From Learning Enrichment Co-Ordinator Primary
e-Safety
Last week, as part of e-Safety Week, the Year 3 classes took part in class and online activities to learn more about Cyber Safety and the best ways they can keep themselves safe online. Just like any activity that children take part in, they need to learn about the safe way to participate and the unsafe ways. Think about learning to cross a road, ride a bike or as they get older, drive a car. The children were engaged in the virtual classroom lessons and had heaps of great questions, both online and when the lessons were finished.
I have been working as an educator using ICT for teaching and learning for a long time. Interactive Mathematics and Literacy sites, Robotics, Coding, Games based learning, Minecraft education and now 3D Printing have been familiar sites in my classroom for well over ten years. In this time, the way children and adults access and use the internet has changed but the key messages the students were learning in e-Safety Week are the same messages from when I started teaching with ICT technologies.
First and foremost, students learn that they should not share any personal details online, even when talking to trusted friends and family. There is always the risk that another person can come across this information.
They learn that they should only communicate online with people that they know in real life.
They learn that everything they place online has a digital footprint so they should only say and post things online that they would say in real life.
Also, they learn that the most important thing to stay safe online is to have a trusted adult, like their parents, that they can talk with and share what they are doing online and to tell if they have any interactions online that make them uncomfortable.
There are some great resources available from the e-Safety Commissioner for parents, teachers and students to access. These are readily available and easy to find by following this link.
I find one of their best resources is the e-Safety Guide. This is a guide to many of the most popular gaming and social media sites that children use. It explains the best way to use each site when staying online, including setting in app restrictions and recommended ages for use. If you are looking for a place to start to talk with your children about being safe online, I find this a great place to start.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-issues/esafety-guide
