Blog # 2...Safety Blogging

According to my Mom, the world was a much safer place when she was growing up. Now I’m not completely sure if I agree with that comment, but I know there may be more threats that exist in the world because of the Internet. While an awesome tool, if one is not safe, there can be major unhealthy consequences to a person’s actions. Since this weeks main focus is on blogging, here are a few tips that we can teach our students to use to ensure blogging safely:

Publicity, Publicity, Publicity: A lot of people don’t realize that most of the things that are published on the net become public domain. Be careful of pictures that you post and information that you publish. Anyone may be able to see these pictures and take them (sometimes illegally) and anyone can read your blog (which can be really bad if you have a blog about something you do that’s embarrassing during your free time and your teacher stumbles across it).

The Password issss….Yours and yours alone. If you give out the password to your blog, it may fall in the wrong hands and your page may be hacked or even deleted. Make sure you don’t give out your password.

To Comment or Not to Comment…That is the Question….You can always delete the bad comments but students should remember…..although you delete yours, someone can easily copy and paste your comments and they will live on in cyber space. Also, you don’t want to break your sites “terms of service” by using foul or indecent language so hold your tongue and follow the commenting rules….press delete not reply.

Be Careful Where You Visit….Make sure you are visiting an age appropriate blog and not one that is filled with indecencies. If students are blogging for school than there should be no reason they are on a blog that deals with anything inappropriate, once again, violating the “terms of service”.

Blogging should be a fun experience if done the correct way. Stay clear of trouble and you will have the ultimate blogging experience.

-Amanda