Blog – Latest stories tagged 'internet_matters'

This year, Anti-Bullying Week (17th-21st November) is calling on the school community to take action to stop the bullying of all children and young people. With more and more children owning mobile devices and spending longer online and on social media, cyberbullying is becoming one of the most common forms of bullying and the source of increasing distress to children and concern to their parents and school leaders.

That’s why Internet Matters is helping to raise awareness of the important issues of online respect and cyberbullying by launching an exciting competition with the Anti-Bullying Alliance. The competition asks schools to create their own song, rap or poem on the subject of being respectful to others online to generate important discussions of this issue amongst students, teachers and parents, both inside and outside the classroom. The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges including singer and Internet Matters ambassador, Sophie Ellis-Bextor:

“I’m really excited to be part of a competition that raises awareness of such an important and growing issue for schoolchildren today. I’m looking forward to hearing about how children themselves feel about cyberbullying and their thoughts on tackling it together – I’m sure there will be some inspirational entries.”

There are separate competitions for Primary and Secondary schools. The winning Primary school will receive a visit and inspirational assembly from Olympic medallist Christine Ohuruogu MBE, and the winning Secondary school group will enjoy a special daytrip to Sky’s TV studios in West London where they’ll make their own film.

To support schools participation in the competition, there’s also a lesson plan for teachers on how to help children understand the issues and lead into the creation of their competition entry. This includes notes on how the activity supports the wider curriculum.

The competition is open until 28th November 2014 with the lesson plan and full details about how to enter on the Internet Matters website. Start getting creative!

From educating children about e-safety in the classroom to helping parents teach online safety to their children when they’re at home, the role teachers play in keeping children safe online is ever expanding. 70% of parents look to their child’s school for advice about internet safety.

The internet is a wonderful development both for children and teachers. Long gone are the days when children had to wade through an encyclopedia to learn about the wider world around them. Nowadays, the answer to any question they have is merely a click away: on the worldwide web. Enquiring young minds are now endlessly able to expand their knowledge: learning and socialising, adapting to different technologies and engaging with the world around them in new and exciting ways. However, that same curiosity that makes teaching so fun and rewarding also has its drawbacks when it comes to keeping children safe online.

Dangers that children may face in the ‘real world’ such as being bullied, watching something that’s inappropriate for their age, or inadvertently revealing personal information about themselves to predatory adults are issues that they also need to be aware of in their online worlds.

Whilst schools have always taken these issues extremely seriously, the addition of e-safety to the new National Curriculum for primary schools acknowledges something teachers have known for a long time: parents are looking to teachers to help educate their children about e-safety. With only half of parents feeling equipped to teach their children about e-safety at home, the challenge for teachers is not simply finding the best resources to teach about e-safety in an age appropriate way, but also to communicate that message in ways that will help parents to continue teaching their children about e-safety when they’re at home.

As an online portal for parents about how to keep their child safe online, InternetMatters.org already offers a wide range of resources and e-safety advice for parents. To coincide with the new National Curriculum, a recently launched ‘Schools’ section now offers resources for teachers too.

E-safety Support members can also access a selection of resources the help parental engagement, including an online training module specifically for parents. To find out more, visit our online training page.

If you have any examples of parental engagement issues or successes in your school, please let us know using the comments section below.