I attended a conference today run by Stockport Local Authority entitled "Children and the Net". I was expecting lots of guidance and direction on what schools should be telling children. Instead the audience was treated to an in depth study on the law and how it related to child abuse, plus lots of case discussion of very distressing incidents - some of which had nothing at all to do with the Internet. While I don't for a minute decry the necessity to raise awareness of the issue of internet predators, I wonder whether the audience had rather gone beyond the need to highlight the problem and were in fact looking for guidance on issues surrounding cyberbullying on which precious little was imparted.
It seems to me that the extensive filtering of the net by local authorities that has gone on in schools has led to the issue of Internet safety being left somewhat on the backburner as schools have backed off the responsibility to the LA. In many cases, schools haven't delivered a consistent message on e-safety simply due to lack of knowledge and it's about time that the mettle was grasped and the issue no longer ignored.
Fortunately there are some great resources on the web for schools to use:
Thinkuknow is an excellent resource covering all the major danger areas, and for KS2 children it contains a cybercafe with lots of interactive things to do. It might be a little text intensive for less able readers and will require a lot of direction and discussion in class. It's an essential site to use.
BBC Chatguide is another super website which has the potential to be a real eye-opener to those of us who don't use chatrooms much. PAW (parents are watching) and POS (parents over shoulder) are two acronyms that I certainly shan't forget. There is also an excellent video that can be downloaded and watched, as well as some teacher resources.
There are plenty of other sites around, many of which can be found by looking at the Internet Watch Foundation's website or via Ceop.
Two essential messages remain: one is to encourage children to report abuse and cyberbullying: many site are now starting to use the "report abuse button"
with the "Virtual Global Taskforce" eye logo. This is usually displayed as a red rectangular button as seen here, but is also displayed as a logo only on some sites e.g. Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN).
The second message is to hammer in the acronym ALS (age location sex) until they fully understand the implications of giving out personal data on the net (in this case, location includes email address, phone numbers etc). There is some really good material on Thinkuknow to support this message.
Try showing your class the Virtual Global Taskforce logo and ask them if they know what that means when they see it on the web? It should be as well known to them as Childline is.
Other useful sites include:
http://www.need2know.co.uk/beatbullying/
http://www.childnet-int.org/jenny/ (excellent DVD available to order)
http://www.barnardos.org.uk/reducingtherisk (some excellent resources to order)
And finally, this link is to a video, and although a little bit glib and American, it does make you think about how forthcoming you are online: http://www.netsmartz.org/stories/teresa.htm
