I was very intrigued by this article- and one of the first things that caught my attention was the section that talked about how instilling fear does not work as a way to keep our students safe. I have to say that I agree with this 100%. Often times trying to "scare" someone into not doing something makes them even more curious about it. I feel like this is why we need to teach students to be safe and to know how to look through a lens where they can separate what is good and what is not. How do we do this? By giving students the proper skills, not by punishing or scaring our students.
The statistics about cybersafety and cybersecurity curriculum really bothered me. Teachers not teaching about this in the last 12 months? Thats an entire year! As educators it is our responsibility to teach our students the content that they need to know and to keep them safe. I find it appalling that teachers are not teaching their students about how to be safe online when students are using the internet everyday-often times for school assignments. I know when I was in school I was never told about safety online...I learned about safety online from my parents. I think it is a shame that this is not something that is being incorporated into the curriculum in our schools more. This needs to be something that starts being taught at a young age, because students as young as preschool are using computers for different tasks.
I think another huge issue is cyber bullying. I have seen this being talked about in some schools when they do units on bullying but I think it is not talked about enough as it directly relates to safety online. I think the worst part of cyber bullying is the anonymity of it...students need to know that bullying online is never ok and if they are being bullied online they need to know what to do about it. This is something that is very serious and can be detrimental to many students-even pushing some to suicide. As teachers we can give our students the information about how to deal with things like this if they ever happen, and we can teach students how to get out of a situation like this. I do like the idea of teaching students to cooperate with each other and how to defend someone who is being bullied. I think that this is something that can help the students with understanding bullies better and when they are at school we can be there to watch our students. When they get home and go online though we are not there to watch and make sure that everyone is behaving- this is why teaching students safety online is so crucial...for their safety and for the safety of others.
Great point that trying to scare someone does often make them more curious about it. Just like trying to stop someone from doing something, makes them sometimes want to do it even more. I also really agree with you that teachers need to teach more, and more often, about Internet safety and appropriate use. It is teachers (our) responsibility to teach students the knowledge they need for a successful life. Everybody's life these days does revolves around the Internet, therefore, it needs a ton of focus in order to teach safety.
ReplyDeleteI liked your point about how scaring students doesn't teach them the right thing to do and will most likely reinforce them to try it anyways. If teachers are not taking time out of the year to teach their students how to be safe on the web then something is really wrong...I like how you said that most teachers assign homework that requires the internet and yet they still don't protect their students from things they can possible encounter on the web.
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