Introduction
Today we have access to computers and the Internet just about everywhere, all the time. We have access to our personal laptops at school all day and most of our students have mobile phones that connect to the Internet 24 hours a day. When we go home, we have access to our home computers that access the Internet, we play online games on our XBox 360, PS3 or handheld gaming devices.
Should we be cautious of all of this online activity? Your parents did not have to be cautious because they did not have this kind of access. Your parents would have been in university (most of them) when they first had their own personal computer and they were the first to actually have access to the Internet!
So again, should we be cautious of all of this online activity? When you are online, are you being ‘you’ or are you being someone else? When you play online games, are you logged in as you or an online name? Do you use your own photo or an avatar? Does anyone really know it is you? Do you have a Facebook account? Do you use Formspring? Twitter? What social networking sites do you belong to and do people know it is you when you are on them?
In your groups of 4, discuss:
- what social networking sites do you know of? What ones do you belong to?
- do you use your name when you’re on the site(s)?
- are there privacy settings on the sites you belong to? What are your privacy settings set to?
- what is the minimum age for creating a Facebook account? For a Twitter account? Google if you do not know.
- why would there be an age limit? Do you think it is fair? Do you meet the age requirement? If not, do you still have an account? If you do not meet the age requirement and you have an account, will you now delete it? Why or why not?
Make an individual blog entry in your eportfolios about this now. You will have 10 minutes. If you do not finish, you can come back to it.
In about 10 minutes we will discuss as a class.