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Online Safety
In this digital age, we all rely on and benefit from the use of technology. We realise how challenging it can be for parents and carers to ensure that their child remains safe, particularly when using the internet. We also appreciate that you will want to have measures in place to ensure that your child does not view inappropriate material from their mobile device or from a device you have at home. Please refer to our Safeguarding Policies to see what we have in place to protect your child in School.
National Online Safety
Where we hold a responsibility in educating our children within Online Safety, we have shown our commitment to protecting our pupils online by working with National Online Safety, which we use to educate our children and also to provide resources for all parents and carers.
These resources include explanation videos, monthly newsletters and weekly guides covering a huge range of topics: all of which can be viewed within your created space.
We urge all parents and carers to sign up to this free to use resource through our school portal. To create your account, please click here.
You can access National Online Safety online via any device - including the free National Online Safety App.
Use the links below to download this.
iOS
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/national-online-safety/id1530342372
Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nationaleducationgroup.nos
On occasions, as a school, we may share particular information that will appear in your ‘Watchlist’, a space for all material shared to you by us. This section however can only be accessed through a web browser and not currently through the app.
Further information centred around online safety:
https://ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/
https://nationalonlinesafety.com
https://www.getsafeonline.org/
https://parentzone.org.uk/home
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/online-abuse/
Parental Controls & Safer Usage
We all love things more when it involves real people and the same is true of technology. The ever-growing world of social media enables us to connect across great distances in many different ways. As per checking your children are engaging with high quality content, check any social elements to the apps they are using and that they are appropriate for their age. By actioning these safeguards and ensuring that they are in place, we can restrict the opportunities for them to be contacted by unknown people. For young users we must take on the responsibilities as parents, carers and teachers to talk to our children about the risks of befriending people online that they do not know and make sure they understand what to do if they are being contacted by strangers or being asked for personal information.
With countless research conducted over time around a child’s use of technology, it is clear that (despite mixed results) in the correct environment, and intermixed with a range of other activities such as reading and exercise, it can be hugely beneficial. Physical activity, reading, and human interaction will always play a very important part in child development, and personal computing should not replace or be detrimental to these experiences, but in the right environment it can bring new educational experiences to young children, and help them develop their skills and broaden their horizons:
Hand-eye coordination - through the use of gaming, we can increase hand-eye coordination and by following instructions or interacting with objects we can create outputs or given responses to a specific action/input.
Access to a wealth of information - children learn what is available to them. Traditionally parents, friends, school, and the wider community would have been the only gateways to learning. Now the internet gives them a vast library of material to allow them to discover new things.
Language skills - with each search or each page children develop their skills in reading and evaluating the results that are presented. Over time their language will improve and they will become faster and more adept at finding the information they want.
Problem solving - interactive websites and games help children learn to solve problems as they work their way through the challenges presented to get to the next level.
Creative output - by using devices as a creative output as opposed to being a passive user will build skills in digital literacy, allowing them to become more familiar with functionality and app use. As we become more familiar with these then possibilities can be stretched to incorporate animation and the use of ‘App Smashing’, where more than one app/platform is used to create content.
