Online Safety

Richard Smith has been supporting students, staff and families with online safety for  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.

The 4 Cs of online safety A3 20256_Vs2 and Educational AI Update 2026 

Notebook LM AI version to evaluate (uploaded from PDF)

Here are 4 tips to help you.

1. 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.
2. 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)
3. 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.
4. Consider supporting parents by collecting a range of resources and adding them to a single source (e.g. a webpage or Padlet Online Safety: AmazingICT )