Safer Internet Day – or indeed any online safety focus is an ideal time for a school to review their policies and curriculum when it comes to e-safety. On this site I have posted my scheme of work for e-safety (under review) – but there are many ideas and resources which can support a focus on e-safety in the school!
Here's what I've learnt from organising Safer Internet Activites:
– Use the children! Get the school council involved, or indeed Digital Leaders if you have them. The children can create a presentation and try out some of the activities ready to share with the rest of the school. There are many great activities – and the Think U Know website is a great place to start.
– Create time to share the e-safety policy, and update if necessary – it's worth looking at Ofsted's latest requirements as well. This information needs to be on your school website, and a staff need to be regularly trained.
– Take a look at your curriculum. Linking with the new computing curriculum means that children should be thinking more about digital literacy anyway. Ideally these skills and e-safety awareness should be revisited each term.
– Key Stage 1 can often be harder to engage, so keep the message simple. The Digi Duck story can be used for younger age groups.
– Take the chance to engage parents, and share their questions on the school website. Not only sharing the school curriculum, but also the help that is out there for parents. There are some great discussion questions here on saferinternet.org
– Give staff an activity – or a bank of activities – it can be as simple as leaflets and posters or can be using scratch to create a link game. 2Simple, Espresso and Education City all have their own resources and ideas too.
– Use the opportunity to teach vocabulary and engage staff e.g. Asking children to design their own avatar before a discussion around what information they give out online. There is more about this in my scheme of work here.
– Don't make it only a 'once a year' focus – use literacy units, citizenship focus lessons and the School Council to keep it on people's minds.
There is also plenty of help and advice to be found out there – on twitter I can recommend @esafetyadviser