Teaching Ideas

Chatting Safely on the Internet

While this activity might not seem on the surface to involve copyright issues, it is always important to emphasize safety on the internet to your students. There are cyber stalkers and hackers galore out there, and young students somehow think that they can't be harassed or used by a hacker if they are on their own computer or a machine at school. Also, there is a new bill being proposed (doesn't have a name as of this writing) that would give copyright owners close to, but not quite, "carte blanche" to do what they want to copyright infringers. So, if a student inadvertently steals something from a copyright holder (and maybe he or she doesn't know any better) the copyright holder would have a plethora of nasty things (short of creating viruses and dos attacks) they could do to harass the kid (or anyone for that matter) because they would fall into this new copyright "safe harbor". This is just one of the reasons it is important for students to learn to keep their personal info private.

Here is a good way to teach internet safety, especially in regard to chatting/instant messaging:

• Hand out a worksheet that contains questions concerning how students use the internet and how much, as well as what sites they like to visit most.
• Collect the information and look for trouble spots
• Discuss these trouble spots and demonstrate proper security for using instant messaging
• Follow up later to see if students have changed their surfing practices.

Click here for a more detailed lesson plan.