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The Stonar Way 10 June 2022

The Stonar Way 10 June 2022
  • Whole School

Mrs Tilley writes about online safety and how we can guide others to use technology safely. 

As you are all fully aware, digital technologies have profoundly changed childhood and adolescence. The internet and the means to access it, along with increasing social media platforms and messaging apps, have become an integral part of the lives of young people around the world. They have transformed their education and learning, the way they make and maintain friendships, how they spend their leisure time, and their engagement with wider society. This means that an entire generation of parents are grappling with the challenge that no previous parents have had to face. Parents are trying to find a way through and, unsurprisingly, they are finding it tough.

Do these scenarios sound familiar to you? When dinner is ready you will get a faster response if you send a text message to your teen than to call upstairs. Your toddler can swipe on a smartphone and find her favourite video channel all by herself – at 06:00 in the morning! Your 10 year old is repeatedly begging for the latest, greatest smartphone because “Mum, all the other kids have them.” Your 12 year old is convinced that there is no need to study Maths, English or any other subject because he will “make it” as a YouTube star. Perhaps some of these scenarios perfectly describe your household, or perhaps they are completely off the mark, but no matter what your household looks like, the School and you as parents must work in partnership to ensure that, with support, our children thrive in the digital age. We need to take responsibility and ensure we take the time to understand the digital world, embrace the many positive digital opportunities it offers and act as digital role models for our children.

On Wednesday Jon Taylor led a number of excellent online safety workshops with pupils from Year 5 up to the Sixth Form. Jon is an online safety and social media expert, and an internationally recognised expert in the field of online safety for schools, as well as a researcher. He previously worked for the MET police as an undercover online investigator for ten years. He was a powerful and humorous speaker who read his audience superbly, tailoring each session to our pupils, who actively and articulately challenged him with numerous questions. Jon shared that he found this refreshing, enjoyed the interactive nature of the workshops and was impressed with our pupil body.

Jon focused his pupil workshops and his parent webinar on the importance of awareness, behaviour choices and having online competence when using social media, online games, being part of gaming communities and direct messaging. He gave the analogy that parents will buy a bike for their child and will teach them how to ride so that they become competent without falling off. He then asked how many parents buy a smartphone and teach their child how to use it before letting them loose with it? He stressed the importance of ensuring your child is competent to use devices rather than focusing on age; he did however share that he feels that it is typically at around 13 years and older that children will start to have the competences to use smart phones. Interestingly, as he spoke to different groups the age of a pupil first owning a smart phone grew younger. A couple of our youngest pupils revealed they were given a smartphone whilst in Year 2. This really stressed the importance of us educating even our youngest pupils. Jon also recommends sticking to the age restrictions of social media and apps, but respects that this is a parenting decision.

Jon was a big advocate for a support network for our pupils when using the internet and that they should not be on their own in this digital world. He had the following suggestions for parents, especially when children first have access:

  • Get involved and be part of your child’s closed social media groups.
  • Be familiar with the apps they are using.
  • Join in the gaming to see what your children are doing.
  • Have conversations with your children about the online world. Talk to them about this week's workshop.
  • Consider installing family sharing on iPhones and Google family link on android devices, as well as the effectiveness of tracking apps such as Life 360, which many of our pupils already have on their devices.
  • Draw up and agree ground rules around screen time together, what are they accessing and with whom and set limits for individual app usage.
  • Tiredness from excessive use can create mistakes, so balancing screen time and device usage is vital in keeping your child safe online.

Jon acknowledged that the fear of missing out often drives our children to constantly check their social media accounts but advised our community that this is not helpful for personal wellbeing. He showed a impactful video clip of Billie Eilish, aged 17, on stage at the Reading festival telling the crowd to put their phones away look her in the eye and live for the moment. This is definitely something I would like to challenge the pupils and us as parents to do more often rather than being on a device.

One area of the workshop that was particularly informative to pupils was the matter of privacy. He encouraged all pupils to have all privacy settings switched on and to regularly check that all their privacy settings are still on their accounts and groups because they can reset to default. Many did not realise that when they take a selfie and post online (to the cloud) it is no longer completely private and owned by just themselves. Jon talked about pupils' “digital tattoo” and “digital branding” and reinforced the messages for pupils to stop and think before posting and to ask themselves and parents if this is “appropriate to post”.

 

 

While we can all benefit from having GPS turned on when navigating outside of the home and for tracking apps such as Life 360, Jon encouraged that GPS is turned off at home to reduce the risk of identification and to protect privacy.

When considering digital branding, Jon encouraged positive blogging (WordPress), as well as using LinkedIn and Twitter, to promote a positive profile. In addition, he recommended following universities and companies you want to work for from a young age. These approaches all help positively with cyber vetting. Fifty percent of American universities are using cyber vetting for the initial selection processes, the percentage is lower but unknown in the UK at the present time but thought to be somewhere between 2-18%. Some companies are using cyber vetting for the initial recruitment process too.

Our older pupils were fairly knowledgeable on viruses and how they are transmitted, but less on the compromise of webcams, for example via spyware, so it is important to turn off your webcams when you are not using them. We heard Jon state that you are twenty eight more times likely to get a virus if you try streaming films illegally e.g. not through Netflix, Amazon and Disney+.

Jon covered much more than I can cover here to make pupils and parents informed of the risks of the online world, and how to be equipped with the skills to successfully navigate the digital world. Some of his lasting words to the pupils were to “Be kind and show respect, treat people online how you want to be treated, step out of closed groups and tell if you see behaviour that does not meet these values.”

We will be sending a link to the recording of this week’s Parent Online Safety Webinar with Jon Taylor, so that if you were unable to attend the webinar you can now watch it at your leisure. For further information on online safety please do visit Jon Taylor’s website: https://onlinesafety4schools.co.uk/.

I am looking to expand the series of webinars we offer our parents for the next academic year, so that we can work in partnership to educate and support our children. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me with suggestions of any areas you would like us to cover and if you have any speaker recommendations. In addition, please do let me know if there are preferences to days of the week and times of webinars that you think will work; I really want to ensure that I am opening these webinars up to as many parents as possible within our school community.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Tina Tilley
Deputy Head (Pastoral)