Digital Safety Reflection

Digital Safety Reflection

Aaron Orot

University of Guam

Abstract

This paper reflects the ideas of digital safety towards both students and teachers in an educational classroom setting. It shows that with the advancement of technology being a positive in human life, it can also harm others due to issues created such as sexting, cyber-bullying, phishing, pharming, and copyright content that puts the user in harm’s way. With the help of created websites, future teachers can understand these harms in today’s classroom and use their knowledge to prevent and stop these cases of abuse of the digital world. With a variety of information portrayed in these websites it was able to help visitors of the site to seek countless information about digital safety and being able to understand it effectively.

ED271 gave us the opportunity to search and receive information of different topics affecting the students and the teachers upon daily use of technology and the Internet. The many topics included ideas such as phishing and pharming, cyber bullying, copyright, and textual harassment to name a few. The assignment was meant to educate all of us on these topics and be aware of how it is being used in everyday lifestyle. It was taught in order to teach us effective ways to avoid such activity and influence students to use it effectively and not harming themselves and those around them.

            Upon the topic of math, I believe the ideas of copyright, cyber bullying, and textual harassment and sexting can be shown in an education unit. They can be seen by the teacher due to phones being easy access towards the students as well as the countless social media that is influenced by the Internet. The easy access of the Internet and the teaching from the groups, as teachers we should be aware of the effects on it because it is harmful towards the students. Playing an active role will help decrease the effect of these types of bullying. Also with cyber bullying and sexting it has become part of our island and implemented as a crime for these type of actions leading to severe punishment (GCA Crimes and Correction). Copyright can be also be used, but on the other end of the classroom by the teacher using videos to display the content of the lesson. Students can also be aware of the copyright skills when they present videos or images that support their work and/or presentation.

            These lessons I believe are of utmost importance due to it being a big harm through the countless statistics gathered. In Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin research of Sexting: A brief guide for educators and parents believed that rules are not enough to implement lessons such as sexting and cyber bullying, but with “creative educational strategies to raise awareness among students on the shortsightedness and foolishness of sending or receiving sexually-explicit images of themselves or someone else.” (Hinduja and Patchin, 4)

            A great way for these students to learn about these topics is actually all of the websites my fellow classmates used. I loved how each website put a lot of information in simpler terms. It makes it easier access as a teacher to find a lot of information in one doable site. It helped that each group had a lot of information as well as great presentation skills of their topic to make us understand the topic at hand.  Not only will it help students, but reflects the ISTE standards of design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments and promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility.

            I think a great way to enhance the assignment would actually be combining both our educational game and digital safety knowledge into one. What I mean by is using the information from the digital safety websites and to test ourselves by actually going through the Internet or educational games that help us see if we understand the different safeties. I believe this will enhance the learning of the digital safety because 15 minutes was not enough for all that knowledge to be taught and with the help of the website as reference it can guide us when finding the digital safeties.

            Digital safety plays a significant role in teachers’ lives and with that we, as future teachers, need to be aware of the harms and effects it has in a classroom setting. The information of cyber bullying and copyright of work have been frequently present and to avoid these digital harms we have to understand and teach it towards the students. These websites seeks another agenda of rules not being enough for students to understand, but with the implementation of these websites it allows the students as well as other people the education of digital safety. These websites are great websites for people who want to know a lot of information in one website alone. These websites to me should be taught in today’s education due to lack of understanding of the digital safety within the schools.

Works Cited

GCA Crimes and Correction. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2014, from http://www.guamcourts.org/Gca/09gca/9gc028.PDF

Hinduja, S. & Patchin, J. W. (2010). Sexting: A brief guide for educators and parents. Cyberbullying Research Center (www.cyberbullying.us).

Kecia, R. (2014, January 1). ISTE STANDARDS TEACHERS. Retrieved October 6, 2014, from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf