Safety on the Web

Teachers, do you know how to prepare your students for their safe use of the Internet? The Internet contains vast amounts of educationally sound material, but also contains equal amounts of  material not suitable for children. This checklist is meant to provide some guidelines on safety as you use the Internet with students.

___ 1. Find out if your school has an Acceptable Use Policy for Internet Use (AUP). If so, become familiar with it. Also review the CCPS Acceptable Use Policy.  If not, here is an example of one you may wish to adapt for your classroom. If you prefer parental permission, you may find the following Teacher-Student Internet Acceptable Use Policy useful because it asks for student and parent signatures. (http://www.safetyed.org/help/teachagree.html)

___ 2. Prepare copies of the AUP for each student. Discuss the policy with the students, and then have the students take it home for the parent to review. If desired, obtain parent permission.

___ 3. Invite the parents to your school for a brief presentation on Internet Safety, discuss your school's or class' AUP, and to describe the safeguards that are in place as far as filtering inappropriate content. (If in doubt, check with your system's Informational Technology Department for details.)  Discuss the ways you intend to use the Internet in your classroom. Provide information to parents for monitoring their child's use of the Internet at home. The links below are some good sites you may want to recommend to parents who are interested in providing for a safer Internet experience at home.
 

• A good site with common sense tips on Internet Safety, including a section for child safety.  http://www.internet-safety.org
• Here is a Parent-Child agreement for Safe Internet Use at home. http://www.safetyed.org/help/agree.html  The main page for this link is: http://www.safetyed.org/
• This is a comprehensive site with information on online filtering, controlling email and chat room use, safe search engines for kids, and much more. http://www.getnetwise.org/
• Here is an excellent site with many resources on Internet Safety for everyone, including safety tips for parents, an online slide show for parents and kids, and many other safety-conscious topics. Prepared by the University of Oklahoma Police Department. http://www.ou.edu/oupd/inetmenu.htm

• Kids Click, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/
• Berit's Best Sites for Children, http://www.beritsbest.com/search/,
• Yahooligans, http://www.yahooligans.com/
• Kids Konnect, http://www.kidskonnect.com/
• Homework Planet,  http://www.homeworkplanet.com/
• Ask Jeeves for Kids, http://www.ajkids.com

___ 5. Prepare a simple start page containing the websites you wish your students to use. Use a word processor, copy the URL from the internet, paste it on your word document, and save your document as a web page. If you save it on a shared drive, your students can access it and click on the prepared links.  Another method is to post the lesson links to a free teacher site, such as TeacherWeb (http://www.teacherweb.com), or MySchoolOnline (http://www.myschoolonline.com/golocal/)

___ 6. Monitor your students carefully as they use the web. If you need to have individuals or small groups use the web without your presence, arrange for an assistant or parent aid to accompany the students.

___ 7. CCPS uses Bess to filter content on the web, but no filtering software is 100% effective. If you find a site that contains objectionable material, please contact the Helpdesk right away by calling x 3500 and provide the address.

The Internet is a terrific teaching tool to incorporate into your daily lessons and to use with your students.  It is your responsibility to make sure the use of it is done with your students' safety in mind as well as their learning goals.