Social networking safety

I was reading Claire's Blog today and was again reminded of the importance of social networking safety. We were shown a video in class by Glynis. It highlights the starke realities and dangers of social networking. I think this is scary and its a really serious video but its so important that children understand the risks they take when they dont think through their decisions in cyber space. I am hoping to show this to my year 5/6 students on prac in June. I think Claire put it really well when she said "It is important as we are encouraging students to get stuck into technology and show them great ways to use it, that we are also ensuring that we talk to them about ways they shouldn’t be using it!" Education Victoria has posted a video through FUSE https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/pages/View.aspx?pin=Z7FM3R . This is good for teachers who want to learn how to create a safer alternative to facebook within the school environment, targeted at year 5 and 6 students. It promotes the use of http://uk.ning.com/ but another popular site used is http://www.edmodo.com/ . All in all i think the most important things to take away are that facebook is an adult social networking site students and children need to be extremely vigilant in their use of such an adult space and it isnt necessary. There are many other safer options out there. If teachers can introduce or facilitate a class social networking site this can deter students from seeking another more dangerous site.