May 31, 2005
Teaching children to use the Internet
Posted by Jess in
Tech Talk
I meant to write about this awhile ago, but for some reason it kept getting pushed back. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to teach children in grades 3-5 as part of an after-school program in my community.
The course was 6 weeks long, with just one hour a week, and I titled it "Surfing the Internet". My main goal, and this was included in the class description, was to teach children how to safely have fun on the Internet. This included learning email, fun sites to visit, how to use a browser, and safety.
I decided I really wanted to go in with an effective curriculum, as a teacher had pointed out to me that someone had tried this with the children previously, and it was nothing short of a disaster. The only way to do this effectively seemed like building on each lesson as the weeks progressed.
The class was such a huge success that the children were sad to see it end, and the teacher told me that I had done a great job and she had never seen it done so methodically. Most importantly, by the end of the class, those kids were nothing short of savvy. They understood what an ad banner was. They understood why they weren't allowed to click on a pop-up. They asked permission before signing up for something, and they certainly didn't use their real name when putting in their high-score on a game site. They sent me e-cards saying goodbye at the end of the class.
In case someone can benefit from this, here is my curriculum of the first three weeks (the foundation skills) and the tools I used.
TOOLS
1. Email accounts for the students. I chose "safe2read.com". For one low price per year, Safe2read allows one primary master account. After that, you can add up to 10 email accounts and monitor all incoming and outgoing email. You can also safely add allowed emails. So I set up 10 generic accounts such as "school1@safe2read.com", "school2", "school3", etc. Generic names allows for no compromise of the student's privacy. I also set all these accounts so the students could email each other without approval needed.
2. Letter to parents.
The first week, the students were sent home with a letter explaining the curriculum, and the generic email accounts. They were also assured that the child's privacy and security would not be compromised by the email account, and were reassured the accounts would be deleted once the class was over.
WEEK 1 - Learn to browse, and what's the Internet, anyway?
A foundation in knowing what the Internet really is becomes crucial to the students learning to respect it. Children were given rope, and each child had a worksheet. Half the sheets were about frogs, the other half were about kangaroos. Each child was told they were a page on the Internet. All the frogs then joined ropes with each other, and were told they became a web site, and were now a great site to learn about frogs! The kangaroos did the same. One child from the frogs then joined a rope to one child from the kangaroos, "linking" their sites to each other. Now, anyone could first learn about frogs, then click the link to go on to the site about kangaroos via those two linked children.
After this, students were then sat at their computers and shown an excellent site to learn navigation - www.disneychannel.com. The site is busy, yet there is lots to click on, drag, highlight, etc. And, to get there, the students have to type in the URL in the address bar.
WEEK 2 - Internet Safety
It must be said that for this week, I was better prepared to learn how to say "hands off the keyboard and mouse and eyes should be looking at me!" This also becomes crucial for the next lession, especially now that the students know how to find the Disney Channel online. :-)
Out of all weeks taught, this was the most important. It's equivalent to showing a child a circus across the street, but not teaching them to look both ways before crossing first.
The children were sent to NetSmartzKids.org, a wonderful site to teach children all about safety. The site has six 1-3 minute animated films for the children to watch. Watching them in order is crucial. The children watched them all in row together.
They involve humorous personification of all the dangers of the Internet called "Wizzywigs", such as characters like the Numbut, who spends too much time on the computer and not enough time playing outside. The Spamazoid sends the same email to everyone on their email list all the time. Then there is Follow-You-Fiona, who likes to listen to what you say, and loves it when you tell her too much information.
There's also games such as "Who Is Your Friend on the Internet?" These games had the kids laughing AND learning.
Once the movies were over, I handed out a printout of a sample online profile of a child. We went over all the bits of personal information in there and the children told me which bits were OK to have in there, and which were stating too much information. They even picked up on the subtle clues in the profile, such as stating the first name of the child's dad in a classified ad. Between that and knowing the last name of the child, the students correctly figured out that someone could put two-and-two together and could call information based on the father's full name.
After the safety lesson, we moved on to banner-ads and more privacy lessons. I explained how toy stores have fun toys spread out for kids to play with to keep them in the store. I then explained how websites contained fun games, but many of them, like toy stores, were trying to sell something at the same time. Most websites have a primary focus, and the first step is to discover what that focus is. Lastly, I explained how banner-ads were usually rectangular, but were almost always animated and were definately trying to sell something.
We went back to the kids' favorite site, disneychannel.com. I asked the kids to tell me the primary function of this site. Without hesitation, they all answered "to tell us what shows are on the Disney channel!" They were then able to correctly point out all the ad-banners on the site.
WEEK 3 - Email
This week each child was given their "school" email account and shown how to log in. Before the class, I sent each child about 5 different emails, with a task to do in each email.
The tasks consisted of "Send me a reply to this email! To do that, hold your mouse button over each icon until you see the one that says "Reply", and then send me a message!"
More tasks, such as "forward this email", "delete this email", "send a brand new email to the person sitting to your left", etc. taught each aspect of emailing in a manageable format. Children didn't move on to the next email until they had completed the task.
At this point, classes became easy as I could simply group email the children what sites I wanted them to go to and their assignments.
The last step of this class was about FUN! This should always be the most important element of each class, and should *never* be forgotten. Always end each class with some element of fun if possible.
The children were sent a link to Hallmark's free E-Cards. They could take their time and go through and pick out a card, and send it to someone in the class, or myself. Once they found a card they liked (Hoops and Yoyo were *really* popular!), I showed them how to fill out the bit (safely) to send it to someone in the class.
FUTURE LESSONS
Now that you have established a strong Internet foundation, the rest is up to you. We did scavenger hunts online through Yahooligans!, using the Internet as a reference tool, and more. Ask Jeeves for Kids is excellent. Give each child a "why" question (why is the sky blue? Why do we sleep?), or have them come up with one on their own and find the answer.
Happy teaching!
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Jess,
This is *excellent*; I've been (halfheartedly) searching for something to catch my daughter's interest. She's got an e-mail account and periodically (infrequently) will visit a couple of websites, but this gives me hope for making it so that I don't mind her exploring without me hovering...
You rule, Jess! I wish my daughter could be in your class. In today's connected world, it's *so* important for kids to learn how to use the 'net properly and safely. Good job, and keep on keepin' on!
Love,
Marion
xxx
