Internet Safety, Or Not

Our wonderful tech guy has been spending a lot of time teaching internet safety and introductions to the internet in every classroom in our school. A really great classroom teacher would have talked with him ahead of time to be ready to support and be a part of the lesson. I'm not that teacher. I signed up for my time and just looked forward to half an hour during which someone else would be teaching in my classroom.

I adore our tech guy and think he is a fabulous part of our staff. He has set up structures and supported all of us in endeavors that have changed the world for our students. Plus, he's a friend and I enjoy chatting with him. I say all this because it makes what happened during, or really before, this lesson that much worse.

He came in with his laptop, opened it up and set it on my keyboard. As the kids were getting settled I noticed it was open to Cog Dog Blog. Without thinking I said, "Hey, I had dinner with Cog Dog last weekend." (My husband and I had to be in Fredericksburg on a Saturday evening so we crashed a gathering at the Bava household where Alan, aka Cog Dog, was staying at the time.)

Our tech guy went on to teach a wonderful lesson which included the big idea that one should never meet an internet friend in real life. Oops. I just hope the kids weren't paying attention to our discussion at the start.

Too make the lesson go south in another way, our tech guy made a Venn diagram of online and real life friends. He used me as the example of a real life friend and said that he knows where I live but not where Cog Dog lives. He said that he has been to my house. A students piped up, "I've been to her house too." The other kids immediately jumped in to argue that it couldn't possibly be true. Fortunately our tech guy pulled them back in before I had to say that yes, he has been to my house because his big brother and my daughter are good friends.