Although ICT can be wonderful and amazing, they can also be quite dangerous. This is due to things like anonymity (who knows who the person on the other side of the communication channel is) and scams (who hasn’t experienced a ‘Congratulations, you’ve won an iPhone’ popup?). I’ve been fortunate enough to escape all of the ‘digital dangers’ (i.e. cyber-bullying, spam, identify theft, etc) so far, but I believe that it is important that children are able to use ICT responsibly, safely and ethically, especially when they are as surrounded by it as they are today.
Week 10’s learning path asked us to complete a number of quizzes. On the first one (bullying) I scored a mere 2 out of 4. Obviously I was surprised by a few of the things on the quiz. Firstly, I was surprised that offline bullying is still more prominent than cyber-bullying. I had just assumed that as cyber-bullying is ‘easier to do’ as it does not require face-to-face interactions, it would be more common. I was also surprised by the notion that most bullies have inflated self-esteem. I held the misconception (likely from being told that bullies only bully to make themselves feel better) the bullies had low self-esteem.
On the second quiz about Cyber-safety I scored 25 out of 25. This is due to having had completed this quiz in the past. I do think the quiz, ‘Cyber Smart Kids Quiz’ would be a useful resource to use in teaching, as it explicitly explains how and why to safely use certain ICT.
Overall I think a possess a fairly good ‘common sense’ knowledge of digital citizenship, in that I can work out for myself what should and shouldn’t be done. I may however need to expand my knowledge to be able to explain these things to students.
Teach Me To Teach 