For the extra reading I looked on the church website and found an article by President Hinckley called "An Ensign to the Nations, A Light to the World." In it he emphasized that we are all responsible for our own actions and decisions. He said that we each have a sphere of responsibility and we are the only ones that have it. Our personal decisions fall into this category. We need to make good decisons to protect ourselves. Satan wants us to not do this and tempts us. The media is a major way that he tempts us.
I watched a lot of videos about personal experiences that people had. It was shocking to see how many young girls and boys struggle with on-line relationships. I was extremely shocked to see how easy it was for predators to get information from these children/teens. I had no idea how big cyberbullying was either. It was terrifying to see what people did to their peers online. It just shows the insecurity of youth and how Satan has found a new outlet for it.
The biggest thing I learned from this assignment was how much there is out there to educate children on being safe. There were some fun websites with activities that taught percautions that children should take when going on line. When I was growing up we had a tape called "The Safety Kids" that talked about being safe. It had a song to help us memorize our phone number, a song that taught what to do if someone was getting too close to you, a song to help you know what to do if you got lost and a song about the importance of the buddy system. I still remember the songs and sing them with my siblings. I see these websites as being able to have the same affect on the children today. THey have catchy songs about the new threats to youth. I think that it is very powerful.
I talked to a parent about how she educated her children about internet safety. She siad that she just talked to them about it and told them what was okay and what was not. She didn't use any resources when talking to them. Occasionally when there was something on the news about cyberbullying or predators she would talk about it with her children but that is about it. I was able to tell her about all the resources I found on line and on the church website. At first she was indifferent about it. This surprised me. I thought she would have been a bit more excited to know about all the videos she could show her children but she wasn't. I decided to keep showing her stuff anyways. I walked her through a few websites and watched a few videos with her. At the end when we were wrapping up our conversation I thought thta this was a waste of time becasue she didn't really care. But, to my surprise, she said things like "So I can type in these websites and these videos will show up again right?" and she would slowly stop talking to me and paying attention to what I was saying becasue she was glued to the computer. It was so cool to see that her interest had been sparked. I was grateful I decided to talk to her. Hopefully she will go back to the websites and explore some more!
TPACK report
14 years ago
