Google Family Safety Center – A Resource for Parents

Keeping kids safe online is a top priority for every parent and teacher. To help parents and others learn about strategies and tools for keep kids safe online, today Google launched the Google Family Safety Center.

The Family Safety Center introduces parents to and shows them how to use Google’s safety tools including safe search, safe search lock, and YouTube’s safety mode. Google has partnered with a number of child safety organizations to develop educational materials for dealing with topics like cyberbullying, strangers online, protecting personal information, and avoiding malware online. Finally, Google’s Family Safety Center contains a collection of videos featuring Google employees sharing the strategies they use with their own kids for teaching online behavior and keeping their kids safe online. One of those videos is embedded below.

Best Practices – 9/1/2010

Edmodo.com

Edmodo.com

Edmodo is a private way for students to interact with each other outside of the classroom.  This can promote discussions, debate, and collaboration with a very user-friendly tool.

Strengths:

• Free
• Easy to set up – students can set up their own accounts using a password that Edmodo sends the teacher.  No e-mail address is required.
• Easy to use – students can send messages to the entire class or just to the teacher using Edmodo’s messaging tools
• Secure – no one can sign up for your group without the password.  Also, you can remove students if they post inappropriate content.
• Promotes discussion and collaboration – since it is completely secure, you do not have to worry about “anyone” on the internet seeing what is being discussed
• You can post daily assignments for the students to check in one location.  (If you forget, students can remind each other of assignments through the messaging tool.)

Webquest

Webquests are inquiry-based learning activities (similar to scavenger hunts) that take place online.  Students do research about a particular and have a certain role on their team in order to complete the assigned task.

Links to Webquests I have created:

http://grade6online.com/web-quest/hatchet/Task.html

http://pi-webquest.ericaajohnson.com/

If you are interested in creating one or using a webquest in your classroom, I have many resources to help you.  Just ask.

Here is a link that has a lot of information about webquests and it also has pre-made webquests for you to use in the classroom. http://webquest.org/index.php

Strengths:

• Puts responsibility on the students to complete research about a topic
• High interest – students LOVE them
• Interactive – students work in teams to complete the task
• Thousands of pre-made webquests are available online.  You don’t need to create anything.  (They are available for MANY grade levels and ALL subject areas.)

Wiki

A website in which the students can edit any of the content on the site (similar to Wikipedia).  It can be public, private, or a little of both.

Link to my wiki using the book Where the Red Fern Grows: http://grade6online0910.pbworks.com/

Strengths:

• Can be completely private – students can post information without security risks
• Using pbworks.com to create the wiki allows students to get usernames and passwords without an e-mail address.
• Highly collaborative
• Can be completely assigned as homework – students can access the wiki from anywhere and can communicate with their classmates from home through the wiki
• High-interest and engaging
• Free

A portion of a group’s project on the class wiki:

If you are interested in creating a class wiki, I can help you.  Just ask!

https://challenge.zoho.com/login.do

Create quizzes online.  There are plans available for a fee that will allow you to have more options for your test.  However, there is a free option that will be sufficient for most teachers.

An awesome collection of lessons and activities for teachers.  There are lessons for all grade levels and ability levels.

A good resource for math educators: http://math4allages.wordpress.com/

Word Collages

http://www.wordle.net/