iSAFE- Internet Safety
- This certificate shows my completion of the iSAFE curriculum
In this blog I am reflecting on the iSAFE curriculum. The iSAFE curriculum contains six modules:
- Personal Safety – Overview of curriculum with general information about personal internet safety
- Cyber Community issues – Things to avoid on the Internet and how to avoid them
- Cyber Predator Identification – How to identify and avoid cyber predators
- Cyber Security – How to identify and avoid viruses, worms, and other malicious code
- Intellectual Property – How to protect and respect intellectual property
- Effective Outreach – How you can help others in your school community become aware of internet safety issues.
This curriculum helped us address EALR 2 of the Washington State Standards— DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP: Students demonstrate a clear understanding of technology systems and operations and practice personal safety, and legal, ethical, and respectful behavior.
After going through this curriculum I see the importance of internet safety and having students teach each other about internet safety. Kids just won’t listen as well to adults as they will to their peers. The statistics in the modules sometimes surprised me and sometimes affirmed what I already thought. The cyber predator section was really scary to watch and listen to. It is shocking to me that there are so many kids who have met face to face with people they first met online, but guess I shouldn’t be shocked with the popularity of dating sites like eHarmony and match.com when adults meet up with people they met online. The difference that kids don’t always see is that adults are usually more careful in an online environment. Kids see online relationships are more “pure” without the distractions of looks. They are more willing to trust internet relationships because they believe they are anonymous.
With so much information online we all have to be so careful. 87% of Americans can be identified by just birth date, location/zip code, and gender! I was surprised to hear that there don’t appear to be any differences in online behavior between ethnic groups and that the internet is a “great equalizer.” I am not surprised to hear that girls are more involved in social networking sites and blogs.
The section on copyright infringement, patents and trademarks is great and should be shown to students because they don’t get it. Just because something is online doesn’t mean that it is free for the taking. All work and classroom assignments are copyright of the students. I can’t post any work online without permission.
I liked that the goal of iSAFE which is to empower students to manage their “digital footprint “ to protect themselves, not to prevent students from going online. Identity.net seems like a great resource to help students decide who is safe to share information with and how much information to share. The way that students take action and take control of teaching each other to be safe is inspiring and I wish our school district would use a program like this to help parents protect students.
Look to see what iSAFE has to offer parents, students, and teachers.
