10-16-08 - Internet Activities Involving Safety

Today, class was in one of the computer labs. We did a couple of activities using the computer that we could have our students use. The first activity was an online safety scavenger hunt called “Staying Safe Online.” We went to the website and followed the links provided to answer questions regarding online safety for kids. I thought it was really cool that the safety tips were provided by the characters of Disney’s Doug. I think that it is a great idea to have characters that children recognize from a TV show present safety tips. But, is Doug still popular with kids today? The second activity was a web site containing a number of different types of safety including bicycle safety, animal safety, fire safety, and many more. You could click on each individual link or navigate from page to page on each individual page. This site was easy to move thought and it provided some nice animations while still keeping the page design simple. After looking at the different links, we were assigned to comment on a few of our favorite links or safety tips.

Now one may ask, “What does this have to do with science?” And really it does not have anything to do with science. But, it is important to teach children about safety both in everyday life and in the science classroom. A logical progression of instruction may be to start talking about safety in everyday life so students can understand the importance of safety and then move to instruction on safety in the science lab. Also, a science teacher may want to use the internet in his or her classroom so an activity teaching about online safety would be very appropriate to use.