: Creating Internet Safety Lesson Plans for High School Students

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(406 Words)
It is important to teach high school students about the importance of safely using the internet. You may want to create lesson plans for such a topic to ensure that you provide a thorough and thoughtful lesson that can literally save lives.
First when creating the plans, you want to make sure that you include real world examples of the trouble that high school students can get into. High school students are almost adults, and you can be more forthcoming with them than you would younger children. They can also understand more. You can discuss how people have gotten into major financial trouble because they had their identities stolen on the Internet. You can talk about the dangers that are even more serious such as older people pretending to be teenagers in order to lure youngsters into speaking with them and perhaps even meeting them. You can talk about cases in the news when this has happened if you think it is appropriate.
It is important to provide easy to understand, concise ways in which high school students can help to avoid the dangers of the Internet. Just telling them of the dangers is not enough. In your lesson plans, come up with these rules or guidelines for using the Internet such as “Never give out personal information to strangers” and “Understand that someone might not be what they seem.” No matter what they say and what picture they post, they can be someone totally different.
When creating your lesson plans, you may want to plan a time that the high school students can participate. Many high school students are very accustomed to using the internet and may think that everything about safety is a joke. They may “space out” during this lesson, but you can decrease this if you have them actively participate. In your lesson plans, you can have a brainstorming session where everyone can talk about what they do in order to prevent safety problems on the Internet. You can ask if anyone has personally experienced any of these dangers or know someone who has. You can even ask that they come up with reasons why people fall prey to these scams even when there is so much information out there.
It is very important for high school students to know and avoid the dangers lurking on the World Wide Web. Use the above tips to help create lesson plans on Internet safety.