I have been supporting students, staff and families with online safety for nearly 20 years. The landscape is changing constantly so it is important to stay up to date through reading, discussion with other professionals and careful planning.
Here are 5 tips to help you.
- Relate Online Safety to existing values in school. For example the word ‘respect’ may be a whole school value that can be linked to work in Online safety, PSHE and Computing. The picture below contains words from one such school. These include joy, love and faithfulness.
- Don’t feel that you always have to create a Powerpoint to include. My experience suggests that group activities, discussion and the use of technology such as micro:bits and robots provides the variety to encourage good discussion and reflection. Remember that students will often have had many assemblies linked to Online Safety in which they have been talked to. (see picture below)
- Emphasise to students that technology such as chat bots and AI are machine based, do not have emotions and may not necessarily provide appropriate advice. It is important to talk to other humans, tell a grown up (CEOP tag line) or talk to a trusted adult.
- Three to websites to keep up to date are Internet Matters, SWGFL (Project Evolve) and CEOP
- Consider supporting parents by collecting a range of resources and adding them to a single source (eg a webpage or Padlet page)
You can request advice and guidance from Richard Smith via amazingict@icloud.com
