Global Frig Door

Digital Citizenship: Online Safety

As more of our 21st century society moves to the web, we need to develop those skills that will help us navigate these online communities.  We started this week learning about online safety in the computer lab.  The kids already knew a lot about how to stay safe online, and how to avoid cyberbullies.  Each year the students seem to know even more that the year before.  We will be a using a couple sites to learn about what to do to stay safe while online.

We are not going to use McGruff.org.  It is a good resource, but it focuses mainly on preventing cyberbullying.

Netsmartzkids.org takes a more positive, proactive, and pervasive approach to what it means to me a good digital citizen.  Fun characters like Clicky, Nettie, and Webster teach kids how to be safe online by doing the right thing and avoiding the Webville Outlaws.  The site is very interactive with lots of videos, games, and activities.  It has expanded this year to include how to evaluate the credibility of information found on the web.

I just discovered   Webonauts by pbskids.org.  It is really a web game that teaches 8-10 year olds 21st century literacy skills as well as online safety.  It seems to have more of an interacitve storyline to teaching online skills.

Podcast – Virtual Spelling Bee

Our class had a spelling bee.  The unusual thing about this spelling bee is that half the contestants weren’t in the room.  As a matter of fact they weren’t even in the state.  We had a spelling bee with Mr. Rodriguez’ class in Los Angles, CA.  We met virtually via Skype video conferencing software.  The video didn’t work and we had some technical difficulties.  However, we managed several rounds of students in one classes giving spelling words to 1 of 5  contestant in the other class.  We ran out of time, but Ruby, Sierra, and Ashyn made it to the final round in our class.  It was a great opportunity to meet third graders from half-way across the country.  We have already visited their class blog and hope to do more with them in the future.

Here is the podcast of our virtual spelling bee.  Enjoy!

Virtual Spelling Bee podcast [ 10:02 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download