The Importance of Keeping Children Safe During Online Research

With every new school year comes a wave of students who will be tasked with their first research assignment. This will require them to do extensive research outside of their normal class time, and for modern students, that time will rarely be spent at the library foraging through shelves of books; it will be spent online, the new frontier for research.

Here at The Teacher’s Academy, we know the importance of teaching safe methods for using the Internet for research while also educating teachers and instructors on how to curate a safe browsing environment for their students. To satisfy this educational need for our teachers and our students, we offer a course titled “Internet Research, Cyber Safety, and Social Media” that details all the different aspects related to Internet safety while conducting research.

It all starts with learning how to safely and properly navigate the Internet’s search engines and research portals. Like with any source of information, there are more reputable ones than others, and our course is designed to instruct teachers on how to ensure students are remaining safe during their online research.

Because there is a significant amount of dangerous content on the web, it’s increasingly important to relay critical thinking skills to students that translate to safe online research. The following projects will be completed as apart of our learning objectives for the course:

1. Internet Research and Cyber Safety
2. Developing an Acceptable Use Policy
3. Creating a Web Search
4. Mini Lesson Plan on Plagiarism
5. Website Citations and Reviews
6. The Creation of an EduBlog for the Classroom
7. Internet Research, Cyber Safety, and Social Media Choice Project
8. Online Participant Survey

If you are a teacher seeking professional development hours in Pittsburgh and you wish to take the “Internet Research, Cyber Safety, and Social Media” class, you can easily sign up online here. The class is a 15-credit hours course. For topics and courses beyond cyber safety, The Teacher’s Academy offers professional development courses for teachers in Pittsburgh who need credit hours in Pennsylvania to reach their continued education requirement. If you have any additional questions or concerns, or you wish to learn about all the other courses offered by The Teacher’s Academy, please continue exploring our website and be sure to fill out our contact form.