Challenges of the Internet in the classroom

Pretend you are a K-12 teacher or university professor. Everyone in your class has a personal computer connected to the Internet. Describe in 300-500 words what you think will be several of the most significant challenges you will face when using the Internet in your classroom.

If I were a teacher in a school where students would have access to their own computer and internet I would be extremely excited. The technology that is available to us is amazing and I would jump at the chance to use it regularly in my classroom. However, there are some challenges that teachers have to face when using the internet in the classroom. One of the biggest problems is safety. Will the students be safe online when exploring the internet? This is a major issue for teachers as well as parents. It is definitely something that you need to address to your students before going online, even if they already know how to use the internet. One site I found that was interesting and something I would use in my own classroom is the Kidz Privacy site at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/kidzprivacy/index.html
It is a site designed to help, parents, teachers and students understand ways to safely use the internet. This site has downloads and sections for parents, teachers and students.

One of the biggest safety issues is not knowing exactly who you are chatting with or meeting in some of the online games. There are so many people online that it is hard to know to who is real and who is not. Students need to know that who they are talking to online might be who they say they are. There are a lot of good people and there are also not so good people and our students need to be taught ways to protect themselves. A perfect example of this is the Megan Meier story which I watched online at You Tube. This was a story about a girl who thought she was chatting with a boy her own age. She got close with the boy and then one day the boy said he didn’t like her anymore and that she was worthless, etc. This girl took it to heart what the “boy” told her and she was very upset and eventually took her own life. The “boy” was actually another parent in the neighborhood. Now I’m not saying that this is the norm but it can happen and so we need to teach our children to be careful who they become close with. It could be anyone. There are many dangers when surfing the web. So we should take this into consideration before we let our students online.