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Fundamentals Training / Teach Students About Internet Safety and Privacy

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Teach Students About Internet

Safety and Privacy
By Google for Education Published: Jan 12, 2021 25m Beginner (2)

   Expected Lesson Time: 25 minutes

Go through the sections below, then test yourself (and get credit) by
doing the Lesson Check.

Make Good Choices

The Internet is a place. A really big place. And just like you need to be careful about certain
places in the physical world, you need to be a little careful about some places in the online
world, too. Think about the town or city you live in. It’s probably a very nice place, but you know
there are still areas that you wouldn’t wander around in after dark, back alleyways that you’re
better off avoiding, and times of day that are not as safe as others. Places that might be
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perfectly ne for grown-ups might not be as acceptable for children.

The Internet is no different. There are large parts of the Internet that are completely safe and
you can often wander freely without a worry. But there are other places that are much less
secure. Maybe even places you would want to avoid completely.

If you’re sensible, you don’t take silly risks, and you know what to look out for the real world is
a pretty safe place. It’s the same with the online world. Just as you might teach your own kids
how to cross the road safely or avoid talking to strangers, we need to teach kids how to be
safe in the online world, too.

Not because the Internet is a fundamentally bad place - it really isn’t. But because it would be
a mistake to not teach our kids about the risks involved. It starts with knowing how to behave
online, being respectful to others and maintaining an appropriate level of personal privacy. It
means taking sensible precautions with your identity, and managing your passwords and
accounts. As the Web gets more personal, the need for you to be logged in isn’t going to go
away anytime soon, so we need to teach kids how to handle their sensitive login information.

And of course, whether online or off, you should always stay away from trouble when you
recognize it. Staying safe in the online world means maintaining a healthy skepticism about
things you read, being able to spot a scam or hoax, and understanding that when something
appears too good to be true… it probably is.

Stay Smart, Stay Safe

Click on the cards below to listen to a few tips for staying safe and secure online.

VIEW TRANSCRIPT VIEW TRANSCRIPT

VIEW TRANSCRIPT VIEW TRANSCRIPT

Passwords Are the Key

Managing passwords is something that all students need to master. With Google Workspace
for Education Fundamentals enjoying widespread popularity in classrooms all over the world,
the need to create and remember a password is something that many students must learn.
Here are a few tips for managing student passwords.

Start Young

With very young students - say Kindergarten through Grade 2 - many teachers choose to use
the same password for all students. Something easy for the students to type and remember,
that also meets the required password complexity rules for your school’s IT policy. One idea
that works well for young kids is to base the password on a pattern of keys on the keyboard.

As students get older (Grade 3 and up) they should de nitely start to create and manage their
own passwords. It’s worth giving some explicit lessons on ways to pick a password. Some
suggestions might be to use a word and number combination that is meaningful to them, or to
turn a familiar phrase into a password, or to take a common word and swap out some of the
characters for symbols, such as $ for s, or @ for a.

Make it easy for them

Very young students still forget their passwords regularly until they’ve used them many times,
so a good idea is for the teacher to keep a list of their login details in a Google Sheet. If a
student forgets a password, their teacher can look it up. This is usually much simpler than
having to reset the password and have the student pick a new one (which they typically also
forget next time!).

To collect the student passwords, why not create a simple Google Form for them to enter their
chosen password? This gives the teacher a list that shows exactly what each child picked, and
then the teacher can set the passwords based on that list. Obviously, there may be some risks
in having a complete list of passwords, so you should be very careful and only do this for your
very young students. As students get older, they get much better at remembering their
passwords and this all becomes much less of a problem.

Stay Private

No matter what age your students are, it’s important that they learn to never give their
password to anyone. Parents and trusted teachers can be an exception to this rule, but
students should understand that giving their password to a friend for them to use is a very bad
idea. If someone knows your password, they can log in and pretend to be you online. And
that’s just asking for trouble. Don’t share passwords. Ever.

Your Turn

Let’s put some of these ideas into practice. You will now use Google Slides to create a slide
presentation you can use in your classroom to help your students learn some of these ideas
for managing their password.

Your slides should provide an explanation of what makes a good password. If you teach very
young students, you should probably include a screen showing the different character types -
uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters - as required by your school’s
password requirements.

You should include slides that contain a few ideas for:

Examples of good passwords

Examples of bad passwords
Ideas for choosing a password

Remind students of the two main rules about passwords:

1. Passwords should be easy to remember, but hard to guess.

2. They should never give their password to anyone except a parent or trusted teacher.

Click Here to Get Started ↗

Lesson Check

Now let's do a quick check to make sure you got this lesson (and that we give you credit for it)!

1. The best way to protect your online life is by:

Using an easy to remember password, such as “password123”

Never using a computer that isn’t yours

 Choosing a strong, secure password, and enabling 2 step veri cation

Telling someone else your password in case you forget it

Check Answer

 Correct!

2. A good password should contain: (Select all that apply.)

 Uppercase letters

 Lowercase letters

 Numbers

 Special characters

Check Answer

 Correct!

3. If you get an email from someone you don’t recognize o ering you money or a prize,
you should:

Reply immediately before they change their mind

Send back your bank account details so the money can be deposited into your account

Reply to ask for more information

 Delete the message immediately and/or "report as spam"

Check Answer

 Correct!

4. The main reason for using Chrome in Incognito mode is that:

Your browsing is completely private and secure, and all history is cleared when you close
 Chrome

You get to wear a face mask and pretend you are Zorro

You can visit websites you shouldn’t and get away with it while you’re at school

Webpages automatically default to https instead of http to keep your information secure

Check Answer

 Correct!

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