Using Google Image Search

Another point which came up at one of my sessions was should we let our students use Google Images to search for pictures. The presenter's point of view was that as long as you had the student's record the url it was not a problem but one teacher was very worried about students coming across inappropriate images. The presenter said that most of what came up was no worse than what they may see on television.

I, of course, could not keep my big mouth shut and had to share that my students use Google Images all the time but that I have trained them to tell me if they accidentally come across something inappropriate be it a picture or a web site. I have them do this for two reasons. Firstly, if I do a history search and find an inappropriate site I should already know why it is there and secondly, they need to be aware that you do come across inappropriate items without trying and it is important to be responsible about it. I still believe this method works for myself and my students.

I, perhaps flippantly, also said to this woman that my elementary students were mostly hunting for kittens and puppies so it wasn't usually too much of a problem. When I thought about it later I realized my students actually do searching for much broader topics. I should have added that for grades one to three I often do the searching myself and put into a folder but this is more a time factor than my worry that they will come across something bad. I have also searched using the projector and have the younger students tell me which pictures I should save for a project.

I have only had one potentially disastrous situation in the last several years. I was searching, a few years ago, with my grade three's watching on the big screen for pictures of sea creatures. We were busy hunting for octopuses and I had the screen with all the little preview pictures up and I was enlarging ones which the students wanted a better look at. We had done several with no problem when I clicked on one which we couldn't really see in the small preview picture. When it came up on the big screen I realized it was an ice sculpture on the hood of car, the only problem was that it wasn't an octopus it was an ice sculpture of two people have sex, lots of legs. I quickly reduced the size and said it wasn't in the ocean so we couldn't use it. We moved on and I'm pretty sure none of my students were any the wiser.

It definitely made me aware of what was out there but it hasn't stopped me from using Google Images. I have tried some projects where the students have had to draw all their pictures and scan them in but it frustrates that students who can't draw and takes a lot of time both to complete and then to scan. I was wondering what other teachers do with their classes.