Internet Safety and Evaluation

This week was extremely challenging for me with the 2 huge assignments we were given.  I don't think they were supposed to take as long as they did, but at least several other students felt the same way.  

Although these projects were very time consuming I gained a lot of knowledge I will use in the future.  Some of the things that were helpful were the ability to recognize an authentic website.  I learned what things to look for if they are or are not a valid site.  Things like;  Image quality, Tech support available, grammatical errors, author credibility, and if there are breadcrumbs at the top of the webpage to help me navigate back to where I began from the moment I opened up the site.  Another way is to pay attention to the URL.  Just by looking for things like .edu, or .gov and symbols such as "~" automatically throw up a red flag that this is a personal site.

Another thing I learned was how to help children be safe as they are chatting online.  I had never even heard about how people can bully children online.  It makes me sick to think that there are so many sexual predators online and how deceptive they are as they lure children in without them realizing it's happening. 

I am going to teach my children at home as well as at school how to recognize a good website as well as how to be safe while surfing the web.  What a great plus this will be in the classroom and at home.