Reflection on Session 2: Stickies + Cyberwellness (17092010)

After doing the cyberwellness activity, I realized that though there are many pros to having internet, there are also many cons. I remember how my parents used to tell me that there are a lot of viruses online, and how we can fall prey to online ‘predators’ easily. As a 16-year old teen, I dismissed her. However, now, as a teacher,  I am able to understand my mother’s concern. What if my students get addicted to online gaming? New games spring up every year one after another, and it is so easy to get addicted. The implications of being addicted to gaming are substantial. First of all, time spent with friends and family will be much lesser as addiction to gaming means hours and hours in front of the computer. In addition, many of the games that current teenagers are addicted to are in the form of fighting, for instance Counterstrike. Is that a good influence on kids? What can students gain from this game other than being able to differentiate the types of guns and having faster finger reflexes?

After all, we certainly do not want our students to become like this:

Just like a coin, there are two sides and it's indisputable that cyber brings about many benefits with efficiency being one of them. Nowadays students, can most probably type faster than they can write. Likewise, many websites to aid learning and discussions have sprung up such as the one we went through today - Stickies. It was so fun, even for us as adults to post our responses. I thought the tags idea was awesome too, though sabotage might take place if there happen to be some naughty students in the class. For instance, they might type something offensive or not very pleasant and tagged it under another classmate's name. So I guess there are indeed two sides to everything afterall. That said, I do think that websites which require students to log in under a fixed username and password might save us as teacher a lot more trouble, and allow us to have a clear understanding of the participating level of each particular student.



What I already know..
The cyber world is both useful and harmful to a certain extent.

What I want to learn..
How we can handle and help different student's cyberwellness issues such as addiction to cyber gambling etc.

What I learned this week..
How to use Stickies. The different cyberwellness issues for students and some ways in which they affect our lesson plans, or lesson strategies.

What questions I still have..
Where to find all these useful and assistive website such as Stickies, Mindmeister? And the best thing is they are FOC! :)