4 April-Internet Safety

This week we began creating our Internet Safety Campaign. I think that when most people hear the term "internet safety" it evokes a narrow concept regarding sites that contain pornography or other deemed socially unacceptable information. However, it's interesting to really understand how encompassing online safety actually is. It's a much broader topic that also includes knowledge about and protection from dishonesty, plagiarism, and cheating. What is further disturbing, is just how much of this seemingly socially unacceptable information is easily available and how blurred the lines have become between what is socially acceptable and unacceptable since the drastic increase in the overall pervasiveness of the internet.

It is so much more difficult as an educator to patrol the gathering of information and production of original works by students. Just recently, a friend suggested to me that I become a "tutor" for a popular online homework assistance site. The site is largely blocked from view until a user obtains a username and password. I signed up, but I was quickly unimpressed by how much actual tutoring was occurring versus how much outright cheating is on the site. The site is set up to let students post their "questions" and then a tutor writes a response, and the student user then has the option to purchase the response. Most of the student users are posting full assignments and requesting the tutors to complete the assignments, and then the completed assignment is purchased. Sadly, it is pretty clear from the student users that most of them would greatly benefit in their own educations if they actually completed their own work. I believe that students need to understand the overall diminished integrity of using the internet to cheat and plagiarize work in the name of finishing a class. This method of finishing classes, specifically at the college level, cheapens degrees. It truly proves that everything can be bought and paid for, even the outward appearance of subject-matter knowledge. However, if the question ever arose about that student's ability to actually perform in the subject, they would be severely lacking. Students need to understand that they need to keep themselves and their reputation in tact in the online environment. It is not totally virtual, and is not entirely an intangible environment. As a future Language Arts teacher, I am working to design an Internet Safety Campaign that addresses more than just dabbling in dangerous online activity like pornography. I hope to educate students about maintaining their reputation and integrity in an online environment that offers many enticing opportunities to ruin reputations early in life and may eventually lead to illegal and dangerous behavior.