Safe Surfing: Online & Web Safety

Internet safety is the practice of following actionable guidelines, understanding modern technology, and protecting your digital devices so you can defend against malicious parts of the online world.

It’s one of the main parts of a strong digital citizenship program in any school.

That’s because the internet provides near-instant satisfaction when looking up answers to questions, instructions on how to accomplish a task, and more.

But it’s also packed with potential dangers. Malware, phishing, scams, drive-by downloads, misrepresentation, and old-fashioned lies hide in every possible corner online, just waiting for an opportunity to strike.

So how can you prepare children and teens to successfully navigate this minefield of information?

It’s not easy — but the first step to teaching internet safety is understanding it yourself!

Internet safety is truly an expansive space, and it requires a knowledge component as well — the kind of knowledge that helps you use safe technology.

Making Safe Choices

The most important part of internet safety is learning how to make safe choices.

That requires a lot of background knowledge, but it’s all actionable information that your students can use any time.

Using the points below, you can teach your students how to stay safe online by making the smartest and best choices available.

Resources For Educators

Resources, presentations, lessons, curriculum guides and more for educators to use when teaching their students about being safe online.

What Does Internet Safety Entail?

Internet safety requires you to have a firm comprehension of the internet, what’s on it, how it’s used, and how it operates. It also emphasizes understanding the lesser-known areas of the internet, like code, webpage interactions, and secure connections.

In general, you can break down internet safety into two categories — behavior and knowledge.

Teaching internet safety involves the following: Verifying someone’s identity, Verifying a link is safe, Identifying an online scam, Protecting privacy, Creating and using passwords, Identifying cyberbullying & Becoming a good digital citizen.

Safely Researching on the Internet

Click on the image above for a presentation for students on how to Safely Conduct Research Online.

Evaluating Websites & Citing Your Sources

Click on the image above for detailed presentation for students on how to Evaluate Websites & Cite Sources.

How-To Evaluate Websites

Click on the image above for a presentation for students on How-To Evaluate Websites.

Reference Materials Online

Click on the image above for a presentation for students on how to Safely Use Reference Materials Online.

Be Internet Awesome Curriculum For Educators

Click on the image above or the link below to access the Be Internet Awesome Curriculum.

https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/files/bia-curriculum-en-june-2023.pdf

All elements of Be Internet Awesome:

Align with ISTE Standards
Don’t require any personal information or login
Can be used across devices
Are free for everyone

Helping students be responsible digital citizens.

The Be Internet Awesome curriculum gives educators the tools and methods they need to teach digital safety fundamentals. The materials developed by Google in partnership with iKeepSafe enable educators to bring the most critical teachings—and the excitement of Interland—into the classroom.

Included in the curriculum are lesson plans for the five topics, with activities and worksheets that were designed to complement Interland.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Smart

Activities to help kids share with care

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-interland.appspot.com/en-us/hub/pdfs/2021/BIA_Curriculum_Smart_ShareWithCare_June-2021.pdf

Alert

Activities to help kids stay internet aware and alert

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-interland.appspot.com/en-us/hub/pdfs/2021/BIA_Curriculum_Alert_Don_tFallforFake_June-2021.pdf

Strong

Activities to help kids secure private information

https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/files/bia-curriculum-strong-secure-your-secrets-june-2023.pdf

Kind

Activities to help kids practice online kindness

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-interland.appspot.com/en-us/hub/pdfs/2021/BIA_Curriculum_Kind_It_sCooltoBeKind_June-2021.pdf

Brave

Activities to help kids learn about brave internet choices

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-interland.appspot.com/en-us/hub/pdfs/2021/BIA_Curriculum_Brave_WhenInDoubtTalkItOut_June-2021.pdf

Interactive Learning Games For Kids

Great interactive games, magazines and resources that kids will love to play, while learning about internet safety at the same time!

INTERLAND - Be Internet Awesome

Interland is an adventure-packed online game that makes learning about digital safety and citizenship interactive and fun—just like the Internet itself. Here, kids will help their fellow Internauts combat badly behaved hackers, phishers, oversharers, and bullies by practicing the skills they need to be good digital citizens.

Click above to check it out!

Highlights for Kids - Be Internet Awesome

This is a special edition magazine! We’ve teamed up with our friends at Google to create a magazine to help kids be confident and safe while navigating the digital world. In this free edition and resources below, we offer ways for Families and Educators to explore the Be Internet Awesome tools with your kids or classroom students.

EasyTech Digital Literacy Curriculum

Students aren’t born with digital literacy skills.

They may use computers and cell phones, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they understand basic uses, best practices and safety risks. Teaching digital literacy skills ensures compliance with technology standards and helps prepare students for success in our digital world.

Accelerate Learning

Digital Citizenship & Media Literacy

Prepare your students with critical future-ready skills to help them better navigate their digital world.

Internet Safety for Teachers

Help students stay safe online with strategies that promote positive connections.

https://avidopenaccess.org/resource/internet-safety-for-teachers/

23 Great Lesson Plans for Internet Safety from Common Sense.org

Educators' approach to internet safety in the classroom has changed as technology and our use of it continues to evolve. In the past, digital citizenship lessons on internet safety focused more on dos and don'ts, like do create safe passwords and don't talk to strangers online. While secure passwords are certainly important for technology users of all ages, and stranger danger is nothing to take lightly, most internet safety dilemmas are much more nuanced.

The best internet safety lessons recognize the complexity of these topics and help students build the critical-thinking skills and habits of mind to navigate the dilemmas they encounter. Below are the best internet safety lesson plans for students in grades K–12. See the full Common Sense K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum for lesson plans on additional digital citizenship topics.

Find some great lessons plans, divided by grade, on this site with a wide range of topics pertaining to digital citizenships, cyberbullying and online safety.

https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/23-great-lesson-plans-for-internet-safety

Where Are Kids at Risk Online?

Click on the image above to review a slideshow to learn about some of the places online where kids can be at risk.

Teaching kids about Internet safety

CYBERBULLYING SAFETY

Ways to Help Youth

Children and youth live at a time of instant access to cell phones, tablets, or computers that opens the door to exciting new ways of connecting, interacting, and learning. However, these new modes of communication also present new challenges for the adults who care for them. Not only do parents and other adults help children and youth navigate in-person social situations, they also need to prepare them for healthy relationships online.

Click Here for a PDF File Giving Teens some Top Ten Tips for Standing Up to Cyberbulling

https://cyberbullying.org/standing-up-to-cyberbullying-tips-for-teens

Check this site on resources to help prevent cyberbullying attacks.

Cyberbullying is bullying - unwanted, repeated, aggressive, negative behavior - that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, tablets, and computers. Cyberbullying can happen over email, through texting, on social media, while gaming, on instant messaging, and through photo sharing.