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Blog Entry 3

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48450604

This article is about an online game called Roblox that is geared towards young children and has over 90 million users worldwide. This game, like many others has a chat feature that many times parents are unaware of. This article talks about a particular case where the parent thought it was an innocent game, unaware of the chat feature, letting her son have access to it thinking there was nothing to be worried about. Her son ended up having inappropriate chats with other users and she had no idea. This article brings attention to the scariness of online games and how we need to protect our children and students from being lured in to sexual predators. The article discusses how parents should be "skilled up" in regards to watching and monitoring their child's internet use, but it also discusses that if they are groomed into negative situations, to provide the appropriate emotional support but it can have long term effects on the child. Although these sexual predator situations can be rare, it happens, and children and parents alike need to be aware of what to look for, and know that lots of internet games have chat features where predators lurk.



Brain Pop
A technology tool that I would like to use in my ELA classroom is Brain Pop. This website was developed in 1999 by a doctor who wanted a create, interactive way to relay difficult concepts to his young patients. Brain Pop has millions of online videos, games and resources in almost all content areas to help students understand an array of topics. For ELA, they have writing and reading lessons. I think having these videos and games as a supplementary tool for my lessons will be an interactive way to reach my students while providing high engagement.

Although, Brain Pop can be fun and interactive, I worry that some of my students will use the time that these videos play to talk with their peers and not pay attention. I want to make sure that after I play the videos that I have students turn and talk with their peers to make sure all students are responsible for watching and listening to the videos.

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