Blog – Latest stories tagged 'e-safety'

During last week’s Bett Show, we took the opportunity to take a look at the education trends that were emerging from an e-safety perspective.

Unsurprisingly, by far the biggest trend is that of using portable devices and Apps to support education and learning. There were over 500 online resources on show along with hundreds of devices including BYOD, tablets, touch-screens, webcams and a host of Apps too – the list goes on.

With all this access to technology and the Internet, it’s easy to get swept along with the shiny new gadgets and flash Apps to help engage students in and out of the classroom – anything that supports this should of course be encouraged.

But with all this change in the way we teach and learn it’s vital to remember that e-safety should come as part and parcel of any new technology we choose to use with students. That’s not necessarily to say that new devices should prohibit certain websites for example, but that we should be aware of any potential risks we place in front of students. Does a new App allow users to engage with each-other? If so, do we know who the other users are? Can the activity be monitored? And so on.

We should always know the pros and cons and make students conscious of them too before integrating new technology into the classroom. That said, there were some great examples on show that combine new technology with good e-safety practice.

If you have encountered good or bad examples of devices or Apps that you would like to share with fellow teachers, please let us know by using the comment form below.

In September 2012, Ofsted issued the first briefing to its inspectors instructing them on how they should inspect e-safety in the schools they attend. The inspection authority’s ‘Inspecting e-safety in schools’ document has been updated regularly, with the last amendment being published at the start of this year.

The briefing has caused a fair degree of confusion within schools, with regard to interpreting its stipulations. What e-safety requirements school leadership should have in place with regard to their staff and students has caused the most uncertainty.

The document highlights a number of key features of good and outstanding practice, which cover a number of areas. Within this and subsequent blogs, we will look at the individual areas of the briefing and suggest how schools may deliver particular aspects successfully, in the eyes of Ofsted (or indeed, other inspection authorities) and to the benefit of schools.

Key Features of Good and Outstanding Practice - Whole school consistent approach

1. All teaching and non-teaching staff should have good recognition and awareness of e-safety issues.

This can be demonstrated by:

- This gives helpful context when discussing e-safety in training sessions for staff as well as assisting students to understand during PSHE or ICT lessons focusing on e-safety.
- Allows students and staff to keep up-to-date with new e-safety issues.
- It also allows students and staff to privately browse the articles to improve recognition and awareness or help with projects relating to e-safety.
- A repository can also be helpful when compiling an e-safety policy.
- Can be used in school newsletters/websites to keep parents/guardians aware of modern e-safety issues to ensure that they can keep their children safe at home.

2. The senior management of schools have made e-safety a priority across all areas of the school.

This can be demonstrated by:

3. Training in e-safety has been given a high priority in order to increase both expertise and internal knowledge capacity.

This could be demonstrated by:

4. They value the contribution that students, their parents and the wider community can make and that this is integrated into the whole school e-safety strategy.

This could be demonstrated by:

- Nominated, trained individual members of staff and peer-monitors that parents or students could approach personally in the event of an e-safety issue.
- A specific email address or telephone contact that parents use to alert the school of potential issues or to request advice on e-safety.
- Regular in-school events to allow dialogue to take place between parents and teaching staff where advice and information could be offered regarding e-safety and safe-guarding issues.
- Promoting access to parents to the school’s repository of articles and resources in order to raise awareness and knowledge of e-safety issues at home.

These are just some suggestions on how you may develop your e-safety provision. If you would like to share your thoughts on implementing e-safety policy and practice in your school, we would love to hear from you. Please use the comments form below.

Further ideas on how to demonstrate key features of good and outstanding practice will be brought to you in future articles.

As the latest sales figures for the Christmas shopping frenzy begin being released, it’s no surprise that technological gadgets are leading the charge.

It is reported that Microsoft sold 364,000 Xbox Ones while Sony sold 530,000 PS4s in the UK in the lead up to Christmas. The sale of digital games (which includes mobile gaming, PC and console downloads) is said to have grown by 16.4% taking it to a value of £1.18 billion and video games have also grown in the UK by 6.6% overall in 2013.

However, it is the ‘tablet revolution’ which makes the most striking impact on our engagement with the online world. Post Christmas sales figures estimate that 12-13 million units were sold in the UK which means that now over half of the UK population now owns or has access to a tablet. This huge leap has been fuelled by the emergence of retailer branded tablets (from the likes of Argos and Tesco) which are available at a much cheaper price than the market leading iPad – making tablets more financially accessible to more people.

The BBC recently reported that over the Christmas period, viewing of their iPlayer service saw mobile devices overtake computers for the first time - with access to the internet now so readily available it’s easy to understand why.

So where does e-safety come into all of this?

I spoke to colleagues, family and friends in the lead up to Christmas and found that the youngest request for a tablet came from 7 year olds – and some of them were getting their wish. Of course iPhones, laptops and consoles were also popular across all ages too.

So Christmas morning comes and the excited child (or indeed adult!) opens up the tiny box sitting under the tree to reveal the shiny new tablet and they are away - with full access to the internet. But how many of the parents set up filters, or activated parental controls before they wrapped the gift? I suspect far fewer than were prepared to admit.

It is this freedom to roam the internet, warts-n-all, that adds weight to the argument for education over prohibition when it comes to e-safety. It’s all very well having filters on school systems and parental controls on PCs at home, but with so many more children now having the world at their fingertips they not only have the ability to access the wealth of information available online but also can potentially become susceptible to the dangers that the environment offers too.