Internet Safety

I feel that this is a big concern, especially since our 2nd graders are going to be getting laptops this coming year. They will be taking them home and some will have internet access there also.

Either way, if you are blogging, having the students create podcasts, vodcasts, wikis, etc., or have a wiki/webpage for your class, there needs to be thought put in to who will be able to view it and what is allowed on it.

I plan to use a google wiki for parent information. This will not have any of the students' personal information on this site. It will be open to the public. Then it will have a link to the parent blog site that I have created. I have not yet decided whether this will be private setting (invitation only) or open to the public. I am just concerned that I might not get some parents' email addresses or some grandparents might want to view it and would be interested in volunteering. If any of you have thoughts, feel free to let me know what you think.

Then, I just learned about Ning, a networking site, that will allow us to have it as a private site. I plan to use this networking site for my students' classroom use. The students will be able to blog on this site. We can also have pictures, podcasts, vodcasts, etc. on here if it is only open to the students. The only issue I see is that I will need to set up email accounts for the students to register them as members of the network. I don't know that this will be a big deal except if they would know them and try to use them outside of class. I think I can have them log in to Ning just using part of the email address (without @gmail.com), so they won't know it is their email account. (I would actually like to have them have epals too though)
*If anyone sees a specific concern, please let me know. Thanks!