Grade One loves working with technology and we are learning how to stay safe when we are online. We are using a website called Common Sense Media. This is a great site for parents to visit, as well as teachers. It will help parents with many questions they might have about how to keep their child safe on the internet. I encourage parents to check it out.
Mike Sitruk has been helping us with this very important theme. We have had two sessions so far. The first one was on “Going Places Safely” Students learned that they can go to exciting places online but they need to follow certain rules to stay safe.
When going online follow these 3 rules to stay safe
1. Ask a parent (or teacher) first.
2. Only talk to people you know.
3. Stick to places that are just right for you.
Our second session with Mike focused on privacy issues.
What kind of information should I keep to myself when I use the internet?
Students learned that many websites ask for information that is private and we discussed how to responsibly handle such requests.
We viewed an online form that asked for private information and we talked about how they should never share this kind of information online. Students then viewed sites that ask them to create usernames, and they learned rules for safeguarding their private information when they create usernames. We brainstormed words that might mean something to them – pet they like, pet name, sport, favorite number. Username ideas were sportdude, dog100, boomer10, soccerboy, dancegirl, etc.
In this lesson we learned to:
1. recognize the kind of information that is private. (full name, age, address, telephone number, email address, where they go to school or after school, where their parents work)
2. understand that they should never give out private information on the Internet
3. learn to create effective usernames that protect their private information
We can’t wait until Mike comes to our class for our next lesson on Digital Safety.
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