Internet safety

I spent a couple hours learning about internet safety this week. One reason I spent more time is that I got distracted by watching the teen safety videos on netsmartz.com. I must admit, the stories and facts that I learned were a bit frightening. I read the whole site for internet safety on the ldstech website and found a bunch of statistics on cyber bullying. I was surprised by how young kids are when they start being bullied. I was also surprised by how easily information can be found. It made me wonder if it is too late for me to lock up all my information that has already been shared through facebook and such. I googled my name and found that the first two pages of search results are actually about me. I taught my sister (who has two boys) all about what I had learned and even showed her one of the videos that I thought would be most helpful to her.

The thing that we spent the most time on was kid safe browsers. I showed her Kidzui and she decided to look into it. we were about to download it, but our computer told us that it was from an unknown publisher. How can I trust places like kidzui if I haven't used it before. Have any of you used it? Is it actually safe? Does it really work to keep our children off of the typical websites? My sister said that she likes nick jr., but nick jr still has adds that her kids can click on that take them away from the site onto places that she has never seen before. Does Kidzui get rid of that problem? My sister and I decided together to be more careful and watch out for danger on the internet. I hope my nephews, and everyone else I love, feel the same!

Participation

I have reviewed all of the movies made by Dan, Liz and Stuart. Here are the link to my comments.

Dan: http://dan-the-tech-teacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/multimedia-project-teaching-relative.html?showComment=1323890290337#c2360392488867117287

Liz: http://lizthesciencewiz.blogspot.com/2011/12/instructional-video.html?showComment=1323890792312#c2616605896594443560

Stuart: http://stuarticusharperian.blogspot.com/2011/12/harpers-world-of-science.html#comment-form

Movie Reflections

I made this movie movie with the idea of it being a project I could have my chemistry students do. It would have been after we learn about the difference between chemical and physical changes. Then my students could think of examples of each type of change and come up with a project to show what they know. If they have to think about examples, find ways to portray them and present them to the class, they can have more confidence in the idea that they actually know what they are talking about and they will be more reflective about their learning. Plus I feel like my students would have a lot of fun doing something like this. I know the high school student that helped me had fun!

My First Movie!!!!

Instructional video storyboard

Here is my storyboard!

The Promethean Board

Another technology that I have been working with is an interactive white board called the Promethean board. A lot of people have heard of the Smart board, but that is just a name brand, kind of like Kleenex rather than Puffs. I could use this technology to help the students become more involved in the classroom. It takes a little longer to make flipcharts (kind of like a power point slide show), but you can share your flipcharts with any other teachers who use the promethean board (if you want to). I really like that I can use layers (which I just learned). Using layers I can hide answers underneath of pictures and have students identify what each picture represents. Then I can let them move my "reveal-er" over the picture to let them see if they are right. The promethean board also comes with an "iclicker" type of technology, so I can have students answer before we reveal the answer. I really love how interactive the promethean board is, though there are a few glitches. Sometimes the "pen" squeaks against the board which is unpleasant, so I think I would like to use a smart board rather than a promethean board. Another glitch is that sometimes the pen will stay as a clicker even when you try to use it as a pen. I haven't figured out how to get out of the glitch yet, but I hope to. Overall, I really like the promethean board. I would use it if i had one in my classroom, but I would not go out of my way to buy it for my classroom.

Here is a poll that I would use in my classroom...

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