Flow of Activities
Activity Staying safe online
How do I stay safe online?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
- Evaluating (ACTDIP005)
What's this about?
There are many situations, connected to the internet, in which people are asked for their personal information.
Personal information can be used to identify a particular person and care must be taken when providing this information. It is potentially dangerous for strangers to have your personal information.
Young children must check with a trusted adult before sharing any personal information online.
Learning tasks
- Help students to understand the importance of not sharing their personal details online without a parent’s or teacher’s permission.
- Use a modified celebrity head game to reinforce when it is appropriate to share personal information and when it is not.
- Develop some personas for trusted people, such as a teacher, police officer, mum, dad or older sister. Also develop some personas for non-trusted people, such as an online friend, a pop-up on the internet or an email from an unfamiliar person.
- Share the labels with the class. Have a student wear the labelled headgear of a trusted person. Explain that this is someone who is trusted and you can share your information with this person or in a situation they say is safe.
- Next, give another student a ‘celebrity head’ of an untrustworthy person that you would not share your personal information with.
- Discuss the ways that older people converse on social media or in an online game environment.
- Ask students to create a paper version of an online profile that shares personal information safely. The profile might include an avatar instead of a photo; first name or nickname instead of full name; and interests and hobbies.
- Create a visual display that indicates what personal information can be shared online and what can’t. Information that can’t might include full name, address, school, photo, date of birth, passwords, telephone number and email.
- You could laminate cards with a word and a picture and ask students to sort them into safe and not-safe baskets. Once the cards are sorted, students could put them on a masking tape ‘table’ on the floor. Then, with your help, they could take a photo of the cards, print the photo out, and display it in the classroom for reference.
Supporting Resources
Your online identity
This article provides background information.
Protecting personal information
This article provides background information.
Lesson Ideas
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- Personal online profile
Assessment Resources
Activity Behaving online
How should I behave online?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
What's this about?
All schools have rules for acceptable behaviour in the classroom.
Acceptable behaviour extends into the online space. Two considerations include the protection of the student and how to behave socially.
Your school may have a values statement that students are expected to adhere to. This could encompass staying safe online and acceptable behaviours.
Learning tasks
- As an extension of classroom rules discuss rules for online safety and acceptable online behaviour.
- Refer to ways to remain safe online such as protecting personal information and identity. Consider stranger danger when on the internet.
- Draw up a set of rules with the class, particularly focusing on how to stay safe and behave online.
- In these tasks the emphasis can be on acceptable behaviour. The previous section was about what is safe and unsafe, which lends itself to following a set of rules. A focus on acceptable behaviour can lead to guidelines on how to behave appropriately. You may decide to do this with a focus on cyberbullying.
- Behaviour is about social norms, politeness, and how people manage themselves. Some prompts for discussion might include:
- How do we treat each other in the playground?
- How do we act when talking to another student via a webcam?
- How do we treat each other when we work on a shared story?
- How do you give feedback on someone’s work put up online?
- This could then lead into the students developing their own online guidelines.
Supporting Resources
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- Presentation or demonstration
Activity Apply online rules
How can we work together online?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
- Investigating and defining (ACTDIP004)
- Evaluating (ACTDIP005)
- Collaborating and managing (ACTDIP006)
What's this about?
When undertaking a joint task to create a simple digital solution young students in particular need guidance and support about how to work together and manage the task.
One way to facilitate students working together is to ask them to plan their solution through drawing. This provides an opportunity for students to think through their ideas and piggyback off one another to develop an agreed solution.
This phase also offers an opportunity for teacher guidance to prompt student thinking and to clarify how certain aspects of the task may be achieved; for example: Who will do what part of the task? What resources are required? In what order can the tasks be done?
Providing and gaining feedback on a digital solution in a safe online space enables students to apply appropriate social behaviours.
Learning tasks
- View or read a relevant text such as a fable or fairytale and then discuss the key parts of the story.
- In pairs students create a photo story retelling.
- Students plan the retelling first. They then create the story using presentation software. Ask students to include such things as:
- images* (photographs/scanned student drawings or digital images created using a drawing program
- audio files (recordings of students retelling the story)
- text (typed text of their retelling).
*Discuss why it is not appropriate to use illustrations copied directly from the text (ownership and copyright). - Share the photo story in a safe online space, for example the school intranet collaborative space or a collaboration tool such as Seesaw or OneNote.
- Provide a process for students to view and give feedback on each other’s photo stories. Discuss acceptable online behaviour in regard to feedback.
- Note: This activity requires students to use the skill of abstraction (to focus on important information only). They will also need to use their skill in sequencing, which is important for reading comprehension as well as computational thinking.
Supporting Resources
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- Artefact analysis
Activity Finding information
How does the internet help me find information?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
- Collaborating and managing (ACTDIP006)
What's this about?
Bookmark relevant, safe websites to prevent students from coming across inappropriate online content.
Learning tasks
- Explore bookmarked websites to gather information for a class context. Show students how to bookmark a safe site so they can revisit it at a later stage.
Supporting Resources
ABC Education
This might be a useful example of a trusted safe site.
FUSE
This might be a useful example of a trusted safe site.
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- Presentation or demonstration