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25th April 2007

Where are our 6th grade students going online for fun?

posted in isafety, podcasting, socialnetworking |

I spent most of the day both Monday and Tuesday this week teaching and learning from about 150 5th and 6th grade students at Winding Creek Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma, which is just south of Oklahoma City. Our topic was Internet safety and guidelines for being safe online. I shared a couple videos with them (the National Ad Council video on cyberbullying and the “Predator” video from iSafe) and they brainstormed all the websites they know about where they or their friends “go for fun.” We then created an Inspiration concept map of the results.

We then colored all the sites that permit interaction / social networking a different color (blue.) Last night I took that Inspiration concept map and linked most of the website names to their actual URLs. Check out the results. We used that product to discuss social networking in today’s full-day workshop about “safe digital social networking” for the State of Kansas Department of Education’s annual conference in Wichita. This was my first opportunity to do a full day, six hour workshop on safe digital social networking. We had a lot of fun (at least I did) and the workshop evaluations were very positive. Lots to discuss and learn about on this topic.

Working with the elementary students earlier this week, we actually created 8 different versions of this same document. The one I linked is the version created by the last group of sixth graders. There was some variance (of course) in the websites the students shared and brainstormed, but this version was the most comprehensive.

In addition to discussing Internet safety, we also recorded different students sharing tips about Internet safety for an audio-only podcast. Unfortunately, it appears I may have deleted most of that podcast accidentally….. So I may have to see if I can return to the school at some point and re-record the students’ ideas. They were VERY fired up to share their thoughts about being safe online via a podcast, and came up with some very good suggestions for their peers. They also really enjoyed hearing what their peers had shared, and were quick to identify the voices of their classmates even though they did not state their names in the podcast recording.

This was a LOT of fun for me, since I generally work directly with teachers rather than students now. I hope it was also beneficial for the students. It’s an eye opener to see how many of their self-identified “fun websites” permit digital social networking. We need to be having more conversations with kids, parents, teachers and others about these issues.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 5:16 pm and is filed under isafety, podcasting, socialnetworking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 4 responses to “Where are our 6th grade students going online for fun?”

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  1. 1 On April 25th, 2007, J.D. Williams said:

    I am surprised that http://www.maidmarian.com isn’t on their list. My 6th graders want to go on it all the time.

    I’m still trying to weigh out the pros and cons of it to see if it is actually useful. I’ve heard some of their conversations when I think it could be (using maps and navigation, how to join certain chat rooms) and heard some where I don’t think its useful at all. The unmoderated chat can be a problem. We talk a lot in my class about what to do if you come across something online that you shouldn’t. Haven’t had any problems with that site yet; wish I could say the same thing about flickr.

  2. 2 On April 26th, 2007, HVWP Tech Team ‘06 » Blog Archive said:

    [...] Where are our 6th grade students going online for fun? [...]

  3. 3 On April 26th, 2007, Bob Cotter said:

    You’ve provided an interesting option for an activity to do when I am working with students. I give similar workshops at the schools in our district and will be doing two classes of grades 4 to 7 tomorrow. My current focus with elementary students is on having them understand that what they post online can be very public and that they need to use strong passwords to protect their presence. I also emphasize the need to avoid posting personal information and yet to not hide behind the annonymity of a crypic user id. I use a lot of the NetSmartz videos as well as others from similar organizations. I have just addeded the cyberbullying video in your entry to my collection.

    The inspiration links are very interesting. Thanks for this useful contribution to my ongoing professional development.

  4. 4 On April 26th, 2007, Bob Cotter said:

    I added the assembly video to my presentation today. Wow, what an effect that had.

    Comments from the audience as the video ended, “That was harsh.” And, “Who would ever say something like that at an assembly.” A follow up question from me solicited the response that more than 50% of these grade 5 and 6 students knew someone who had either sent or received an email or MSN note or webpage comment with similar content.

    This video really hit home to them. Thanks again for sharing.