Elementary computer lab teachers will soon be rolling out the i-SAFE program as an integral part of their curriculum. This comprehensive program provides teachers with resources, lesson plans, and even handouts. We invite all who use the i-SAFE curriculum to add to ideas below on incorporating “green” technologies into the program.
Does your child text while driving? If the answer is “yes,” he or she is at the same risk of causing a fatal accident as someone who is driving while legally drunk. The statistics are far reaching and frightening.
Across the nation, celebrities and organizations are grappling with this escalating problem. Oprah Winfrey is taking a lead with her No Texting Campaign – don’t temp f8, that txt can w8 and inviting all drivers to take her No Phone Zone Pledge. Her website now includes a growing bank of resources such as the video What you really see when you’re texting.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has launched the first national nonprofit organization dedicated to ending distracted driving in this country. You can learn more about their program at Distraction.gov.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles is currently enforcing the following cell phone laws:
- Prohibit persons under the age of 18 from driving a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone or a mobile service device. This prohibition includes telephones equipped with a hands-free device.
- Prohibit persons 18 and older from driving a motor vehicle while using a hand-held cellular telephone unless that telephone permits hands-free operation. EXCEPTIONS: The law allows those driving a motor truck, truck tractor, tow truck, or specified farm vehicles to use a digital two-way radio service built into a wireless telephone that operates by depressing a push-to-talk feature and does not require immediate proximity to the user’s ear. These exceptions apply until July 1, 2011.
Bottom line: Do not text while driving!
If you have resources 2WebWatchers could add to this blog and include in our Internet Safety presentations, please post a comment.
Note: Image copied from Oprah.com
During this busy time of year, 2WebWatchers hope you can set aside an hour on December 16 at 9:15 – 10:15 to log on to the 2009 K12 Online Conference – Bridging the Divide. High school teacher Vicki Davis and her students will be sharing their year-long Digiteens Global Project:
As part of the k12 online conference 2009 and as a conclusion to the Digiteen Project #3 of 2009, students from Westwood Schools will be presenting their top socially connected sites for kids aged 8-12 (and some that they DO NOT recommend.) As part of Digiteen 2009, these students felt that many sites that are marketed to kids aged 8-12 are not appropriate nor safe and set out to review and test the best. They have been blogging and have a twitter account (@socialsafety) and will be presenting live in Elluminate on Wednesday, December 16, 2010 from 12:15 pm-12:45 pm and answer your questions about their testing experiences.
At the conclusion of the student presentation, from 12:45pm – 1:15 pm leading social internet safety expert, Anne Collier will reflect and talk with students about their findings. Backchannel questions will be included in the conversation.”
In addition to meeting and learning from Vicki’s students, you will meet Anne Collier. Anne’s Connect Safely website and her interviews posted to PBS Frontline’s Digital Nation series are great resources for parents and educators to learn about keeping children safe in a digital world:
Be sure to checkout the video resources she has posted to the site, such as Larry Magid’s tutorial on privacy settings for Facebook and the Meet the Web Family videos, including Is Kate a Web Addict?
Parents often ask 2WebWatchers about the best ways to set parental controls on their home computer. We think you’ll find Google’s SafeSearch worth checking out. Of course, nothing replaces parental supervision, but the Google team is doing their best to provide parents with a user-friendly tool that attempts to block explicit or inappropriate sites. Thanks to 
very conspicous “colored balls” displayed at the top of the screen, parents can see at a glance that SafeSearch is still “locked.
And if SafeSearch were not enough,…Google has also launched KidRex, a search engine “for kids, by kids.”
We would welcome parent reviews on both these Google tools. Please feel free to post a comment by clicking on the Post a comment link below this post.
Note: All comments are moderated by 2WebWatchers (usually within 24 hours).
Is your principal or vice principal out there in the edublogosphere? If so, wouldn’t it be awesome to have an EGUSD administrator join the ranks of bloggers who have been added to Scott McCloud’s growing Moving Forward wiki, such as elementary school principal Vincent Baxter, middle school principal Chris Lindholm, and high school principal Patrick Larkin?
If your EGUSD principal or vice principal is not out in the edublogosphere yet, how about nominating him/her for a free Edublogs Supporter Level account? We (2WebWatchers) will provide any training and support needed.
The nomination process is very simple. Click on our comment link, and complete the statement below – inserting his/her name and why you think he or she would make good use of this powerful web 2.0 technology tool.
I nominate ______________ to become an Edublogs Supporter because I know he/she will __________________________________________________________.”
We will be selecting three winners from your nomiations. Good luck!
PS – We moderate (approve) all comments, but within a few hours, you should see your comment go “live.”
Like students everywhere, our students are actively texting, posting to blogs, remixing, and uploading photos and videos – sometimes without the realization that once things are posted on the Internet, they can become archived permanently and are searchable by recruiters, future employers and anyone else out there with a computer.
For the past three years, we have been facilitating district-wide Internet Safety workshops for teachers, administrators, and parents. After demonstrating how to “Google yourself,”* we frequently have participants pull us aside or contact us afterwords because they’ve discovered their child has posted either inappropriate information or way too much personal information on the Internet. They want to know how they can help their child remove detrimental material from MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks.
As alarming as it may be to find that your child’s digital footprint has taken a negative turn, there are, fortunately, options for undoing or lessening the damage:
- Start by contacting the website that is hosting whatever it is you would like removed. The content could be either by or about your child. Unfortunately, even if your child understands the potential impact of placing personal information on the Web, his or her friends may not. Either way most webmasters will comply with your request (it helps to request politely;-)
- If you would prefer to pay a third party do the searches for you, businesses such as Reputation Defender will “scour the Internet for all references to your child or teen – by name, photography, screen name, or social network profiles – and package it to you in an easy-to-understand report.” Typically, fees run from$10 – $15 per month, depending on your plan. Note: the EGUSD does not endorse any search vendors.
- Encourage your child to become involved with school, community, and national or even international organizations that he/she has an interest in – and that, in turn, will provide positive press – resulting in positive Google search returns. For example, a Google search on Cosumnes Oaks sophomore and independent filmmaker Tori Winslow will bring up (besides a number of Google twins) links that showcase her passion, talent, and commitment to producing documentaries to educate the public and promote an awareness of issues ranging from humane treatment of giraffes in captivity to common health concerns . The Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium, for example, features an interview with Tori about the value of filmmaking. The Gluten-Free NYC website promotes Tori’s Celiac Disease documentary. And the EGUSD website references her in a feature story spotlighting the winning entries for the district’s first annual Internet Safety Video Contest. Tori’s accomplishments are documented and searchable, which can be a good thing – especially if the audience includes a college recruiter or a prospective employer.
If you have questions about or suggestions for helping our students create and maintain positive digital footprints, please post a comment.
*To google yourself, go to Google at http://www.google.com/. Type in your full name, but in quotes – like this “John Doe.” Then click Google search.
Image copied (under Creative Commons Fair Use attribution) from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ildalina/2068892886/
California Assembly members are proposing a bill that would expand on the 2007 Chavez bill (AB 307) requirement for teaching Internet safety in California public schools. The Chavez bill originally addressed the need to teach students about copyright and fair use. The bill was later amended to include a section on Internet safety.
A new bill, AB 678 (Hall) Education Technology, extends the Chavez bill to require California school districts’ 3- to 5-year technology plans to include Internet safety guidelines and criteria that educates students and teachers on the negative impacts of cyberbullying and the responsible use by students of mobile communication technology. The EGUSD 2009-2012 technology plan clearly delineates the district’s commitment to continue our outreach to teachers, students, and parents on the safe, effective, and ethical use of the Internet.
If you would like to track AB 678’s journey through the Legislature, bookmark this link: http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_678/.
One of the goals of the 2WebWatchers blog is to keep our EGUSD community at large informed of changes in federal, state, and district guidelines pertinent to the teaching of Internet safety. Another goal is to provide you with resources that can be used in K-12 classrooms and at home. We have a new addition to our collection of EGUSD student-produced, award-winning Internet safety videos: Blog Safely. This PSA was produced by 4th grade filmmakers in Lesley McKillop’s classroom at Prairie Elementary and received Honorable Mention at the recent SEVA Awards Night.
As always, we invite your comments and feedback.
A visit to Toby Johnson Middle School’s Video Productions class is like stepping into a whirlwind of amazing media activities. Throughout the classroom, students are teamed up and collaborating to meet a variety of production deadlines. Student groups may be working on Public Service Announcements, commercials to promote school activities, movies to be used for instructional purposes by other teachers, news reports for the morning show, instructional videos, documentaries, music videos or digital story telling assignments.
All Toby Johnson students begin their day connecting through media through the live daily news show, First Things First on TJ TV, which, while only in its first year, has already become an integral part of TJMS’s school culture.
Video Productions teacher Dana La Chapelle started transforming her vision for a student-run school TV program into a reality over the summer. She remodeled what was originally an adjoining wood shop class into a state of the art – on a shoe-string budget – production studio. Thanks in part to funding from a Carl Perkins grant, obsolete equipment donated by CSUS, and a lot of help and technical guidance and equipment donations from Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium (SECC) production manager Doug Niva, La Chapelle’s students were able to go live with their first TJ-TV show on the first day of school. “Without SECC, we wouldn’t even have known what equipment we needed” said La Chapelle, “thanks to Doug Niva, we had a wish list to start with and set out to find a way to bring the needed items together. After we gathered the equipment, SECC stepped in again and helped us to put it all together. Doug spent two twelve-hour days helping me (and my family) put the studio together and many hours since offering technical support and guidance over the phone,” La Chapelle continued. “There is absolutely no way we could be doing any of what we’re doing today without the help and tremendous support of Doug Niva and SECC.”
In addition to the TJ TV shows, students are involved in creating a range of public service announcements (PSAs) that will go out to the TJMS community and beyond. The winning middle school entry for the Elk Grove Unified School District’s 1st Annual Internet Safety Video Contest, for instance, was produced by one of La Chapelle’s video teams. Much of their focus in recent months has been to create winning entries for the upcoming Student Educational Video Event (SEVAs) and to complete a video series about the changes that students experience during their middle school years to be broadcast as part of the school’s Advocacy Program lessons. Throughout all projects, LaChapelle weaves in lessons on ethical and legal use of the Internet, including copyright and fair use issues.
“My goal for the Video Productions class is to engage students in learning new technologies and production strategies that will prepare them for success both in school and in the future,” explains La Chapelle. “To be literate in the 21st century, students need a wide range of abilities and competencies, including the ability to create, analyze and evaluate multi-media texts – and to understand the safe and ethical use of new technologies. Most importantly, I want students to learn that what they think, feel and have to say is important. They have so much to contribute inside themselves. I love being able to show them how to share their voice in such a compelling format.”
As the video below illustrates, there is no “down time” in Video Productions. From a student perspective, the class provides a variety of experiences. As Jessica, a 7th grade video productions student explained, “Video Productions is a great way for us to get involved with student-made voices!” Seventh grader Enshika added, ” I really lie Video Productions. It gives me a chance to be creative and use my imagination. There are no boundaries or limitations.”
To learn more about the Video Productions class and TV program, please contact Dana la Chapelle at diachape@egusd.net.
If you know of other school programs that integrate Internet Safety into the curriculum, please contact 2WebWatchers at 2WebWatchers@egusd.net.
For the past year, we (2WebWatchers) have taken our Internet Safety workshop on the road in an effort to make it accessible to parents as well as teachers. These regional face-to-face workshops serve as an open invitation to parents to join in the conversation of best ways to help their children learn to use the Internet safely, effectively, and ethically.
As part of the presentation, we showcase how teachers are harnessing the power of Web 2.0 to take learning beyond the walls of the classroom – while teaching students the protocols to keep them safe from others, from each other, and from themselves. A concern voiced by some parents is that their elementary student may have little access to the Internet during the school day due to lack of computers in the classroom and/or limited access to computer lab time. Therefore social networking is not woven into their child’s school day. They ask for recommendations of safe social networking sites their child might use at home.
Our question to parents is “Is there a specific interest or goal for bringing your child into the world of social networking? For instance, do you wish to:
- create an online communication tool for your child, family and friends that can be accessed, expanded, archived over the years?” If the answer is “yes,” then we recommend creating a blog, using an ad-free program such as Google’s Blogger. An excellent example is All About Amy. We first learned about Amy’s blog via a post from her father. In the years to come, we suspect Amy will value being able to look back at conversations with her immediate family, relatives, friends, and all those who helped her on her journey to becoming a reflective writer. All About Amy is a great model for parents as co-pilots!
- provide your child, age 5-8, with access to a safe, international audience and a window into other cultures? If the answer is “yes,” then we recommend
Panwapa – Where Kids Shape the World. This site is an excellent introduction to social networking! For a starter, the only “personal information” required to create a profile is your child’s country. Sponsored by Sesame Street, Panwapa allows children to visit other members around the world, thus learning about other cultures and languages as well as world geography. Members are walked through steps to create an avatar. With pre-scripted messages and a built in voice-over directions, Panwapa is accessible to pre-readers. The Care Giver and Teacher Guides are also helpful. A safe FREE site with educational value and no ads (other than funders’ logos). Appropriate for ages 5+
For parents who are curious about several of the better-known social networking sites for elementary students and ‘tweens, here is some background information:
- Club Penguin – Brought to you by Disney, and, although it’s possible to join and play for free, more options are available to paying members. Site is heavy on consumerism, but does offer levels of parental control. A recent parent review published to Good Housekeeping Magazine, Undercover in a Kids Online World, is an interesting insight into the “good” vs. “bad” of this site. Parents should definitely be co-pilots on this site and provide guidance and explanations about how to deal with unfriendly messages. Appropriate for ages 8+
- Webkinz – Requires purchase of a Webkinz pet in order to get “pet code” required for becoming a
member. This site is all about consumerism, which could possibly teach children lessons in saving. Definitely needs a parent co-pilot to monitor unfriendly messages. Appropriate for 8+
- Imbee – “Sorry to announce that this site is down indefinitely.” Too bad because this site offered a parent-monitored introduction to blogging. Appropriate for ages 11+
For parents wondering where to go in order to find reviews of kid-friendly social network sites, we recommend Common Sense Media.
Any insights from readers would be most welcome!
Note: Webkinz image copied from http://sydemkate.com/Images/webkinz3.gif
An Internet Safety Night for Sunrise Elementary parents is scheduled for Thursday, April 2, 2009. This workshop is part of our continued effort to teach parents how to best guide their children in the safe, effective and ethical use of the Internet.
Our presentation is an interactive, highly participatory conversation with the community at large. As always, we will share topics that have emerged from this training session here on 2WebWatchers.
Sunrise Elementary will be the 5th and final Internet Safety training sponsored by an elementary school for the current school year.
2WebWatchers will be scheduling future regional trainings through Adult Education. We will advertise these trainings here on the blog, in school newsletters and on School Loop.
