Beyond Classroom Tech Tips…

Yesterday I received a comment on my post about online safety information for parents from Sylvia. She provides a link to her post which provides an excellent list about what to scan for when looking a your children/students’ social networking site:

I regularly monitor my own childrens’ MySpace page. My 17 and 15 year old have added me as their friend on their private profiles, while my 13 year old does NOT have an account. While I do not read their messages, I do scan over the general tone on the page. I have also been asked several times by parents of friends and students of mine to check their blog or web page out to see if I could spot a safety issue.

Here are the things I scan the page for:

1. No first and last name
2. Don’t give away your geographical location (city)
3. Don’t give away school name
4. Possible double or direct meaning of screen name
5. Overall tone of page
   1. Cuss words
   2. Sexual
   3. Racist
   4. Hate words
   5. Threats
   6. Bullying
   7. Violence
   8. Offensive
   9. threatening
6. Photos
   1. sexual
   2. provocative
   3. age inappropriate
   4. identifiable school uniform or school shirts
   5. doing something illegal (or pretending)
   6. photo resolution (the higher the resolution, the easier and with better results it can be manipulated/photoshoped)
   7. bullying (negative comments)
7. Interest and Personality Details
   1. How detailed? Could feed all the information to someone who is “grooming” the child.
8. Posting of sports team and competitions
9. Posting of cell phone numbers or AIM screen names
10. Posting of friends’ personal information
11. Friends List
    1. Do you know them personally? All of them?
    2. Do you have bands added? (Loss of “private profile” control)
    3. Do your friends keep your personal information safe?

This new Social Studies 10 online resource from the Saskatchewan Learning Resource Collection looks awesome.

Welcome to the Grade 10 Social Studies online resource home page.  Within this site you will find learning objects designed for students and teachers.  The objective of this online resource is to supplement and enhance the criteria set out in the Evergreen Curriculum for the province of Saskatchewan.

Grade 10 Social Studies teachers will find this a valuable place to go for  lesson ideas and instructional strategies.  Use one learning object…. use them all… but give it a look.

The purpose of this blog is to provide ideas and suggestions for activities that will help teachers comfortably use technology in their classrooms. Each week I hope to add new ideas that come from following my bloglines account and from teachers within our school division.