E-Safety Live Briefing Comes to Inverness

We are very pleased to announce that there will be an E-Safety Live Briefing in Inverness on the 16th May 2013. This event is brought to us by the partnership that includes Childnet International, South West Grid for Learning, Internet Watch Foundation and UK Safer Internet Centre. All of these organisations are heavily promoted in our e-safety work here, so it’s great to meet them in person and welcome them to Highland.

The Highland E-Safety Group will be in attendance too and on hand to provide local information and support the event. This is a opportunity to hear the latest in developments in the world of E-Safety. It is ideal for anyone working with children and young people from any organisation or sector, voluntary or private. The more the merrier! We’d be really keen to ensure this news travels far and wide so please do pass on to any colleagues who you may feel would benefit from attending.

Please go to their website www.swgfl.org.uk/News/E-Safety-Live/Home to reserve your place. All registration will be handled through the this site and the E-Safety Live team.

Be Safe and Keep Others Safe Online! Guidance for Parents and Carers

On behalf of the Highland E-Safety Group I am pleased to highlight to you our new offering of guidance for Parents and Carers, but actually it’s going to be useful for anyone interested in safety online. This is a 4 page article which is going out as a supplement with the April edition of the  Highland Life Magazine

Feel free to download here Be Safe and Keep Others Safe When Online and share with anyone you feel would benefit from reading it. It has been written to reflect a balanced approach, acknowledging benefits and offers practical tips for Parents and Carers to share with their children. There’s a few links and ideas to get folks thinking too thrown in for good measure.

Thank you to The Highland Council, Health and Social Care service who supported the publication.

Safe Searching on YouTube

Following on from the post earlier about reporting illegal or concerning content to the Internet Watch Foundation, I happened to find out about this seriously good little clip from my good colleagues in Falkirk, link to their fabulous Curriculum Support Team here. The short clip is great for supporting teachers, parents / carers and pupils about using YouTube. It gives options for searching safely, reminding folks about local authority filters  and how to flag unsuitable content.

In Highland, to support learning and teaching, YouTube is openly available for all teachers and educators on our Local Authority network. For all pupils, primary and secondary, we have made available the category of YouTube ‘Education’. For more information on YouTube Edu please click here.

Thanks to Stuart Lennie in Falkirk for sharing this with us!

Reporting Online Criminal Content

‘Be Safe and Keep Others Safe Online’ is a little motto we have begun to use here, it sums up the approach we are taking in our advice and guidance. We believe that everyone has a role in making the internet and the sites we use safer in terms of content, conduct and contact. We recognise that we all have a role to play, even if it is by modelling good use of social media sites, communication tools and mobile devices or reporting content that raises concerns. The Highland E-Safety Group soon will be  releasing a new guide for parents and carers and we will go into some of these thoughts in detail. It will be published here for download soon.

We often get asked how to report content online and we direct people to the Internet Watch Foundation www.iwf.org.uk  Reporting anything can be worrying for the person reporting it so the IWF have provided a short clip on  how you can report content that you believe should not be there and how you are protected as the person reporting it. This can be content anywhere on the internet and no matter where it has originated.

CEOP and Microsoft Launch new Windows 8 App

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) have teamed up with Microsoft again and today launched a new App to promote their support and resources for children, young people, parents and carers. It’s free and downloadable from the Windows App store. The full press release is here

This is another great addition to the ways in which CEOP is being promoted. They have a number of social media, browser plug-ins and networking site profiles now including  Youtube  Facebook Twitter Firefox Plug In Google Chrome In Scottish Schools we have access to the digital network Glow and each school can add a Glow CEOP tile so that it’s there ready for them to explore as soon as they login. The main website www.thinkuknow.co.uk is still the place to go for all of their key resources, it ‘s great to see CEOP doing all they can to promote their support for creating safer online communities.

WithScotland Resources for Online Safety

 

WithScotland are a national resource for the benefit of everyone in Scotland involved in protecting children and young people. The Multi-Agency Resource Service (MARS) and the Scottish Child Care and Protection Network (SCCPN) joined forces and are developing stronger connections between child, adult and public protection.

To support Safer Internet Day which took place on the 5th February 2013 they published some useful information and articles on their website which aim to help children and young people keep themselves safe in a digital world.

Link here http://withscotland.org/messages/internet-safety-day

 

Safer Internet Day 2013

 

Today is Safer Internet Day and many Highland Schools are using this as an opportunity to remind everyone in the school (not just pupils!) of the importance of being safe online. Some of the key agencies have launched some new resources to mark the day, CEOP in particular have launched two new videos. You can view them here on their excellent education website www.thinkuknow.co.uk by logging in or you can hop over to their youtube channel, available here.

Whilst it’s a great opportunity to raise the profile of the work going on to promote safer online worlds for children and young people, it’s important to recognise that this work and approach needs to take place throughout the year and across the curriculum in schools and at home. It’s a great way to continually reinforce messages such as not sharing passwords and thinking about the content you place online and how everyone has a part to play in creating safer online spaces.