With my school on the verge of releasing Google Apps For Education, the possibilities for students to stray over the line of appropriate, either on purpose or by accident, is quite high when it comes to the sharing of their content online. Google+ will be accessible by my 15 year old students and above within our domain.
For some time now, I have had my students create an e-Exercise book in Google Drive that has their notes, images and videos from their science lessons embedded. The students find uploading their videos to YouTube and embedding them into their Drive files so easy that it is their preferred choice. Before I would let them do this, they had to show me that they could change the settings to Private and only share with the email addresses they specified; they also had to give me a few reasons why they should keep themselves safe in this manner. They know the right words to say but they are naive and don't really see the risk; perception of risk and actual risk are two different things and when a threat isn't directly in your face, it is out of mind!
In preparing the social networking guidelines for our transition to GAFE, I used all of the resources below. I liaised with the Pastoral Leaders in the school and the ICT specialists as they teach the topic of e-safety each year. I also spoke with the librarian; the librarians are very strongly versed in Digital Literacy and advocate the The Big 6 in regards to searching online, however in this case the librarian felt that the greatest experience lay with the other pastoral and IT teachers with whom I had already spoke.
I was very pleased to find that the pastoral team has a module specific for e-safety and Digital Citizenship. I am not a Form Tutor and so I do not teach this element of the pastoral curriculum so I took time to sift through the curriculum on e-safety and drew together elements from what we already have and what would be better for e-safety ion social networking scenarios.
The following is a list of points our students should aim to consider when they are posting online or are in online communities. Our teachers will be expected to model and teach our students about these:
- Privacy Settings
Keeping posts shared with those people you want to have look at your stuff. Remember public means anyone can see! - Think before you post
What one person thinks is funny could be very hurtful to another. If your mother wouldn't like to read or see what you have posted, don't post it! - Consider the photos you upload
The nature and impact an image has when posted online, the attention it draws and the people that can view it need to be considered! - Know how to report inappropriate behaviour
Does the social network itself have a reporting feature? Which teachers can you report to? Tell you parents? Cyberbullying is against the law; CEOP. - Online friendship
Keep your personal information off you profile, don't give your full name, DOB and address, and only accept friendship requests with people you are actually friends with In Real Life.
Another behaviour students should get in the habit of doing is logging themselves out of their accounts after using a public machine. We have bookable iPods, iPads and laptops and students like to leave their Google Drive accounts logged in; full access thank you!
Resources:
Kidsmart: http://kidsmart.org.uk/
Digizen: http://www.digizen.org/
Childnet: http://www.childnet.
Know it all: http://www.childnet.com/
Stop Bullying.gov: http://www.
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