2 Great sites to teach your kids about Cybersafety

I have written quite a bit about cybersafety in regards to parents, teachers and students taking ownership of the issue and not just burying our heads in the sand and hope that it goes away and in attempt to find out more about it today I came across two great resources that teach students about about cybersafety, protocol and correct use of the internet.

Hector’s World is a valuable educational resource for use in the classroom. Its cybersafety messages are relevant to younger primary school age groups, particularly 5 – 7 year olds.

Age-based lesson plans and activity sheets for each of the episodes have been designed for use in the classroom. The learning objectives are consistent with the principles set out in the national Statements of Learning for Information Communications and Technology and Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship.

At a teacher’s or parent’s discretion the Hector’s World stories may also be used for children under 5 years of age and for older primary students aged above 8 years.

Suggestions for the classroom:

• view the Hector’s World episodes with the class
• use the lesson plans as a guide to enforce key learning objectives
• install the Hector’s World Safety Button™ on classroom computers
• encourage parents to install the Hector’s World Safety Button at home
• use the downloadable Hector’s World learning activities to enhance the learning experience

Cyberquoll is aimed at older kids and looks at the issues of cyber bullying and the undesirable elements of the web and how to deal with them from the perspective of a teacher, parent and student.

Hope you enjoy them and would love to hear of any others you might know.

Parents need to take more ownership and responsibility of Cyber-Bullying where it happens... At home.

Recently in Victoria Australia we have had mass media coverage over cyber bullying following the tragic suicide of a teenage girl in Geelong who was found to be a victim of cyber bullying; and worst of all she was the 4^th suicide from that school in the last 18 months alone.

Media outlets lapped it up including 60 minutes because it was yet another societal story of doom and gloom of epidemic proportions that did not involve the global financial crisis, Swine Flu, Iraq, Afghanistan.  What made this cheap journalistic booty so appealing to current affairs programs across the country was that it had a real fear factor for parents, suggesting their kids could be involved in this in their bedrooms late at night right now and we could quickly start shifting the blame to our schools for it as this is where cyber bullying manifested itself in reality.  After all this is where their teenage sons were all filmed as mourning friends, stressed and angry parents teachers and principals the next day.

As an ICT leader in a numerous schools over the years I have had a number of parents increasingly approach me to seek instant solutions when they finally find out what their kids are up to online at home and are looking for someone to blame and rectify a massive problem with a click of a mouse.  I have dealt with irate parents looking for someone to blame as they have simply too lazy to enquire or invest any interest or time into what their children are capable of at home on a computer. 

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