Meghan Christensen

SLM-521

7/4/09

Elective #8

Key Pals

First Grade: All Subject Areas

 

Before reading about key pals and kid friendly e-mail, I thought that the internet wasn’t a safe place for students to be at without their parents’ or teacher’s supervision. Although parents still have to agree to let their children use the internet at school, they shouldn’t be bothered by these kid-friendly ways to use the internet as a classroom community tool. Here are a couple of good ideas to be able to use safely in and out of the classroom.

 

  1. Students can use a classroom chat room to ask questions about homework. They can chat with other classmates about homework problems or the teacher could have a scheduled time that she will be on to help any of her students.

 

  1. Outside of the classroom, students can chat with other students in other states. I know in my first grade class, we read about Flat Stanley and then make our own Flat Stanleys to send all over the world. Students could discuss what life is like all around the world with people from those areas.

 

  1. Classroom can set up e-mail accounts to e-mail projects or letters to each other. Maybe the teacher needs to let parents know of conferences.

 

  1. Classroom/School newsletters can be sent out to teacher/students about calendar dates, or criteria that are being taught for that specific month/marking period.

 

  1. I have a computer center in my classroom, so a safe site that has students finding out information on their own is a great tool for the classroom. Students could retrieve information for research projects and reading material.

 

 

Two sites that would be good tools to use for some of the above ideas are as follows:

 

*      Yahoo! Kids  http://kids.yahoo.com

This site offers kids a safe and secure place to have fun and learn too. One feature that is very nice is the StudyZone. Students won’t be bothered with crazy advertisements and games to distract them. Students can go to this area to view clips of nature, ask Earl if they need help, learn about space in the science section, use a dictionary or encyclopedia, and learn facts about different countries. Yahoo! Kids also has articles based on cartoons, kid stars, news, movie reviews, and game reviews. There is another section filled with games and puzzles for kids to play too. Parents have their own section as well. Parents can look at movie, music, and game reviews before allow their children access. They can also look at information about the site. Yahoo! Kids provides tips for parents when dealing with their children using the internet. A very resourceful site.  

 

*      ePals http://www.epals.com

ePals is a great site to look at if you want to have your own classroom e-mail account. It is a secure site that allows teachers and administrators full access to all e-mail registered. This allows control over harassments of any kind to be stopped through e-mail. Parents can also connect to the school registration to keep up communication with the school. Other classrooms around the world are registered and can connect to other classrooms to chat.