Digital Safety Reflection

      In my ED271 (Technology Application for Education) class, we were assigned a topic to present on that related to digital safety. My group and I got the topic of textual harassment and sexting. On the way to creating the presentation, we did a lot of research on the topic and learned things that would not even have known about if we didn't do the research. Did you know that if an adult were sexting someone under aged, they could get arrested and will forever have to register themselves as a sex offender? Did you also know that sending, receiving, and forwarding sexually suggestive photos is also considered sexting even though the pictures aren't yours? I didn't know that. So should we assume that everybody knows what the dangers are on the internet?
       The amazing thing when listening to the presentations about fair user practices and copyright issues, digital safety and privacy, cyber bullying, textual harassment and sexting, pharming and phishing, and digital wellness is that they all seem to connect to one another.  In the article "Student Safety in the Age of Facebook", Bosco says that "we are responsible to see that young people know how to use the tools of their culture in a responsible, safe, intelligent way." The dangers and the tips on how to avoid all the dangers on the internet that were presented seemed to be similar, which is great considering that if a student hears about one danger, they would take the same precautions as if they listened to all the presentations.
        If I were to teach my students ways of being safe on the internet, I would do it exactly like how my professor for this class, Dr. Jacqui Cyrus, did it. She assigned us into groups and had us search for the information ourselves. She didn't hand us the information on a silver platter. She made us work hard to look for the information which helped keep the information about the topics in our heads. I would assign my class the task to find the information and also present it in class so that the rest of the class would be informed of the other topics.
       I would not suggest any changes to this assignment. There are many other things we can inform students about when using the internet, but the topics we covered are sufficient enough to get students to think about how they should be using the internet. I also would not want to change it because assigning students to inform other students is a great teaching technique. According to the article "How Peer Teaching Improves Student Learning and 10 Ways to Encourage It ", students receive more time for individualized learning, direct interaction between students promotes active learning, peer teachers reinforce their own learning by instructing other, and students feel more comfortable and open when interacting with a peer. If there is a lesson that should be embedded into the minds of our students, it should be on how to keep themselves anywhere, even when they are at home on their computers.
      I believe that this assignment was necessary in this class. Technology is finding a way to progress and fast. It is also finding a way into our classrooms and into the hands of young people who don't really know the dangers of the internet. Since it is happening so fast and the dangers are just a send button away, I believe that it is crucial for students to learn about what we learned about. I would teach my students about the dangers of technology exactly how I learned in this class, by letting the students teach other students. Peer teaching is an effecting teaching strategy that would help students keep the information in mind.

References
-How Peer Teaching Improves Student Learning and 10 Ways To Encourage It - InformED. (n.d.). Retrieved December 16, 2015, from http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/peer-teaching/
-Student Safety in the Age of Facebook -- THE Journal. (n.d). Retrieved December 16, 2015, from https://thejournal.com/Articles/2012/03/02/online-safety.aspx?Page=2