Burger Queen Blog: How I Would Teach An Educational Unit About Digital and Internet Safety Issues

Objective of the Educational Unit:

The objective of this educational unit was to inform the class about Digital and Internet Safety. The class broke up into groups to present four respective components of the unit, which include: Digital and Internet Safety Issues, Textual Harassment and Sexting, Phishing and Pharming, and Cyber bullying. Each of the groups creatively presented what their topic was about, how it affects students, and how we can prevent these issues and promote Internet safety for our students as parents, professional teachers, and active guardians. According to Garcia-Umana and Tirado-Morueta (2018), "it is essential to apply educational measures to promote the responsible use of the Internet, it is unquestionable that information technologies are gaining strength in the information society and preferably among adolescents who will be the future of society." So, I feel that this educational unit has influenced us as future professional educators to incorporate Internet safety with our lessons, especially with how technology is developing and present in our everyday lives.

How the components worked cohesively as an educational unit:

In my perspective, the four components of the unit worked together cohesively to inform our class the different aspects of Internet Safety we should teach our students in the classroom. It allowed us to listen and present as professional peers. In regards to Internet Safety, I feel that our class managed to elaborate on different ways students should protect their identity, private information, and overall safety online. However, I feel that we should have another group presentation in which they demonstrate how to find the credibility of online websites and sources.

In addition, I feel that the order of how we presented the four components in class can be modified for the overall educational unit to have a more powerful impact on our peers during class. I feel that our presentation should go in the following order: Cyber bullying, Textual Harassment and Sexting, Phishing and Pharming, Distinguishing Credible Sources, and Digital and Internet Safety Issues. In this order, I feel that the students will start off with topics that they are more exposed to, then leading into topics they have not yet been exposed to.

How would you design a lesson on Internet safety:

With this educational unit, I will teach my students five different components of Internet Safety while integrating other content standards such as ELA, Math, and Science. For elementary students, I would design this educational unit to be taught in third quarter to build their computer skills prior to an end-of-the-year project that requires the use of Internet. I would combine cyber bullying, textual harassment and sexting with ELA standards by having students identify the main idea and details of the components and identify ways to report cyber bullying, textual harassment, and sexting. I would also create an interdisciplinary lesson that teaches students how to distinguish credible sources with Science standards, requiring the students to analyze and compare credible sources with non-credible sources. And finally, I would link digital and Internet safety issues with math by having students generate bar graphs to visually represent how many people are affected by not being safe on the Internet.

For secondary students, however, I would design this educational unit to be taught at the beginning of the school year. Much like with the design for elementary students, cyber bullying, textual harassment, and sexting will be taught in an interdisciplinary lesson with ELA standards. However, the students will be asked to write a reflection, instead of just identifying main ideas and details. In another ELA lesson, I would teach about phishing and pharming. I would then check their understanding by having the students create a Venn diagram that compares the differences and similarities between phishing and pharming. In a Science class, I would incorporate my lesson with how to find credible sources online. I would also have them participate in practice activities that teach students how to distinguish credible sources and how to use that information in their science projects. And with Math, I would incorporate digital and Internet safety issues by having students create bar graphs and pie charts to represent how many people are affected by using the Internet in an unsafe manner.

Conferencing Tools:

For this project, my group members and I didn't use any web conferencing tools. However, we communicated mainly through WhatsApp and Google Docs. With Google Docs, we were able to assign parts for the presentation and share our information we gathered from the Internet. Google Docs also made it easier for us to compile a list of the resources we used for the project, allowing us to convert it into APA format for our presentation slide. WhatsApp allowed us to communicate on who can edit at certain times. The presentation tool we chose was Canva, which only allows one user to edit at a time. So, we were able to use WhatsApp to communicate whether someone was editing the presentation or if someone wanted their turn to edit. If I had the chance to do this project over, I would have created a website using Wix or create a presentation with Prezi. Canva was quite finicky to work with, and it was difficult and time consuming for us to constantly "wait our turn" to edit the same presentation.

Suggestions for this Assignment:

I feel like preparations for our presentations would have gone a lot smoother if we were given a rubric based on what we are being graded on and what is expected on our presentation. It would have given us an outline of what was required, so that we can go beyond the rubric and be creative. I feel that being told, "Be creative." is counterproductive because students aren't able to have a foundation of what is expected before being able to expand beyond their presentation.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I felt that our class did wonderfully as a group to present the educational unit. We covered important components regarding Digital and Internet safety. I feel that most teachers would only teach students about cyber bullying. According to Faryadi (2011), "the authorities at universities should take steps to curb cyber bullying. Victims of cyber bullies suffer from emotional and psychological stress, and inevitably their grades will deteriorate." Although cyber bullying is quite an important topic to discuss, I feel that there are other digital and Internet safety issues our future students must be aware of. And this educational unit allowed us to explore different ways we can teach our students how to use the Internet safely.