Group items tagged

"The CyberSafety Net is an aggregator website that draws in the best resources from the internet and presents them in a logical sequences for each year level from Prep to Year 12. Teachers, Students and Parents can freely use the materials on this website. At Coomera Anglican College, teachers are using the CyberSafety Net as a combined Scope and Sequence and curriculum, embedded into RaVE (Religious and Values Education) , PC (Pastoral Care), PD (Personal Development) and homework tasks (Religious and Values Education), and implemented at school and during homework activities."

Information on Digital Citizenship, Search/Research, What's Web 2.0, Plagiarism, Copyright, Safety 'Net, Cyberbullying. From 2Learn.ca Education Society, Canada

"More than 5 million online U.S. households experienced some type of abuse on Facebook in the past year, including virus infections, identity theft, and for a million children, bullying, a Consumer Reports survey shows. And consumers are at risk in myriad other ways, according to our national State of the Net survey of 2,089 online households conducted earlier this year by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Here are the details: "

"BASKING RIDGE, N.J., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless said today it is spotlighting Net Safety Tips On The Go, the first-ever digital safety and security advice app for Android(TM) smartphones as part of National Internet Safety Month. Now available in V CAST Apps, the app, developed by Google and Verizon together with premier online safety education organizations, provides critical online privacy, security and youth online safety educational messages to help Verizon Wireless customers protect their privacy, families and finances when using their Android smartphones. "

Report exploring Australia's Freedom on the net (FNOT) score. The main site also includes FNOT scores for other countries.

"I set out to answer these questions through a study of attitudes, which compared digitally literate students' to digitally-challenged teachers and visa versa. In this study being undertaken at Swinburne University and sponsored by the Wesley College Institute for Innovation in Education, 321 students in years 9 and 10 and 100 educators were surveyed about their attitudes to digital literacy and the use of digital technologies. The schools were co-educational independent schools with laptop programs and significant differences were observed in student and educator attitudes towards each other's digital literacy. The hypothesis, "that there is a disconnect between the digitally capable students and digitally challenged educators in schools with laptop programs, limiting effective use of digital technology in the classroom" was supported in the findings. This has repercussions for educating "net generation" students and implications for the implementation of the National Secondary Computer Fund and National Broadband Network. The disconnect was revealed in terms of attitudes towards technology in the classroom, teaching pedagogy, internet use, adoption of cutting-edge technologies and limitations placed on school laptops and networks. In this study 57 statements were provided to research participants, who were then grouped into four groups: digitally capable students, digitally challenged students, digitally capable educators and digitally challenged educators."

very useful list

"I'm pretty sure that we're all aware of computer hackers. The real shocker comes with just how easy it is for hackers to steal your information. Today's infographic lets us regular folk know just how easy it is for our information to be tracked and potentially stolen. I have personally been guilty of being too trusting of public routers.  Since I don't have internet at home, I'll spend HOURS surfing the net, and getting personal things done at Mcdonalds, where the internet is free for the public to use. But not after reading today's infographic! It's crazy to realize that this entire time someone could have been cyber stalking my information! I'm going to have to beef up my antivirus and keep my internet time to a minimum. Seriously, for your personal and financial safety, read today's infographic and be protect your computer. The facts in today's infographic are too scary to ignore!"

""Research demonstrates that many youth are disengaged from traditional forms of civic and political life but are very engaged with new media," said Mills College Professor of Education Joseph Kahne, the author of the study. "Our study findings strongly suggest that there are ways to build on their engagement with digital media to foster engagement in civic life." The study debunks the notion that young people, because they are growing up with technology, are so-called "digital natives", who naturally learn to use the Internet for information and discourse. Most young people, in fact, have a lot to learn about using online information and social media resources to better understand their role in society and politics. The research indicates that Literacy 2.0 education can directly influence young people toward civic involvement and political participation. Teaching new literacies, such as credibility assessment, is essential for supporting a healthy democracy, the report concludes. The findings make a strong case for increased digital literacy programs for both students and parents."

"SOME 7.5 million of the 20 million minors who used Facebook in the past year were younger than 13, and a million of them were bullied, harassed or threatened on the site, a study released yesterday said. More than five million Facebook users were 10 years old or younger, and they were allowed to use Facebook largely without parental supervision, leaving them vulnerable to threats ranging from malware to identity theft to sexual predators, the State of the Net survey by Consumer Reports said."

In her new book "Now You See It" to be released August 18, Duke University Professor Cathy N. Davidson explores how the advent of the Internet is changing what we see. Learn more at http://www.nowyouseeit.net.

Practical suggestions for helping kids use the net safely, responsibly and kindly

There are a number of labels to describe the young people currently studying at school, college and university. They include the digital natives, the net generation, the Google generation or the millenials. All of these terms are being used to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of young people (Gibbons, 2007). For some, new technologies have been such a defining feature in the lives of younger generations that they predict a fundamental change in the way young people communicate, socialise, create and learn. They argue that this shift has profound implications for education (e.g. Prensky, 2001a; Gibbons, 2007; Rainie, 2006 and Underwood, 2007). Typically, supporters of this concept view the differences between those who are or who are not digital natives as primarily about when a person was born. This paper will critique and show new evidence against this conception of the digital native as based purely on generational differences. The paper will separate the 'doing' from the 'being', that is it will propose a number of digital activities (doing) that indicate digital nativeness and then examine which types of people (being) are most likely to demonstrate these characteristics. The paper will show that breadth of use, experience, self-efficacy and education are just as, if not more, important than age in explaining how people become digital natives.

Useful blog re net safety

"Just like the footprint you leave when you walk on the beach, your digital footprint is the trail you leave about yourself when you're on the net. Anything you do online, including any profiles you have created, the sites you've visited and the online conversations you've had, add to this trail - even if you think you've been doing things anonymously, or have hidden them (e.g. deleted them from your computer)! "

There are lots of ways to find out about useful apps. for use in schools with ipads and other tablets. The OZTL-Net is one. Here's a website from the Victorian Education Dept. that provides lots of evidence-based information and recommendations about using ipads in schools and useful apps.

" Real time updating, a powerful search tool, and easily movable columns make it the perfect tool for journalists and producers monitoring a number of different stories across the day.​ TweetDeck works by sorting the' noise' into manageable streams, based around searches, lists and profiles."