Last year, I worked with a 6th grade classroom teacher to blend a lesson she had for her class with a project I wanted the kids to perform in my computer class. My project was working with Microsoft Word to create an alphabet book. Each letter had a page and each page had to have a picture along with the text. The classroom teacher was teaching a unit on Canada. What a perfect opportunity for me – the new (to the district) computer teacher! I will teach my lesson and score points with the classroom teacher. Wonderful!
Since these students had not had any ‘formal’ training in any of the computer applications, I got the chance to show them around. They were doing quite well, but had difficulty looking up specific items on the web. They would search for general terms like “Canada” and expect to get results for specific animals, etc. It was a sharp learning curve.
After the second day or so, the teacher came to me before school a bit distraught. A parent had contacted her regarding some images her son had seen on Google while doing this project. After she explained what the images were, I assured her that there was no way those images could bypass Google’s safeguards and the district’s firewalls. Just to assure her, I sat down at a student computer and searched with the same terms the student had used, “Things in Canada”. Well, I will save you the details, but let’s just say I didn’t know you could do that in any country, even Canada! Wow! And me, the new teacher, was responsible for this child seeing these images.
So after I scraped myself off the floor, I sat down to write a note to administration, teachers, and parents. I explained to them that in spite of the best safeguards in place, accidents happen. We can do our best to assure that our children are safe from harm, but they still will occasionally get hurt. With that in mind, we cannot put our children in a bubble in order to assure they are protected. Instead we need to teach them how to navigate the world. And a part of their world is the internet. Are there bad things out there? You bet there are! Will we do all we can to prevent them from entering the school. Yes! But will we always be there to stop the ‘buggy man’ from entering their lives- Absolutely not. That is why we need to give them the tools to handle situations like this.
Sexting, cyberbullying, and the like need to be addressed in the same way. It is easy to say, “Just say no.” (Thank you Nancy Reagan……) but the reality is much more difficult. We serve our students better by teaching them how to deal with it. If we show them the rights and wrongs, actions and consequences, then they can be informed ‘surfers’. These kids are not dumb! If Joe’s non-netbook shows nothing else, it should make people realize that this generation picks up technology with little to no effort. There is no fear. What a wonderful frontier to explore when you aren’t afraid of hitting the wrong button and crashing the system.
Regarding my 6th grade students and Google searching – I took the opportunity to discuss with them the merits and pitfalls of searching. I explained how to do a ‘good’ search and that if you can’t find what you are looking for in the first page or so, you need to rephrase your search. But, I’ll be honest, it was a ‘teaching moment’ I would have gladly passed up!
Canadian Flag: http://images.allrefer.com/reference/world/flag-images/canada-flag.gif
