Internet Safety Reflection

I. I chose to read the article entitled "Filling the World with Goodness and Truth" by Elder M. Russell Ballard. It was a really neat article that made one want to try their best to fill the world with what is good.
II. The movies I watched were shocking to me. These children were so young to be doing and going through the things they were. The PBS movies especially astounded me. That a girl at 14 could post somany horrible pictures, make it her life and say that they really weren't that bad and for a boy so young to be bullied so much that he committed suicide. It mad eme wonder what will happen in the future, how much worse it will get and scared to raise children amongst such dangerous situations.
III. My most important take aways were that I really need to stay up to date when in comes to technology so that I will not be ignorant. I also need to have a good relationship with my students and my children so that I am also not ignorant if they begin to get into things - to have a relationship where they can talk to me and so that I know them well enough to know when things are different and/or going wrong in their lives. I have also been engrained with the belief that the computer and all media should be in an open area in the house and that rules will need to be set and children need to be taught about the dangerous things out there and how to avoid them. One can never just assume that a child knows something.
IV. This parent already knew about the importance of having filters and programs established to block bad things on the internet, about having a computer in an open area, about not giving information out on the internet and not going into chat rooms. The parent was very surprised however by many of the things that I told them and I was surprised by how much they did not know. They did not know about cyberbullying and had never even thougt about its possibility or its consequences. They were astounded when I talked of how it is so much more dangerous because a child does not have a safe place to go to get away from it or how much more cruel children are because it is easier to say mean things over the internet than it is to say it to a person in person.
They also did not know about hate sites nor of the many dangerous things on the internet other than chat rooms (including the sharing of information on things like facebook)and pornography. When I gave ideas on what to do about these problems, the parent was very attentive and appreciative. This surprised me as I thought that they might not take what I said seriously as I am a college student who has not had experience with children. I believe that this parent will actually implement the idea of needing to be technology savy and talking to their kids about rules and expectations while on the computer.

I completed the university course evaluation, the course feedback survey and checked my grades on Moodle.