Online learning communities
Hints and tips for parents on how to choose safe online learning communities for your child
Your child can meet new online friends, have a lot of fun and learn a great deal from taking part in online learning communities. If you know what your children can do online, what they can learn and how to keep them safe, you can help them get the very best from this exciting new educational development.
What is an online learning community?
Physical communities are groups of people who live together or gather together to enjoy each other's company - perhaps in a favourite café, or they might share common interests in a club, or pursue some common purpose like learning to paint in a community art class.
In a good online learning community children can do all of these things. For example, they could hang out with friends in a daily news forum, join a media club to talk and write about music, books or films, join a study group and help each other with history homework or take an online course on how to build homepages.
What do children do?
Children have fun sharing their interests and at the same time they learn all sorts of things. They learn personal skills that will help them now and in the adult lives and mostly they learn by doing. Here are the kinds of things they can do:
- email their online friends and learn how to express themselves, carry on a conversation and build a relationship. They might also learn how to format their text and send email attachments
- build their own homepages about their interests - music, books, fashion, sport, TV, films, pets or school subjects. They try to write interesting things that other children will want to read. They learn how to use html codes and create and upload images, sounds and videos
- write articles and submit them to editors for inclusion in the community magazines or clubs. They can even run their own clubs on something that interests them and get other children to send articles
- take part in discussion forums on fun and important issues, like daily news forums on what they did in school or what's happening in the world, or perhaps a media forum about the latest books and films, or an animals forum about threatened wildlife
- enter competitions like Homepage of the Week or the Best Animal Photo competition
They can do online courses like How to Be Safe Online or How to use Multimedia on your Home Page and they can win awards to celebrate their achievements.
What do children learn?
The most important thing children need to learn in a community is how to be safe online and in good online learning communities this is the main focus.
- how to be safe online - they learn how to look after their passwords, what they should or shouldn't say in emails, what personal information it's safe to give out and what to hold back
- how to behave - they learn how to behave respectfully online, for example: no swearing, no bulling and no sex talk. Good online communities like good schools or clubs, create a friendly atmosphere and a positive, mutually respectful ethos and they have mediators who look after the children and make sure they all behave
- how to understand others - children make friends and work with others from all sorts of religious, cultural and economic backgrounds and every one is equal online
- how to communicate - Communication is a really important skill for adult life and children learn how to communicate in different ways - in emails, in forums and on their home pages. They learn to communicate with lots of different audiences of people
- how to do - children learn best by doing and in online communities they learn a host of useful ICT skills like creating images, formatting text, using html codes on their home pages and a whole lot more
- every subject under the sun - in the forums, magazines and clubs children can learn about every school subject as well as making sense of what's happening in the everyday world
Are they safe?
In a good online learning community your children will be safe, but before they join you should ask a few important questions:
- who runs this community? - Make sure the organisation running the community is one you can trust and has a good reputation for child safety. Ask these questions: Are they based in the UK? Do they publish their telephone number and address? Do they have a good track record of running online learning community? Do they have any awards for child safety? Are they endorsed by people you trust - the government, child safety organisations, your school or other parents?
- how are members validated? - If just anyone can join a children's community, then unauthorised adults could join and try to harm your children. So there must be a validation system to make sure applicants are real children of the right age. If pupils join through school the teacher can confirm they are genuine. If children join from home they should have their parents' permission and the parent should be asked for full contact information that should be checked by the community organisers to make sure it's reliable
- how is communication monitored? - All communications between all members of the community should be automatically scanned to stop people using bad language and to alert the mediator to anyone trying to insult, bully or find out personal information that could make a child vulnerable. Every word of every message should be recorded and saved so the mediators can check back on anything suspicious
- how are members looked after? - There should be trained human mediators online during the times when the children can communicate live - to keep them safe, to make sure they are behaving well and to help them with any questions. Make sure there is an emergency button your children can click if they see anything that worries them - it should send an urgent alert so the mediators pay attention to your child straight away
- how are parents and teachers informed? - The mediators should be able to contact teachers or parents if they have any concerns about a member, so make sure they ask for full contact details. Make sure there is a telephone helpline number and an email address you can contact if you have any worries
After your children join, here are a few things you can do to keep them safe:
- be on call - make sure your contact details, like email address or phone number, are up to date so the mediators can call if there is a problem
- be on hand - encourage your children to use the computer where you can keep an eye on them to make sure they are behaving well, keeping safe and they can turn to you for help
- be on guard - don't let other family members use your children's passwords, because if they do anything outside the community rules - your child could be kicked out. So make sure others respect your children's privacy, encourage your children to keep passwords safe (not lying around on a scrap of paper) and make sure they "log out" every time they leave the computer
- and finally - if you have any worries - call the community helpline or email the mediators
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