Cybersafety Outreach

Web 2.0 enables great information sharing and great challenges.  Dealing with these can be daunting for teachers, parents, and students. Almost daily, new web sites emerge that encourage the sharing of personal contact information, photographs and videos. Unfortunately, with this influx of new social media web sites, more and more kids engage in and experience unsafe and threatening behavior and cyberdangers online.  

With the start of school right around the corner, Michael Connet, Chief Academic Officer for Nortel LearniT (at left with 21st Century Education workshop participants),  and John Grandmont, the award-winning London, Ontario, CA, educator who helped create the lesson plans now being used worldwide are available to speak about the increasing importance of teaching students about online safety and how lessons on online behavior can be effectively delivered in the classroom.  

With 250,000 unique visitors each month, Nortel LearniT is a popular resource for educators to get complete lesson plans on teaching students about online safety and other technology-related topics.  See Nortel LearniT's Special Report: Social Networking Cyberbullying, presenting the latest in peer-to-peer communications and multimedia tools to tackle this tough problem.

Nortel LearniT is also working with an initiative of Canadian telecom companies, ISPs, and http://www.cyberbullying.ca/ to provide cyberbullying education and prevention information.  View this video with cyberbullying facts: 

The easy-to-use Cybersmarts lesson plans and guides engage students via hands-on exploration of cybersafety techniques.   Lessons  include everything from preparation resources, time-management tips, in-class discussion topics, student assignments and evaluation rubrics.  The approach effectively uses Web 2.0 technologies to teach teachers, parents and students about the safety issues related to Web 2.0.  All of the lesson plans and the Cybersafety Guide and the Cybersafety Fair Guide and are designed by teachers for teachers.

Cyberdangers Grow

Recent studies point to the relevance of this issue. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that nearly one-third (32 per cent) of online kids have been contacted online by complete strangers and 17 per cent of online kids have "friends" on their social network profile who they have never personally met.  Another 63% of kids with online profiles believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from their online profile.  Additionally, according to reports by USA Today and the Baltimore Examiner, at least three children between the ages of 12 and 13 have committed suicide due to depression brought on by cyberbullying.  

Nortel LearniT also offers an Online Safety Course, surveying the full range or online issues in a single, convenient document.

The Nortel LearniT lesson plan series on Cybersafety, created by John Grandmont (left) and our Online Safety video tutorial series are a way to introduce the topic to students, adding cybersafety to the back-to-school shopping cart!   Learn more about this issue in a newspaper interview with cybersafety expert John Grandmont and in this video interview:

Cybersafety Lesson Series: Introduction is the first in the Nortel LearniT Cybersafety Lesson Series, launching student exploration of a broad range of guidelines on Internet safety (such as safeguarding your identity, "talking to strangers", passwords, etc.). It includes a Cybersafety Fair Guide 

Cybersafety: Viruses, Popups, and Spam and Oh My - computer viruses and popups, spam, and more, including hoaxes, scams/fraud, identity theft, and cookies

Cybersafety:  Cyberbullies - online bullying via e-mail, video, instant messaging

Cybersafety:  The Dark Side of the Net - Internet dangers of online predators and pornography

Cybersafety:  Web of Deceit - how to examine Web sites to research and analyze the effectiveness of information stored on a Web page. Students will create their own Web pages to demonstrate how they apply their new media literacy skills.  (Lesson plan developed by Gail Holmes, North Carolina State Department of Public Instruction, Teacher on Loan program)

Bookmark our multimedia, printable Online Cybersafety Resources and Guides providing the information in this article plus Nortel LearniT-reviewed online cybersafety web sites.