This screenshot is of a website developed by the students of Division 5. They did the research for the site and wrote the content.  I assisted them by purchasing a URL for the site and setting up all of the pages and navigation. In my career as an educator I hope to focus on learning with Internet technology. Projects such as this one enable students to develop their media literacy and develop a more critical awareness of their consumption of new media.

In developing this site with the students I modeled safe and ethical Internet practices. My main objective in terms of safety was to ensure that the learners did not post any personally identifiable information. I instructed the learners that this website was focused on content and that they should not include their last name or any information about themselves. I did not mention the name of the school on the website and I checked each students’ posting to ensure that the only piece of information was their first name. I also set the privacy settings so that the site is not indexed by search engines or blog aggregators.

I modeled ethical web development by teaching students copyright laws regarding the use of images and ensuring that the information they published on the site was well researched and accurate. I developed a worksheet that showed students how to download images using Wikipedia and Creative Commons. Both of these sites have large archives of images that are licensed for free use. I had students work in pairs evaluating websites based on the accuracy and clarity of information provide. Teaching safe Internet use is an example of one of the ways that I “act as a role model ” to the students and model ethical behavior on and offline (Standard 2).

For the duration of the development of this website I modeled safe and ethical Internet practices. The Internet is complex, and it can contribute to dangerous situations for students. I hope that after completing this project students will be more aware of how to use the Internet safely, and will consider issues around ownership and copyright when using images found on the Internet.