventures in the Internet

Faux Paw PDF book

Privacy Playground: The First Adventure of the Three CyberPigs

Cyber Cafe: Think UKnow

Child Net: Primary

Internet Safety Cartoon

Professor Garfield: Internet Safety

Jr. High: NS Teens Friend or Fake– a video that helps students realize that not everyone they meet online is trustworthy

NS Teens- RescueRun Game

Be Seen app (iTunes) (Google Play)

ThinkUKnow Teen

ChildNet: Secondary

CyberSmart: Unwanted Contact

Everyone Knows You Online

Do you really know who you are talking to online video

Tuesday: What to do

Every year I would ask my students how many of them had seen something they knew they shouldn’t have online. 100% of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade would raise their hands. When I followed up with: how many of you told an adult about it? Only about 2% in the same age group raise their hand!! When you ask students why they don’t report to an adult they list the following reasons: I didn’t want to get in trouble; Mom/Dad/Teacher would take the technology away from me if they knew, it was just an accident so I don’t tell; I was embarrassed. This is a big deal! Kids need to know that there is a trusted adult in their life who can help them navigate their online interactions without blaming them for accidental exposure. After sharing these videos, we discuss appropriate responses to inappropriate material. I ask kids to turn off the screen without shutting the device down. This keeps other students or siblings from seeing the inappropriate content before it can be reported. If a student sees anything online that makes them feel scared, uncomfortable, confused or something they know is inappropriate they should report it to a trusted adult right away. I always let students know that they will never be in trouble for reporting this to us. It is a big help for us because then we know which sites to block so that other kids don’t run across the same material. Empower your students to do the right thing by letting them know that they are doing their part to keep a wider community safe. If students do come to you with inappropriate content, take a deep breath, thank them for their help and report the URL to your tech department to be black listed. No matter how shocking the content is, do NOT get upset with the student! This will keep them from ever telling you about it again. Do not punish students for dong the right thing! Follow up as necessary to help the student properly navigate what they were exposed to.

Elementary: NS Kids: Bad Netiquette Stinks!

NS Kids: Tell a Trusted Adult

NS Kids: UYN game

Welcome to the Web

ThinkUKnow kids

CyberSmart: Offensive Content

CyberSmart: unwanted content

Jr. High: NS Teens: Mike-Tosis

Wednesday: Online Identity/Digital footprint

Students often separate who they are online with who they are in “real” life. This is a mistake! It is important for students to understand that who they are online and who they are in person is one and the same. Decisions made online can impact their real life in big ways! Students also need to know what information is okay to share online, and what information is private and should not be shared online.

Elementary: NS Kids: Be safer online

NS Kids: Be safer offline

CyberSmart: Digital footprint

Jr. High: NS Teens: Profile Penalty

NS Teens: Tad’s Profile Panic game

Top Secret!

CyberSmart: Digital Reputation

Thursday: Cyber Bullying

Cyber Bullying is becoming a big issue for kids all over the world. Kids say things to each other online (or about each other) that they wouldn’t dream of saying to someone in person. It is important that kids know what cyber bullying is and what to do if they encounter a cyber bully. Kids need to know that it is always inappropriate to cyber bully in all of its forms.

Elementary: Faux Paw Meets the First Lady: How to Handle Cyberbullying

Faux Paw PDF book

Communications level 2 mission: cyberbullying

Stuart and Scout: Cyberbullying

The Great Bully Roundup

Hector’s World: Cyberbullying

CyberSmart: Cyberbullying

Jr. High: NS Teens: Terrible tEXt

NS Teens: Cyberbully Zombies Attack

NS Teens: Stand by or Stand Up comic

CyberSmart Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying video

Cyberbully virus video

Friday: Online Privacy

Here’s the thing about making online content private: it’s never really totally private. Kids forget that even if they only share with people they know, the people they know may not necessarily keep online content private. I always use the example of my mom who keeps many of her pictures “private” online. However, I have access to those photos and nothing stops me from downloading them or taking a screen shot and sharing them with the world. It is important for kids to know if something is digital, that it can be shared.

Elementary: NS Kids: Passwords

NS Kids: Password game

Google: Playing and Staying Safe Online

Disney Surfswell Island

Privacy Pirates: An Interactive Unit on Online Privacy

Safety Land

Communications Level 1 Mission: Personal Information

Hector’s World Personal Information

Do’s and Don’ts when using social networks

Jr. High: NS Teen: Post to be Private

NS Teen: Stop that post…again game

NS Teen: Stop that post! game

Google: Playing and Staying Safe Online

CyberSmart: Identity Theft

Online Safety bulletin board video

Do’s and Don’ts when using social networks

Every Day Learning: Online Discernment

Students tend to believe that everything they read or see online is true. Obviously this is SO not the case! Help your students learn how to have discernment as they are surfing the net.

Elementary: Google: Detecting Lies

Co-co’s AdverSmarts: An Interactive Unit on Food Marketing on the Web

CyberSense and Nonsense: The Second Adventure of the Three CyberPigs

Passport to the Internet: Student tutorial for Internet Literacy

Using the web for research

Jr. High: Google: Detecting Lies

Allies and Aliens: A Mission in Critical Thinking

Jo Cool or Jo Fool

MyWorld: A digital literacy tour for secondary students

Using the web for research

Teacher resources/lesson plans:

Net Smartz: Includes an online safety education kit, teaching materials, presentations

Web Wise Kids: teacher resources, safety night, safety kits

iKeep Safe: Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum

Media Smarts: lessons, resources, professional development

Carnegie Cyber Academy: lessons, game guides, printouts/activities

ThinkUKnow– videos, lessons, resources

Child Net- presentations, resources, lessons, videos

CyberSmart- resources, professional development

Google: Good to Know

Tree Octopus- Help Kids see that not everything that is online is true. The Octopus Tree Frog site will put their critical thinking skills to the test!

Remember, as you go through these topics and resources for kids, it is crucial that you tie in the equivalent off-line behavior. Think stranger danger, reporting inappropriate behavior, bullying, and critical thinking. At the end of the week, challenge kids to create their own PSA video about the digital literacy and safety tips they learned this week!

Digital Life: Video Killed the Radio Star

March 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3083 views

What it is: Being a child of this decade, I am LOVING @amyburvall‘s newest video to the tune of “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Brilliant. If you don’t know @amyburvall, you should. She is amazing and makes learning history so very enjoyable. The newest music video is all about Digital Life. A great one to kick off discussions with your class about digital life and clue them into what MTV used to be about in the pre “16 and Pregnant” days. How I long for those days to be back (at least as far as programming is concerned).

How to integrate Digital Life into the classroom: The Digital Life video is a fun way to start a discussion or inquiry into digital life. I don’t know about you, but the digital is becoming SO common that it tends to blend right into the background and we take it for granted. This is an important discussion with students because most of them have never known a life without idevices and smartphones that instantly connect them to the world. This “invisible” tech can be problematic. Kids can take it so for granted that they don’t see the separation between their digital life and their real life. Not everything needs to live online forever (how many duck faced pictures can a person have?). That break-up that happened in 8th grade is probably not the footprint kids want to leave for future employers.

When we talk with students about digital life at Anastasis, we make sure to highlight the following: EVERYONE has access to things posted online- even when you think it is private; deleted from Facebook or Instagram doesn’t always equate to being gone-it can always be resurrected (screenshots are killers); disrespecting others online is bullying-period; there is no sarcasm font- choose your words carefully; emoticons can’t capture every emotion-sometimes conversations are best had f2f (that’s face to face); words can be damaging and lasting-don’t be a bully; cherish your relationships off-line-take time to be away from the connected world.

Tips: If you haven’t seen @amyburvall history videos, go now. You can thank me later. 🙂

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Digital Life in your classroom.

Google Digital Literacy Tour

January 4, 2012Kelly Tenkely6 Comments4239 views

What it is: No matter what subject(s) you teach, digital literacy is something we all need to take the responsibility to expose our students to. iKeep Safe (one of my favorites for Internet safety with Faux Paw the Techno cat!) teamed up with Google to create a curriculum for educators to teach what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. The outcome is wonderful, it is designed to be interactive, discussion oriented, and hands-on. Each separate piece of curriculum (workshop) includes a pdf resource booklet for both educators and students, videos to accompany lessons, and presentations. The three workshops available are:

Detecting Lies and staying true
Playing and staying safe online
Steering clear of cyber tricks

How to integrate Google Digital Literacy Tour into the classroom: Google never disappoints, and the Google Digital Literacy Tour is no exception! These are a great discussion starters for every classroom. I like this Digital Literacy Tour because it doesn’t give a lot of drill and kill type exercises to find out if the student can tell you the “correct” answer. Instead, it invites conversations and deeper thinking…exactly what is needed for true digital literacy!

The videos and presentations can be used throughout the year (and multiple times throughout the year) to open discussions about online behavior. Too often educators assume that because students are adept at using technology, that means they know how to properly use that technology. Students can understand the freedom and benefits that technology brings without knowing how to properly manage that freedom, that is what digital literacy is all about! It is up to us to help students understand what their digital relationships represent in real life, and how their actions online can affect what they do in real life.

Use the Google Digital Literacy Tour as a conversation starter for the whole class or ask students to break into smaller groups to discuss before they share with the larger group. If you have some added time for reflection, ask students to write about their own experiences, or reflection, on why digital literacy is important. Every year I have taught Internet safety, I am amazed by what students tell me they have encountered online! I am telling you now, no matter what grade you teach, your students have encountered something online that they didn’t know what to do with. Help them navigate that!

Tips: Share these resources with parents. They often hear reports that emphasize the negative aspects of online behavior and, instead of teaching students how to properly manage their freedom, restrict it all together. This is okay for the short term but does nothing that is beneficial for students long term!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Digital Literacy Tour in your classroom!

Google’s Me On the Web- keep track of your digital footprint

June 15, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3284 views

What it is: Me On the Web is a new tool from Google. Announced just today, Me On the Web is part of the Google Dashboard that allows you to set up custom Google Alerts for your name in news articles. This was always possible with Google Alerts but now those alerts are coupled with tips and resources for helping students manage their online identities. Now everything can be tracked from one central location instead of scattered around in different places. Me On the Web is easy to set up, just visit your Google Dashboard to get started.

How to integrate Me on the Web into the classroom: There was a day when you could get away with not knowing and following your digital identity, that day is no more. We all carry digital footprints, and now more than ever it is vital for us (and our students) to know how to manage those digital footprints. Teaching students about their digital identity is the first step, Google’s Me on the Web takes that a step further by helping students manage their online identities through Google Alerts and helpful tips. Students must have an account with Google to fully utilize the Me on the Web features. After students have their account set up, they can create a set of Google Alerts related to them. This could be their name, email address, a sports team that they play on, the name of the school they attend, etc. Students will quickly see just how big a memory the Internet has and get a first hand look at their digital footprint and learn some strategies to take care of it.

If you are working with younger students without Google accounts (and most likely with a smaller digital footprint) you can share the School’s digital footprint or if you are brave (and after you know what will come up), your own. This gives even young students a good idea that their digital lives are not private and that what is shared their needs to be managed.

Me On the Web is a great way to begin discussions about social media, character education and respecting yourself and others.

Tips: Google even shares a section about how to remove content from a Google Search. Here is a hint, it is not as easy as just managing your identity PRIOR to needing to remove it. Good choices my friends, good choices. Anthony Weiner could learn a thing or two- just sayin’.

**By the way, if you haven’t seen the Google logo in honor of the lunar eclipse, it is definitely worth checking out- today only! 🙂

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Me On the Web in your classroom!

Class Blogs: Blogging, virtual classroom, LMS, and more!

March 28, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3688 views

What it is: Class Blogs is a fabulous new way for you to easily create and manage FREE classroom blogs! What makes Class Blogs so wonderful are all the extras that are built in. For example, with Class Blogs you can create a virtual classroom space. With just a few simple steps, you can create an online meeting space for your students to learn and discuss in. Blogs can be used to post assignments; when you post an assignment to your teacher blog, students can submit the assignment and a pingback will be sent to your blog. Class Blogs even has features that utilize SMS so that you can send a text message to students and the ability to host lesson plans complete with supporting resources! Class blogs really offers more than just a blogging platform, it offers many Learning Management System (LMS) solutions making it a great all-in-one tool! Here are just a few of the ways you can use Class Blogs:

Class Blogs – Teachers and students can create blogs to help facilitate classroom learning or the blog can be an extension of the classroom conversation.

Learning Logs – Learning logs are sites created by teachers for the purpose of creating online assignments for students. Students can then answer the questions and submit the assignments once they are completed.

Learning Management System (LMS) – Teachers can create a blog and use it as a learning management system. Teachers can post online courses and students can submit their assignments (through blog posts) for the course online as well. These assignments can be viewed by the instructor, the instructor can submit feedback, and the instructor can grade the student’s assignment online. Both the teacher and his/her students must have blogs in order to create a successful LMS.

Electronic Portfolio (E-Portfolio) – An e-portfolio is a valuable learning and assessment tool which includes but is not limited to a collection of resources and accomplishments that represent the individual. Moreover, it is the author’s personal reflection on the work included in the e-portfolio that creates a meaningful learning experience.

Web Conferencing/Virtual Classroom – Teachers/professors have the ability to create meeting rooms or virtual classrooms from the backend of their site. You can upload your presentations, chat with students, public/private chat, webcam, and even share your desktop.

How to integrate Class Blogs into the classroom: Class Blogs has features that make it wonderfully useful for any classroom. Blogging gives your students a place to write where they have an authentic audience. An audience of one (the teacher) is SO 1995. To limit your students to that audience is a disservice. I find that when my students write in blog form, the enthusiasm to write increases, the richness of language increases, and the ideas are communicated clearly. Obviously that is a bit of a generalization, I have also had students who don’t want to post for an audience, it makes them nervous to reveal themselves to their classmates in that way. I let those students blog about topics they are “experts” on as they are building confidence in their learning process. Students can blog to reflect on learning; write creatively; write as if they were a historical character, famous inventor, or a favorite literary figure; to chronicle learning (e-portfolio style); or to invite others on a journey of inquiry with them.

Using this type of social media in the classroom is important. It helps students learn digital citizenship, Internet safety, and netiquette in an authentic environment that goes beyond the rules and actually lets them practice it.

The additional features of Class Blog make it the perfect place to organize your classroom. Post assignments in Class Blogs as a learning log, as students respond, your original post will get a pingback making it easy to track students progress. Class Blog also makes it easy to extend learning beyond the four walls of your classroom using the virtual classroom features. Create meeting rooms to extend classroom discussions, offer additional learning support, or as a place to prepare students for learning. Class Blogs makes it easy to include podcasts, videos, webcams, private chat areas, desktop sharing in your virtual classroom.

Tips: Class Blogs does not have an age requirement, this means that it is available to k-12 (and beyond) education. Registration does require an email address. If your students do not have email addresses, you can create accounts on their behalf. With Class Blogs you can create unlimited class and student blogs, unlimited free classes/courses, and unlimited free virtual classrooms. Be sure to check out the feature page for a comprehensive list of the awesome features on Class Blogs, you won’t believe what all is included!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the Class Blogs in your classroom!

My Online Neighborhood: Internet Safety

March 23, 2011March 23, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2470 views

What it is: I learned about this gem of a video today from my friend @techfacil. My Online Neighborhood is a video created by Common Sense Media. The video is a great way to introduce kindergarten through third grade students to online safety. I like how this video compares the online world with the real world. This helps students understand the rules in a way that goes deeper than just following the rules because we say so. The video approaches Internet safety in a fun way through the eyes of a student, as you will see above, it is very well done!

How to integrate My Online Neighborhood into the classroom: My Online Neighborhood is a nice entry point for teaching Internet safety. Use the video to spur classroom discussions about online safety. The video also makes a nice lead in to the Internet safety lessons from Common Sense Media on Digital Life (sending email, online communities, rings of responsibility), Privacy (follow the digital trail), Connected Culture (screen out the mean, show respect online, power of words, group think, writing good emails), and Respecting Creative Work (whose is it, anyway?). These units and lessons are detailed, fun, and get right to the heart of the matter of raising digitally responsible citizens. The lesson plans are leveled by grade and can be used for kindergarten through fifth grade.

Tips: There are some fantastic parent tips and resources on the Common Sense Media website, be sure to share them with your families so that online safety is modeled and reinforced at home.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using My Online Neighborhood in your classroom!

Zoodles: a kid safe mode for every device

March 21, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments8884 views

What it is: Zoodles makes it possible to have a “kid safe” mode on every device: Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. Zoodles includes wonderful features for technology use in the classroom and at home. With Zoodles every child has their own “playground” space (login) that they access by clicking on their picture. A parent dashboard lets teachers (or parents) customize Zoodles to meet the needs of students. Parents and teachers can clearly see where a student spends their time, what their interests are, and what subjects they have been practicing. Every game in Zoodles has been previewed by experts and is rated based on it’s educational merit. Parent play-along mode makes it possible for parents or teachers to guide the learning experience. The interface is focused on kids and is extremely intuitive. There are no distracting “extras” in the navigation or URLs where students can get sidetracked or lost. The content in Zoodles adapts to each child’s age and ability level so they are constantly being challenged and engaged. There are thousands of educational games built into Zoodles…students always have something new and challenging to interact with. Zoodles also gives students access to fun educational videos. Zoodles is geared for toddler to third grade (8 year old) students. You can peruse the games included in Zoodles by clicking on the “Games” tab on the site. There are games for: cognitive development, creative development, life skills, math, reading, science, and social studies. The games and videos in Zoodles are pulled from several places on the Internet. What makes Zoodles a great tool is the ability to guide students in their learning, easily find quality educational content, scale as a student is ready, and keep ads blocked and hidden.

How to integrate Zoodles into the classroom: Zoodles is great for classroom computers and devices in the primary classroom. It provides students with access to quality learning games and content from the Internet without having to sort through the Internet to get to it. Zoodles is perfect for classroom computers that are used as learning centers. For the classroom, create 3-5 different accounts. Instead of basing the accounts on individual students, the accounts can be based on a learning level. Through the dashboard, teachers can guide the learning that happens in each account. This keeps your students on task, learning at their level, and engaged in meaningful activities. Even if you don’t use the Zoodles interface on your computers for students, it is definitely worth a download as a teacher. The games and videos are broken up into subject areas and age groups. This makes it easy to find an activity for any learning that you are doing in the classroom. Use Zoodles as your guide to find great activities and learning games on the web.

Tips: I found Zoodles when searching for a solution for one of the families I teach. They were looking for a way that all of their kids (2 years old to 8 years old) could use the family computer for fun, safe learning experiences. This is a great app to recommend to parents who don’t know what they don’t know, but want to provide their kids with virtual learning experiences. Be sure to recommend it to your students families! There are premium features that families will LOVE!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zoodles!

Netsmartz Kids: Router’s Birthday Surprise (Internet Safety)

October 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments8042 views

What it is: NetSmartz Kids is an incredible Internet safety site for kids. I have reviewed this site in the past here, and use it every year with my students to teach and reinforce Internet safety. Router’s Birthday Surprise is a new feature of NetSmartz. It is an interactive video where students are drawn into the story, playing a contestant on a game show to learn online safety rules. Clicky, the robot star of NetSmartz, is planning a surprise birthday party for his robo dog Router. As they follow Clicky through his hectic day, students play games, help Clicky put the Webville Outlaws back in jail, and decide who is a trusted adult. When students complete the video and games, they become certified NetSmartz Kids complete with an official certificate. Students have to complete all sections correctly before they can be certified. The complete video and game play runs for about 45 min, but NetSmartz has broken the video and game into manageable pieces so that it can fit in any schedule. Students can watch a portion of the video and play the associated game and save their progress for the next time they are able to login. Games include Make-a-Match where students think about the fun things they do online (history, music, jokes); What Rule is it Anyway where students play a contestant on a game show to learn about the rules of online safety; Get Clicky to Webville where students choose an Internet tube to get Clicky to his destination, Outlaw Roundup where Clicky captures the Webville outlaws and students match the outlaw to their crime; Who Can You Trust where students define a trusted adult; Router’s Gift Grab where students choose a gift for Router; and a NetSmartz song about the four rules of real-world safety where students drag words to complete the lyrics of the song.

How to integrate NetSmartz Kids: Router’s Birthday Surprise into your curriculum: I truly didn’t think that NetSmartz Kids could get any better. They have outstanding videos and songs about Internet safety that my students love year after year, they have fantastic educational resources (lesson ideas and downloads), and the games get requested by my students frequently. Router’s Birthday Surprise manages to make it even better! This interactive video is an excellent way for students to learn about Internet Safety and has the added bonus of tracking their understanding of the concepts being learned. Regardless of what subject you teach, Internet Safety is something that we all need to teach and reinforce in our classrooms. In the past, I have used NetSmartz in addition to the sites listed here to help my students learn proper use of the Internet. The rule that I love that NetSmartz includes is the “Tell a trusted parent or adult if there is anything online that makes you scared, uncomfortable, or confused.” I cannot tell you how many students see inappropriate content but fail to tell an adult about it because they think they will be in trouble. This is a rule I make sure that my students know and a rule that I pass on to parents so that they can handle inappropriate web content appropriately (without banning use).

Router’s Birthday Surprise is such a nice addition because it invites students to be part of a story. It breaks the learning down into manageable pieces so that it can be used in any class situation. In the computer lab setting, students can each create an account and save their progress as they go. In a classroom setting, the video can be played for the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. Poll students to find out how they would respond to each question and invite students to take turns coming to the whiteboard or the computer to interact with a game. If you have a student response system (clickers) students can respond to the game show questions using them. In the one or two computer classroom, Router’s Birthday Surprise can be played as a center activity over several weeks. Each week students can complete another video portion and game.

In my class, after students had learned the Internet safety rules (which we came up with as a class), we would have an Internet safety quiz. This was similar to a drivers permit test. I made a big deal about how using the Internet is a privilege just like driving a car. Just like driving there are rules to learn and follow that will keep them and others safe. Just like driving they would have to prove that they knew the rules in order to get their license. And just like driving, they could lose their license if they weren’t following the rules. When students passed the test, I handed out Internet Licenses. Most years I used their previous yearbook picture and created the license myself, but a few years before I had the pictures, I used the NetSmartz UYN club cards, these are great because they list the UYN rules on the back.

Tips: Mike Hill, a creative producer with NetSmartz, generously sent me some DVD copies of Router’s Birthday Surprise to share with my readers. If you don’t have Internet access in your classroom, or don’t have reliable Internet access, let me know in the comment section and I will be happy to send you a DVD version-free! If you need a DVD let me know why, and be sure to leave your correct email address when filling out the comment form.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NetSmartz Kids in your classroom!

Google Me Business Card

September 15, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4825 views

What it is: Google Me Business Card is a free template download from Ji Lee. The template is a PDF file of a blank Google Search query; enter any name, subject or topic and print out your own customized Google Me Business Card.

How to integrate Google Me Business Cards into your curriculum: These business cards could be used in the classroom during a discussion of digital footprints. Students can create their own Google Me cards to act as a reminder that what they do online has staying power. (This is an important reminder for teachers too!) The cards could also be used as a fun way to assign research topics; enter the topic in the search box and let students draw a card to find out what their assignment is.

Tips: To add your own text: In Acrobat Professional, open the PDF and go to Forms, Form Tools, Text field. Now you can add a text field to enter your own text.

In Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign, place the card on a new document and type your text with the text tool.

Take a screen shot of the image and import it into a word document program (Pages is my Word Document program of choice) Add a text box over the search box and enter your text.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the Google Me Business Card in your classroom!