Take This Lollipop is an online interactive film that has been around since 2010 and I have used it time and time again both back in the UK in a youth work setting, and in my ESL teaching here in Thailand.
Once of the units I needed to cover with one of my classes last year was Internet Safety – an important topic to explore with young people – and I used Take This Lollipop as a way of introducing the concept of privacy and protection on the internet.
The way it works is that someone has to log in using their facebook on the homescreen at takethislollipop.com – remember, this resource was created to highlight the importance of protecting your information on the internet so they don’t save any of the log in details once the activity is complete.
Once logged in, the film starts. We see a creepy man sat at a computer surfing the net. He starts checking out facebook and hey, who’s that? It’s the profile of whoever logged in at the beginning. He starts ‘facebook stalking’ the profile and starts behaving quite disturbingly. Photographs of the facebook user and their friends start to show up – it really freaks out the students to see this horrible man looking at pictures of them.
Depending on how much information the facebook user has on their profile, the creepy man looks up their address and used google maps to see the street. If the student hasn’t listed an address it will only zoom into their hometown – but if they have written their whole address on their profile it will zoom right in on their street.
The film ends as the creepy guy drives off in his car with the facebook users’ profile picture taped to the dashboard.
This interactive online film is excellent for starting discussion on internet safety, information protection and privacy. It also helps to highlight how important it is that we think about how much personal information we choose to share on social networking sites.
Have a go at home with your own facebook first and see how much it freaks you out!
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Those of you who have liked the facebook page will already be aware that I have put Teacher Tuesday to bed – it was just too limiting only being a Tuesday kinda thing. Inside my classroom will have exactly the same content of lesson ideas, inspirations and useful links, only now I can share things with you any day of the week. Tuesdays just weren’t working for me anymore, it’s nothing personal…
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