Finding pictures on the web

When talking about kids' safety on the Internet, finding pictures seems to be one of the trickiest things I have to manage. I once had a student search for "eight" and get a picture of nude people!

If the topic for a project is narrow - like levers, Revolutionary War, weather - I collect a folder of pictures from which they can choose that is stored on the server. The problem with this plan is that they do not have the information to cite the source of the pictures. Not sure how to fix this. I thought about putting the pictures in a Word file with the URL, but some of these folders are very large which would make for a very large Word file. It would also take them much longer to find a picture; in the folder they are in alphabetical order. Perhaps another way to tackle this would be to create a folder of links so they would actually go to the picture on the web and be able to get the URL for each picture. Not sure how I could do this and make it easy for them to quickly find an appropriate picture. I prefer to give them more choices rather than less; that way the projects don't all look the same.

I also have projects like homophone sentences for which there is no way to predict what pictures they might need. This is when they need to search the Internet for pictures. So far we have used Google safe search and the kid-safe search engines that are linked on the school web site. I just like Google because it is so easy to click on "Images" and get lots of pictures. The other thing I tell students is to not go past the first page of results because those are usually the best choices for their topic. I have tried using safe picture sites like Pics4learning, but those do not have enough choices, and the search engine there is not very good.

How young is too young?

One of the reasons I have not used Web 2.0 tools with my classes is that I work in an elementary school with grades K-5. I have always used the excuse that these students are too young to be blogging - that their writing skills are to immature to make good use of a blog or other Web 2.0 site. Another reason is that I find it difficult to assign homework from the computer lab where the students only appear every 8-12 days. Any homework I have assigned seems to be too easily forgotten, even if I have the classroom teacher make the students put it in their assignment book. Lastly, I work in a community where I know there are families without computers at home, albeit fewer and fewer. So you can't really assign a computer project to do at home. Maybe it is just that I am too weary with other issues to take this on with all the attending things to deal with - security, monitoring, access for all students.

As time goes on, I continue to ponder these issues. As to the writing skills,perhaps a wiki where others can help edit the entries would be more appropriate, but I would have to make sure the students understand that part of the process is having others tweak your work. That way we could get the info out and work on the correctness of the grammar and spelling as we go. Maybe there is a dual purpose there.

As far as students having access to a computer, I don't feel I can give up the time in my limited computer classes to have them doing thoughtful writing. It is not really the place for that anyway.

My question is how young is too young to be using these tools with students? Is it simply a matter of teacher monitoring and coordinating or is there really some age below which these tools are inappropriate? HELP!

Web 2.0 Tools

I thought I would use Blogger since I have used it once before. It will give this group a look at another tool they might use. I hope to add to this - picture, thoughts on Web 2.0 in the classroom, other teaching ideas that may come to mind - as we progress. A little overwhelmed at this point with all the tools and all the input on what blogging really is.

Let me know how you like this look, layout, template. This tool has many templates and allows you to redesign your page. How does this compare to what you are using? What might be best for classroom use? Will have to check into the privacy settings here and how to invite users to look since it has been almost a year since I was here.