School safety is something we all think about. There are reasons why doors are locked, visitors have to check in at the office, and students have to have parent permission to sign out in the main office and before they can leave school. Procedures in place at Jacobson Elementary and at the BK Junior Senior High School are designed to keep students safe.
Personal safety is something we learn about in school at a young age. We all know the "stop, drop and roll", move in single file out into the hallway and cover our heads during a tornado warning, and where to go in case of a fire. We are also taught about 'Stranger Danger' and being Drug Free.
What about staying safe and being responsible when using the internet?
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and others have come under scrutiny in the news this past year or so for privacy setting issues, young people posting less than flattering pictures, and cyberbullying. There are bulletins circulating the internet about trojans, virus and malware/spyware that can shut down your computer - even steal your identity.
Just as we need to teach children to be safe in their physical environments, we also need to teach them to be safe and responsible in their use of cyberspace. It is sometimes difficult to make the correlation between physical space and the informal space of sitting in front of a computer screen being the same thing.
We can think of it this way...
Cyberspace is like a huge city. There are libraries, schools, museums, places to have fun, and plenty of opportunities to meet wonderful people from all walks of life. But, like any community, there are also some people and areas that you ought to avoid and others that you should approach only with caution. [1]
Be smart - Share With Care
The following is from the Net Cetera Outreach Kit - OnGuard Online, Stop Think Click series.
Your online actions can have real-world consequences. The pictures you post and the words you write can affect the people in your life. Think before you post and share.
What you post could have a bigger "audience" than you think. Even if you use privacy settings, it's impossible to completely control who sees your social networking profile, pictures, videos or texts. Before you click "send," think about how you will feel if your family, teachers, coaches or neighbors find it.
Once you post information online, you can't take it back. You may think that you've deleted information from a site—or that you will delete it later. Know that older versions may exist on other people's computers. That means your posts could live somewhere permanently.
Get someone's okay before you share photos or videos they're in. Online photo albums are great for storing and sharing pictures of special events, and camera phones make it easy to capture every moment. Stop and think about your own privacy—and other people's—before you share photos and videos online. It can be embarrassing, unfair and even unsafe to send or post photos and videos without getting permission from the people in them.
Thinking about possible consequences before making a decision to post or not to post is part of being a responsible user of the internet. While this sounds like doom and gloom, there is a bright spot - something to look forward to. Just as there can be negative consequences to posting certain things online, there are also positive things that can happen when you choose correctly and responsibly.
A positive Digital Footprint.... we will talk more about this in future posts.
[1] Teen Safety on the Information Highway was jointly produced by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and The MASTER Teacher®.
