In this special edition of Computers in Classrooms we look at Safer Internet Day. What is it? What resources are available? Are they any good? What can you do to engage staff, students, and parents in the issue of online safety?   Computers in Classrooms 09 February 2009 Practical advice for colleagues who use, teach, lead or manage information and communication technology (ICT) in schools. This newsletter is © 2009 Terry Freedman. Contributors own the copyright of their own articles. Home Page: http://www.ictineducation.org Updated virtually daily. Email: terry@ictineducation.org   ISSN 1470-5524 Advertisement The Army In Education website http://army.mod.uk/armyineducation is now live, offering free curriculum support for secondary school teachers. Aimed at teachers of students aged 11-16 years, the website provides a range of free curriculum support materials for Geography, PE, Assemblies and History using aspects of the British Army as a theme for learning. In addition to the curriculum support materials teachers will be able to find out how Army museums and Army Careers Advisers can enhance classroom learning. It is hoped that by developing a better understanding of the work of the British Army, that young people will respect the work of British Soldiers and their role in our society. Advertisement RM.com Catalogue 2009 – out now! To help with your purchasing decisions, RM has published a catalogue - covering both hardware for education and educational software products. Order your free copy here: http://www.rm.com/generic.asp?cref=GP1368138&SrcURL=TerryFreedman_NL. Don’t miss out on the very latest products and prices; schools don't need a credit card to order online! For those of you who are too busy to stay in one place long enough to read all the articles on the Educational Technology: ICT in Education website, I have some good news. It is accessible by mobile (cell) phone, at http://ictineducation.mofuse.mobi/. When you go there you will be faced with a choice between looking at the article summaries and the full articles. The “latest issue of Computers in Classrooms” section will still be accessible only with your username and password.   Special Edition: Safer Internet Day The 10th February is Safer Internet Day, and this special edition of Computers in Classrooms looks at some of the resources available. Some general comments From talking to young people, and from the results of the survey I've been running from the ICT in Education website (see http://terry-freedman.org.uk/db/polls/doc_page2.html), young people, even teenagers, are not as savvy as they like to think. Yes, they may be "digital natives", but they don't really have a mature understanding of how much information they give away about themselves. Neither do they have a clue about how little information is needed to build up quite a detailed picture about someone. Also, what they say they understand and do, and what they actually understand and do, are not always the same thing. For example, in the survey I carried out (see above), 26% of the students who said they would not give a stranger details like their email address, actually gave ME their email address! In addition, 8% of them met someone they had met online on their own, albeit in a public place, and 2% met an online "friend" without taking any safety precautions. The average age of these students, by the way, was 15, but a subsection of the results, in which the average age is 17, wasn't that much better, and on one measure decidedly worse. To borrow a quote from Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. If you're going to take the opportunity of Safer Internet Day to tell youngsters how it is, you need to be aware that some of them could feel quite distressed as a result. That's why I would especially recommend reading the Child Protection Information sheet from CEOP (see below) before doing anything. Range of activities The Safer Internet Day is just one day, but the point of it is to raise awareness of the issues. The focus for Tuesday is on the students, and especially the morning assembly, but there are other groups of people involved and other sorts of times for activities. Firstly, it might not be a bad idea to start with educating staff. Cyberbullying, and other digital nasties, are a matter for the Child Protection Office in particular, and all staff in general. They are decidedly not simply matters for the ICT Co-ordinator to deal with. Indeed, it's a pity that words like "cyber" or "online" or "digital" are used at all in connection with these issues. Next time you run a staff inset session, consider getting your colleagues to take the survey here: http://www.ceop.gov.uk/parentsquiz2009/index.html. It's meant for parents, but staff, and indeed governors, would benefit from taking the test. They will almost certainly find the actual answers a real eye-opener -- and a shocking eye-opener at that. Get parents on board too. A lot of schools are not too sure how to help parents in this area, and many parents feel a bit helpless. There's actually quite a bit you can do, as discussed below. I think the key thing is that, whatever you do on Safer Internet Day, don't make it just a one-off until the next Safer Internet Day in 2010. Also, don't just show a film to use up 10 minutes during a registration period. Allow time for discussion before and afterwards, and make sure you have the answer should any of your pupils reveal that they have been getting some unwanted attention online. (In case you're wondering, the answer is for the student to (a) tell someone and (b) go to the Think You Know website and click the Report Abuse button -- which is also on a number of other websites.) Checklist of suggested activities For staff Run an INSET session in which staff take the parental survey mentioned above. Discuss the results. Show one of the films listed below, either Jigsaw (primary) or Consequences (secondary). Discuss how staff might address the online safety issue as a whole school. Parents Place a link to the Think You Know news bulletin called Parent Internet Safety Update on your school website. You can find this here: http://thinkuknow.co.uk/enews/20090127.html Encourage parents to take the quiz referred to earlier. Think about running Internet Awareness Classes for parents. Have a page for parents on your school website, with some (common sense) tips. For example, youngsters should not be able to get online in the privacy of their bedrooms: internet access ought to be from a family area computer only. Also, parents can be given links to internet filtering software. The school website's parents' page could also have a link to the film Where's Klaus (see below). In fact, you could a whole lot worse than simply place a link on the school's website to the parents' section of Think You Know: http://thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/ It has advice and information on topics such as grooming and social networking, and mobiles. (That last one is especially important, because savvy young people are getting round filtering controls on computers by using their mobiles instead. In fact, social networking and other types of online chat is more and more going mobile nowadays, and parents -- and teachers -- need to be aware of that fact.) Students In my opinion you need a long-term strategy rather than just a one-off activity. Also, I don't believe that just banning the use of social networks, YouTube, blogs, webmail etc etc in school is the answer. In fact, I'd argue that because of the dangers inherent in social networking and other Web 2.0 applications, schools should take steps to educate students in their proper use. I should point out, however, that there are dissenting voices here. Check out the debate starting up on the Technology and Learning Forum: http://www.techlearning.com/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=15782. Someone took umbrage at a blog post of mine, and has responded robustly to say the least. In his comments he includes an interesting article arguing that school students should not use Facebook. One thing you might consider doing is finding out what your students actually do online. You could use my survey (already mentioned) as a starting point, or the survey Miles Berry and I compiled for our presentation at the recent BETT show. You can find details of that survey here: http://terry-freedman.org.uk/db/polls/doc_page6.html You can also see the presentation slides, with audio, here: http://www.slideshare.net/mgberry/what-are-your-kids-learning-when-youre-not-looking. As an experiment, I have embedded this slideshow here: What are your kids learning when you're not looking? View more presentations from mgberry. (tags: filteringnetworking) If you want a ready-made survey which will also benefit CEOP by providing them with more information, use the quizzes on the CEOP website instead. Types of safety The focus of "safety" always seems to be on the sexual aspects, but there are other kinds of safety which need to be addressed. I've been thinking about this topic a lot recently because I've been asked to give a talk to 17-18 year-old school students on the advantages and disadvantages of social networking, with some safety tips. (See my article about it: http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1461.php) For example, I was looking at a website recently which pays people for their articles and stories, in return for which the website publishers reserve the right to do whatever they like with the material, forever. Are the young people whose work is published there aware of the fact that they could be losing out on future income? Are they aware that, should the publishers decide to do so, they could mangle the work such that it seems to say things it was never intended to, with a possible detrimental effect on the author's reputation? It seems to me that economic safety, of which this is an example, is also important, as is the importance of guarding against identity theft. In regard to that, we should encourage youngsters to lie online: they should never give their real date of birth, because that's often a key fact used by banks etc to establish someone's identity. In fact, even the most technically adept of us sometimes make mistakes, as this article by Andy Hutt describes. Andy accidentally opened a phishing email because it looked like a link to an online Christmas card. Given that it was sent just before Christmas, the mistake is understandable. Phishers are pretty clever. The article makes for some salutary reading: http://eduhutt.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/botted/ Hopefully, that's plenty of food for thought for now. I've been looking at some of the resources available for Safer Internet Day, and here are some mini-reviews. Resources from Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/sid09/portal/ and http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk There are some good resources in general, some of which you need to be trained in order to use. Register at the site for free, and then download what resources seem relevant. (On the matter of training, I did the Ambassador training recently, and I can thoroughly recommend it. See the CEOP website for details.) • News bulletin (see above) • Parental quiz and stats (see above) • KS2 Assembly (primary) • KS3 Assembly (secondary) The Assembly resources are very good indeed. My only criticism is that when you download them from Firefox, it's not immediately obvious that they are zipped files. You will need to go to the folder to which you downloaded the file, click on it, press F2, and then add .zip to the name. You will then be able to extract the contents. The contents comprise, in each case, a file, a sheet giving information and guidance on child protection, a suggested activities sheet, and an evaluation sheet. I thought both films were excellent. In the first one, Jigsaw, film showing a young girl posting details of herself in public and leaving her front door wide open is interspersed with interviews of young children in which they were asked if they would behave like that. The fil really does drive home the point that if you wouldn't do something offline, then don't do it online! Consequences, the film aimed at older students, is frightening in two ways. Firstly, it shows how easily someone can glean information about someone online. Secondly, the person doing the gleaning is not that much older than the victim. In fact, my first reaction to a recent suggestion that young people be taken on as teaching apprentices was to ask, "Will these people have been CRB-checked?" (That's the check to see if anyone wishing to work with young people or other vulnerable groups have a criminal record that ought to preclude them from doing so.) See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7870381.stm for the article about apprenticeships. The Safer Internet Day website http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/index.htm This website contains details of what sort of activities are being undertaken in Britain and the rest of Europe on Safer Internet Day. For resources you can use, click on Library and then Audiovisual awareness material. I found the following films which may be of interest to you. In all cases I recommend watching the videos first and then discussing them with colleagues to decide whether, and how, you will use them. • Norwegian film: Stranger. This is a very short animated clip which makes its point very well. A good starting point for discussion, especially with younger children. • Dutch film about Cybersex. I've come across this before. It's quite humorous, but with a pretty sharp sting in its tail. It may be a good starting point for discussion with teenagers. • German film: Where’s Klaus? An excellent film aimed at educating parents. It is also available from the CEOP website and YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOOn2wR8bU • Polish film: You never know who you're talking to: http://mfile.akamai.com/30915/wmv/gff2.download.akamai.com/30915/Poland_clip_strangers_in_Chats.asx This is actually very similar to a film made by the CEOP and the Virtual Global Taskforce, which I think is better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&hl=en-GB&v=kBm16Hxqskc&gl=GB Final comments I hope some of this has been useful. I think the internet is a fantastic resource. Our job as educators is to help youngsters get the most out of it without compromising their safety. Why not share your ideas for helping kids be safe online? Articles published here or on the ICT in Education website remain the property of their authors. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to others, if you think they would find it helpful. 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