Three things that teachers and students should know about using the internet effectively and safely are: internet sources may not always be credible; internet searches, in order to lead to the information you need, need to be specific; and putting out personal information for all to see comes with risks and responsibilities.

With the availability of the internet and many different types of information, the job of sifting through what's reliable and what's not is now on all of our shoulders. This includes students, who should use the best material available to learn from. Will Richardson in his blog "These Days, Reading Means Editing," asks the question if students are "learning to become editors as well as readers?" What a skill! Editing is no easy task. Students have probably grown accustomed to having their information provided to them through teachers and textbooks, information that has already gone through the editing process. But when they turn their eyes to the never ending well of internet resources, they must become the experts at judging what's in and what's out. Questions such as "who wrote this?", "do other sources back this up?" and "does this person have a bias?" are ones that all students should learn how to ask. Teaching the tools to let students make informed choices will give them more control and wisdom over the decisions they make.

Students and teachers should also know how to successfully find what they are looking for. Robert Harris' article "Evaluating Internet Research Sources" makes a fitting analogy between searching the internet and blindly grabbing any magazine from a grocery store rack. He says "now imagine that your grocer is so accomodating that he lets anyone in town print up a magazine and put it in the magazine section." Getting tangled in irrelevant websites can turn what started out as a simple search into a dizzying waste of time, and time is what students and teachers seem to be running out of more and more. Students and teachers both need to able to narrow down searches to the most essential information. Just as students learn how to use indexes and tables of contents in books, they also need to learn how to identify key words and search terms.

Not only do we care about how students are learning and growing, we also deeply care about their safety and well-being. Both teachers and parents try to keep children safe by teaching them not to talk to strangers, for example, or how to react to a bully. But something that is harder to teach is that they are vulnerable to strangers and bullies whenever they share their personal information on the world wide web. This is especially applicable to classrooms that utilize the internet for class webpages, blogs, and podcasts. Integrating this technology in the classroom can be a very enriching experience for students, but students and teachers should be aware and discuss the risks of putting our private imformation on the internet as well as the benefits. Students knowing a good deal about how to use tools such as email, chatrooms, blogs, and myspace, and knowing the personal responsibility that comes with using them, will make them better internet users. This knowledge helps children that already have ample opportunities to use the internet, and also those who have very limited access to it. These students that have little exposure to the internet at home who leave school without having learned how to safely and responsibly use it will be at a greater risk of misusing what it has to offer.