Scenario+C

=Scenario C: High School Videos=

Your high school Spanish students have been extremely excited about a recent project in your class. Students have been writing scripts and acting out “commercials” in Spanish for imaginary products. You have recorded the commercials on a digital camcorder and uploaded the videos to YouTube. The response has been very positive to these videos, and several students have uploaded them to their personal MySpace pages and blogs to share them with friends.

However, one of your students, Olivia, just forwarded you a comment written in response to one of the videos in which she participated and asks for help translating. The comment is in Spanish and contains several sexual references and curse words. When Olivia clicks on the commenter's username to find out more about the person, she sees videos with sexual content. What do you tell your students about the comment and what Olivia saw, and how do you advise them to respond?


 * Talk with students about:

1) Internet predators:** Before any Internet project is underway, it is a prudent idea to go over the "Pledge to be a Safe Web Surfer" with the class. Both "Stop Internet Predators" and "Wired Kids" are websites that offer excellent tips for parents, guardians and teachers on protecting our youth from internet predators. Visit both of these websites before you initiate a dialogue with your class. Then, visit "Web Wise Kids" with your students as a class and watch [|"Katie's Story"] with them, explaining that even innocent actions can have dangerous consequences.

Most high school students are old enough to treat these matters with maturity. It's imperative to emphasize the serious dangers of what Olivia encountered and inform students that they should never click on links, videos or any sort of content that is sent to them by a person they do not know. Emphasizing the difference between valid, safe information and information that is obscene and/or illegal is important as well.

Explain that nothing is 100% guaranteed. People are always looking to take a shortcut or stretch the law. Many even break it, so don't get frustrated with your firewall when it doesn't filter out the bad content. [|Chris Finke] is a software engineer that has years of experience. He designed an add-on to [|firefox] that is to modify comments and filter out explicit lyrics and profanity. It is called a "[|YouTube comment snob]" Like we said, though, nothing is 100%. Look at his comments/feedback.
 * 2) How to block explicit comments on blogs/webpages:**

Review your expectations of student behavior if and when they do encounter inappropriate material: Students should be told explicitly that they are not to forward on inappropriate material, spread rumor or gossip via electronic or any other means. Setting this tone in the classroom will go far in empowering students and minimizing distractions.
 * 1) Stop what you are doing - do not continue to communicate with the source of the inappropriate material.
 * 2) Record what occurred - via cut & paste, screengrab, etc.
 * 3) Report it to an authority: the teacher, a parent, the police, etc.

The [|New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services] has a great presentation about internet safety. On this site, you can pick the age group that you would like to talk with and upload their website. For high school students, there are safety steps and warning signs that they need to take. Examples of these would be: to keep personal information private, don't allow a person to threaten you, erase and block comments, seek help if you feel uncomfortable.
 * 3) Internet safety and the classroom:**

Resources:

New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (October 28th, 2009). []