This week the E-Safety Group members have been supporting Safer Internet Day events in Highland. One of the issues we have been highlighting is meta data in images. This clip below explains a bit more about it. It’s very easy to disable, on iPhones you just go to ‘settings’ and then ‘Location Services’ for Android Phones it’s a similar process.
Why not explore and find out how many functions of a smart phone have a location device? Remember actually for emergency purposes it is also a good thing to have these switched on so have a think about how this might be a good aspect of your phone to have on in the right circumstances.
To co-incide with Safer Internet Day 2012 the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) have provided this great 25 minute video for parents and carers. The video sets out a good foundation for beginning the discussions all parents should have with their children about how to safely be online. It also provides helpful tips and advice on where to go for further help if you are worried.
For schools, this could be played at a parents / carers evening as it is only 25 minutes long, you can then build on this with further discussions and maybe hear from professionals in your local authority or school community. Why not also include pupils to be involved to share their views too?
For Highland, if you would like any further advice please do get in touch with a member of the E-Safety Group or speak to your Head Teacher.
Do you ever feel that your children know more about online technologies than you do?
You’re not alone. The Internet and online technologies are an important part of children’s lives at home and school, providing great opportunities for learning, communicating, playing and creating. As we know, these technologies create huge opportunities for us all; however, they can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, and present challenges to keeping your family safe online.
Safer Internet Day (SID) is an annual event to promote the safe and responsible use of technology among children and young people. The focus of SID 2012 is ‘connecting generations’. It aims to encourage families to explore online technologies together. SID 2012 will be taking place on Tuesday 7th February (and across the week) with activities across the UK and beyond.
Why not use this as an opportunity to start the discussions about being safe online?
This Guidance has been developed by the multi-agency Highland E-Safety Group and has been endorsed for use in Highland by key groups such as the ECS ICT Strategy and Informal LNCT.
The guidance can be accessed here Social Networking Guidance for Professionals
On behalf of the Highland E-Safety Group I would like to say that we hope you find this helpful and informative.
If you have any specific comments please do not hesitate to get in touch.
This excellent little test by Open DNS would be great for any ICT / Internet Safety education, you could encourage pupils to have a go at doing the test, lots of discussion afterwards and maybe ask the pupils to devise a poster or leaflet with their own tips?! My score was 13 out of 14 what will your score be? Can you get 100%?!
Happy Safer Internet Day! To help celebrate and to raise awareness of new aspects of internet safety, The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) have announced their latest resources available for professionals working with children and young people, some of them might be suitable for use with Parents and Carers too. Sky News carried an interesting article yesterday here with news of these latest resources and concerns about ‘sexting’ and research from Beatbullying
New Resources for February 2011
‘Exposed’
CEOP has developed a suite of resources designed to tackle the issue of young people taking indecent images which are then circulated to a wider audience. These resources consist of a ten minute film called ‘Exposed’ and accompanying lesson plans. The materials show common ways young people get into this situation, explore the consequences of these actions and what they can do if they find themselves in this position.
‘Exposed’ is aimed at 14 to 18 year olds, although in practice you may feel the film is suitable for those outside of this range.
You can download these resources from www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/resources/ and selecting ‘Exposed’ under the 11 – 16’s tab. NB The Highland E-Safety Team issued Mobile Phone Guidance to Parents / Carers in Highland, this can be accessed here.
Suite of Resources for Young People with Special Needs and Disabilities
CEOP has developed a range of resources for professionals to use with young people who have special needs and disabilities. Three versions of an animation have been produced that convey messages in an appropriate format for this audience – available in , mild–moderate needs, moderate–severe needs and audio only.
Additionally, there is a dramatisation covering broadly similar issues involving actors who use British Sign Language. There are two versions of this film, partial or full subtitles. All films have an accompanying lesson plan and activities to highlight important themes.
You can download these from www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/resources/ and selecting either ‘Know your friends with Josh and Sue’ or ‘Sam’s Real Friends’ under the SEN tab.
Interactive E-safety Game
There is a new internet safety game for 8 – 10 year olds called ‘Star Riders’. This interactive game requires the user to answer questions about internet safety to increase the amount of time they have to collect stars and avoid nasty icons. There is a leader board to encourage users to improve. The questions users are asked will be changed every few months to reflect new themes.
Safer Internet Day 2011 is not far away now! The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) have provided a really good competition that you can use with any groups of young people, really cool prizes for the winners. It has two age categories 8-10 years and 11 – 16, so can be used for either upper primary or secondary schools and youth groups of any description.
A few details for you…The competition entry can be in any format you choose as long as it reflects the theme of ‘My Life Online’ and has parents/carers as its audience.
Here are some ideas of what you could do:
* Design a computer game – write down your ideas, draw them or maybe make a game with free software
* Produce a film – write a story, use pictures to plan your camera shots or use a camera if you have one
* Make an advert – create a poster or film an advert
* Create a cartoon – draw your own cartoon on paper or use a programme on your computer
* Create a photo blog – use free software or make a photo collage to send in
* Record a song – make up your own song with a catchy chorus
* Write a quiz – test parents on their knowledge and tell them what they should know
Dont forget! Safer Internet Day resource packs for primary and secondary schools are now available online. They can be downloaded at www.childnet.com by clicking on the ‘Safer Internet Day’ logo and following the links. Additionally, to support Safer Internet Day on the 8th of February 2011, the UK Safer Internet Centre will be launching a new website, www.saferinternet.org.uk, at the beginning of January.
We hope that all schools and youth groups in Highland will take part, if you need any further advice please speak to Louise Jones or Jim Henderson.
Learning and Teaching Scotland have cleverly provided an instruction video (runs for about an hour) that can be used as an awareness session for any professionals or parents / carers.
Ollie Bray, National Adviser for Emerging Technologies for Learning, explains the background to the creation of the tutorial here. Ollie has worked closely with Highland in developing their approaches to E-Safety and has been extremely helpful in supplying news, views and guidance.
The full clip and supporting guidance can be found here.
Why not use it as a Safer Internet Day activity as a CAT session for staff?
AVG have conducted some very interesting research summarised in the AVG Nursery Infographic.
Babies and Children born now will have a much easier time accessing a ‘dossier’ of their life history as parents seem to share so much more information about young family members online.
What traditionally has been photos or antenatal scans included in baby books or family albums are now being increasingly posted and shared online. I’m sure most young people cringe when they go back home at a later stage only for the ‘bottom drawer’ family albums and mementos to come out! But what if they were online from the beginning? Thanks mum! But some parents or carers might not see any harm in what they are doing…….now.
This might seem to be on the face of it, fairly amusing, but what happens when the picture of home life isn’t so rosy, children become abused or stalked later in life, what if they become looked after or for what ever reason need to be protected for someone harmful. What if they go on to be famous, wish not to have a public life etc? Just a few issues that could be considered when discussing this.
The full article about this research can be found here, courtesy of AVG. I’m particularly thankful to them for producing the infographic and allowing it be used freely.
We would recommend this is added to any internet safety evening presentations for parents / carers you might be developing. We will include this aspect in our Internet Safety and Responsible Use Training courses.
The use of social networks has had a major impact for adoptive families, communications with birth families previously carefully managed through agencies has been become increasing difficult due to the ease of people tracing and contacting family members through social networking sites.
In Highland we firstly celebrated Safer Internet Day in 2009, we had lots of media coverage and sent leaflets to all Parents / Carers of pupils.It was a great way to keep ‘Internet Safety and Responsible Use’ at the forefront of people’s minds.
We’ve just discovered that 8th February 2011 is the planned date for SID 2011! What will you plan to do? Check our ‘Safer Internet Day’ page for ideas on this site or go here for further details.
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