Internet Safety

This is a very important topic to me since i have three daughters, and its a toss up whether they spend more time in the bathroom or on the computer. I watched the two videos in the syllabus for internet safety.  The first was geared toward middle and high school ages while the second was more basic and elementary.  My gut feeling watching both of these videos is that I dont think they go far enough as far as demonstrating the final end game of internet predators.  the one for the older kids does state in one slide that kids can get raped, kidnapped, and murdered, but it is only one flash slide.  that is the most important thing and they should have hammered it home more.  Im not sure i like the medium in which it was presented either.  the idea of just flashing slides up to music from Rocky 2 was not engaging to me and it is doubtful that it would hold the attention of today's teenagers.  

the video for younger children simply was not threatening enough.  There was a nice calm soothing voice telling children to beware, but I would rather have seen it way more threatening.  If a stranger came to your door, would you let him in?  If a stranger called and said to meet him some place, would you go?  those parallels needed to be drawn to better illustrate the danger and finality of a decision made on the net.

It is hard to police and one thing that is not discussed at all in the videos in parent responsibility: Know what your kid is doing on the internet, know who they are talking to, and know what sites they visit.  There are imbedded programs you can by that monitors IM conversations and while some might say its spying, others will say it is just good parenting.

Jukes article was a bore!

okay here's what you do.  when you hit the Jukes article fast forward to page 8 and start reading then.  Jukes could use a better editor, or maybe even an editor period, to cut down his 22 page article to maybe 3 summary pages.  He didn't have to go through all his exhausting information to tell us that the way we grew up was different than the way kids have it today. 

He could have simply started out by stating that instead of talking about how previous generations used the etch-a-sketch for technology.  Was he going for humor?  Because i wasn't laughing at all.  i was actually getting angry and wanted to punch him for being so verbose and unfunny and wasting my afternoon.  Can you come up with a few more cliche' hack references?  what is this open mike night at the Internet Cafe?  Awful!

One of the biggest revelations in his article is that kids retain less (5%) from a lecture and more (90%) from actually doing and demonstrating what they've learned after they learn something.  Really?  Again can you point out anything a little more obvious to even the casual observer?  And if you make it to page 19, you will receive insight like "we have to make learning more fun" and "use more pictures instead of text" Ucccch!  How did this even get published?  and keep the hack coming by closing with a quote from Einstein! 

i give it .5 out of 10 for essential reading!

School technology/internet safety

The worst thing i discovered after looking at the NJCCCS site was that i am only computer literate at the 8th grade level according to their standards.   I was able to squeak under the wire with a few of the 12th grade, but wasn't confident that I could pass all of them.  Does anybody know who determines and sets those standards?   Is it a bunch of retired teachers with nothing to do--or is it somebody's job to set, write, and maintain them?  I have to give them credit because it seems awfully boring and tedious.  They were very thorough and i dont want that job either way.

  

I also watched some of the videos on internet safety and while the information seems pretty straight forward to us as adults, are the actually showing this footage or videos like this during school to hammer home these points?  If they are not, they should be--pretty good stuff!

practice post

GE 555 this will really improve my typing skills as we move on.