What to consider when you have students searching the internet?

When letting students search the Internet you have to keep in mind a few things.  First of all, these students grew up differently than us. They grew up with this technology at their fingertips from the moment they were born. Some may know the technology that were using better than we do. As we grew up with baby dolls and cars to play with. They have iPads and iPods. Most of students these days are glued to these devices and barely get the time to go outside to play. This is one of the main reasons that I believe that we are seeing more and more obese children. So, children have more time to figure out how to get around firewalls and protection that are on the computers. When letting the students search the Internet they must be supervised at all times. Students will search up anything that interests them. Most of the time what they are searching has nothing to do with what the teachers asked them to search up. Teachers not only have to watch the students they are right next to but the students that are across the room at the same time. This might sound silly and unimportant, but I have a little sister. She is not much younger than me, but I know that she is always on things that she is not supposed to be. As soon as she hears me walking over to see what she’s looking at she closes everything out and hides all the evidence with just a few clicks. Now I think that if children are doing this at home, they are most certain to be doing it in school too. When they do teachers need to learn that hacks and “secret tunnels” to get to the information they need to get to. Whether it’s what was the student looking up or what new application did they install on the computer and hide somewhere where the teacher can’t see it. Lastly we need to watch the firewalls and protection applications that are on the computers. They are there for a reason. One click and the firewall and protectors can be down. And with that same click a student can click on a link on google or Bing or any site and be directed to a not-so-student-friendly site. They could also click on something that puts a virus onto the computers. When letting students search the Internet we need to watch what they are searching and what exactly it is that they are clicking on. 

Some good resources may include:

http://www.abcya.com/
this is a website that incorporates writing and math skills while also teaching the students how to use technology

http://www.e-learningforkids.org/
this is a website that has interactive learning videos and works really well with an interactive white board

https://www.brainpop.com/
this is my own personal favorite, its a website that shows videos to help introduce a topic or help fully explain something to the students