Where do we stand on digital safety?

From the outset of this course, digital safety has probably been the area with which I have greatest concern. Hence the reason that it is with great trepidation I endeavour to take any classroom of students on the internet to complete a course of work. It seems that my concerns are not foundationless either! When I saw the results of what children of a certain age "search" on the internet, it is rather alarming. However, it also highlighted the need for me, both as a parent and a teacher to be aware of what our children are looking for and more importantly why they are looking for it. Therefore for me, I think digital safety means dialogue with the children in a positive and reassuring way! Amongst all of this though, it was pleasing to note that the prevalence of sexual predators accessing children via the internet was not as high as I had believed. Twice as interesting to note was the fact that most teenagers that encounter a sexual predator have actually sought them out rather than the other way around. A very enlightening session of information transmission.

In terms of schools dealing with such dangers and exposure, I guess there are two trains of thought i.e. blockage of all sites except those authorised by the schools and secondly, full exposure with explicit teaching of the dangers that are out there. To my surprise, I found myself erring on the side of "full exposure". At the end of the day, our role as teachers is to educate students on what to expect from the real world and what the real world expects from them, so should we not teach and show them how to deal with these potential dangers? If so, we can only do this by educating them as to what to do when they come across potentially harmful material therefore they need to be exposed to the internet as it is not as it is represented by the school. When the student goes home to look something up on the computer they are exposed to the internet in all it's glory and, if we are doing our jobs correctly as teachers then the students should not be surprised by what they see and if they are they should be aware of what they need to do as the next step.

I was reading a particular blog on this topic and particularly liked the following point made:

"Combat the Myth of Anonymity
Teach your kids that behind every avatar or username there is a human being with feelings. We are never anonymous. Everything we do should have our name attached to it. Help your kids recognize the power of their digital footprint and give them opportunities to build and enhance their own."

Hope you like my first little comic strip created to illustrate how to start the discussion. Easy on the comments, people, I am rather proud of it!!!! Will try to make it more viewable when I eventually figure out what is up with it!