The Parent Hub

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Taking a Look at Cyber Safety

Dear parents,

As we are all aware, the world in which we live is becoming increasingly more technologically focussed. As a result, our students, your children, are being exposed to more and more information and spending more and more time online. Although the internet can be a magnificent learning tool, as with anything, there are dangers involved. Your children are now in year 6 and headed towards the eligibility age of having a Facebook page, Twitter account and more. These types of social media sites can be dangerous, but only if you don't know how to protect yourself of your child, this is an issue that this blog will explore further.

The purpose of this blog is to help you, help your child when it comes to behaving ethically and responsibly online. As well as information on some vital areas of internet practices, there will be links to numerous websites that you may wish to visit to deepen or extend your understanding. Keeping yourself and your child safe, as well as behaving in a responsible and ethical manner online is a priority both now, and moving forward into the teenage years and beyond.

So jump in! Check out some of the other blog posts that explore other issues further! Feel free to leave any comments or questions at the end of the post! If you'd prefer to email me directly then go right ahead!

Enjoy,

Andy Thomas

Cyber Safety and Ethics: The Curriculum Perspective

The new Australian Curriculum highlights the importance of safe, ethical and responsible use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) through an aspect known as a 'General Capability' (ACARA, 2014). The idea behind general capabilities, is that they stretch throughout the whole curriculum, across all learning areas, as a type of over-arching idea. This blog is looking specifically at the ICT General Capability. The idea is that the general capabilities are not taught as stand alone subjects as such, but are to be intertwined with each specific learning area. For example, in English we will soon be looking at publishing a book review. If we were then to go and publish these reviews to an online forum, we would first need to look at behaving safely, ethically and responsibly within that particular website, as well as generally on any website. This would be an example of working the general capability of ICT into a specific subject area. This is a small example, but shows how the general capabilities are said to be implemented into different subject areas. Below is a diagram that can be found on the Australian Curriculum website that displays the different areas of the ICT General capability, as you can see, the top section is what we are focusing on. The next post will discuss this section in greater detail.

'Organising Elements of ICT Capability'
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
Licensed Under: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Applying Social and Ethical Protocols and Practices When Using ICT

As mentioned in the previous post, This is the top section, or organising element, of the ICT general capability. As the title explains, it is concerned with the socially and ethically responsible use of ICT. It involves students developing an understanding of what intellectual property for digital information is, how they can recognise this for their own work as well as others, and then apply this knowledge when creating and sharing information online (ACARA, 2014). For the full ICT General Capability description, click here. The Australian Curriculum breaks this organising element down into four distinct categories:

Recognise intellectual property
Apply digital information security practices
Apply personal security protocols
Identify the impacts of ICT in society (ACARA, 2014)

From this, the curriculum website provides a brief description of each of the four elements, which are divided into different levels along a 'learning continuum'. As we are a year 6 class, according to the Australian Curriculum, we fit into level 4 of the learning continuum. Click here to check out the learning continuum.

Component 1: Recognising Intellectual Property

If you take a look at the Australian Curriculum learning continuum for level 4 (year 6), it explains 'recognising intellectual property' as:

"Identify the legal obligations regarding the ownership and use of digital products and apply some referencing conventions." (ACARA, 2014)

This includes listing all sources, author names and URL's (web addresses) either in the form of a bibliography or similar, when completing a piece of work. You may be able to help your child with this by asking where they have found information from and reminding them to list it within their work.

When looking specifically at the aspect of 'recognising intellectual property' it is important that your child understands that just because a piece of work may be accessible on the internet, it does not mean it is necessarily free to be copied or redistributed. One way in which we can recognise and determine if a picture or piece of work is acceptable to be copied or used is with a Creative Commons logo. This logo is typically found at the bottom of a webpage (as it is with this blog) and generally contains a link to a page which further explains the copyright conditions that the creator is allowing. Once you copy an image to your work, you must then attribute that work to the original author. To find out the best way to do this, check out this wiki page.

By adding a Creative Commons license to a piece of work, you have the ability to say how you would like that image to be used. Obtaining a Creative Commons license is one way of exhibiting knowledge in the area of 'applying digital information security practices'. You might like to create a license with your child here! Check out this YouTube clip below that further explains how Creative Commons work, as well as general copyright information.

Alternatively, if a site does not appear to have a creative commons license, they will generally have a copyright label at the bottom of the web page with an attached link to their privacy policy, conditions of use, or similar, and from here, you can gauge whether information is freely available for use or redistribution. If the image is copyrighted, then unfortunately, you would not be able to use or redistribute the image for any public purpose.

All of this information may be confronting at first, but it is something that can become habitual if you practice it. Just as there are guidelines for you children behaving in an ethical way online, the same can be said for us teachers. All teachers are required to meet a set of professional standards when teaching. Standard 4.5 addresses the safe, ethical and responsible use of ICT requiring teachers at the graduate level to understand relevant issues and strategies to promote safe, ethical and responsible use of ICT in learning and teaching (AITSL, 2014). Click here to see more about the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching.

Components 2 & 3: Applying Digital Information Security Practices and Applying personal Security Protocols

Applying Digital Information Security Practices is referred to in the curriculum as an independent process where students should begin to apply strategies for determining and protecting the the security of digital information and develop an understanding of some of the risks that can be present when working with different types of online environments, such as social media (ACARA, 2014). Applying Personal Security Protocols relates closely to this, but has a heavier emphasis on the personal aspect. This component also deals with the recognition and reporting of cyber bullying and displaying mindfulness and tactfulness when online.

Applying these kinds of practices could be displayed when creating an private online webpage. For example, later in the year we will be looking at creating personal blogs that the children can upload their work to. These will be private and therefore students will have to configure the settings for this to happen. this could involve a friend trying to access it to ensure it can't be found. Another example of keeping safe would be using non-predictable usernames and passwords.

Social Media

Some of you may already be aware of the age restrictions of certain social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but provided below are a set of links to each of these sites' privacy policies and terms of use. You may know be fully aware that your child is using these sites, you may not, what's important is that you know that they are conducting themselves in the correct manner on these sites and that, above all, they are safely using the technology.

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Component 4: Identify the Impacts of ICT in Society

This component deals with the integration of ICT in our day-today lives and the impact this has on our lives, both positively and potentially negatively. Students should also be able to explain the uses of ICT at school, at home and within the local community. As we all know, ICT is becoming more and more utilised in our daily life, examples of this include ordering pizza using a phone app, scanning QR codes to obtain information about various things, even paying bills via phone apps and more. Although some of these may not be completely relevant to your children right now, it is important that they understand how these types of applications and devices may affect them in the future.

Handy Resources

This post contains multiple links to some valuable pages that will hopefully further your knowledge and resources when talking about cyber safety and ethics. The first two links 'Budd:e' and 'Cybersmart' are government funded initiatives that deal with cyber safety for both primary school and high school students. 'Budd:e' is a resource where students play games that teach them about various cyber security and safety principles as well as allowing the students to create their own personalised robot. Check out information about using here and play the game 'Budd:e' here!

Cybersmart is another government website that provides a wealth of resources and information about conducting yourself safely online. It is broken up into age groups and is, as a result, relevant to any age group. Check out the Cybersmart page page here.

These two resources are both easily accessible and can be easily integrated into our daily school activities and lessons. Generally before starting a new unit of work that involves ICT, I will ask students to refresh their memories on cyber safety by visiting either of these sites.

Below is a list of further resources you may be interested in.

Cyber Safety

These Web references are especially relevant for you as parents and even you children as a constant referral point while your students are conducting assignments and need reminders of how to conduct themselves online. The DECD site in particular is more appropriate for you as parents, however.

Creative Commons and Copyright

These sites are relevant for both parents and students, particularly when your are using image that have a creative commons license attached to them as you will be able to remind yourselves of just how to attribute them appropriately.