Blog – Latest stories tagged ''

The Breck Foundation are proud to announce their new challenge - No Tech 4 Breck Day

The Breck Foundaton have launched this awareness fundraiser to help promote safe and moderate use of technology by young and old people alike.

In today’s world, so much of what we do online not only offers opportunities and helps us to be efficient and communicate more readily, but overuse can also cause loss of quality free time, relaxation, sound sleep and used without education and caution can become a danger.

In their efforts to raise awareness of the very real dangers our young people face online every day from online bullies and predators, the Breck Foundation hope to see family and friends together have a day off technology between 9th February (Safer Internet Day) and 17th March, which would have been Breck’s 17th birthday.

They are encouraging everyone to find ways to enjoy each other without the gadgets in our hands. Make plans the day before to meet up, go for a walk, cook a meal or bake a cake together or just play board games or playing cards. Spend time ‘being’ and just being together.

The Breck Foundation was formed to share awareness of the dangers of online predators who may bully, groom or sexually exploit our children online through lies, manipulation and control. The predator can say anything and be anyone behind a screen which can lead to a false sense of security. A predator will spend months or years befriending young people online until they are able to convince a child to do something they wouldn’t normally do.

This can happen to boy and girls, young and old, rich or poor, happy or sad, and anywhere in between. A predator will stop at nothing to get to the child they want. The Breck Foundation are striving to bring about awareness so that everyone from teachers, police, social workers, health professionals, parents and children are educated and empowered to make the right choices to stay safer online.

The Breck Foundation is raising awareness for playing safe whilst using the internet. Breck Bednar was a 14 year old boy, from Caterham, Surrey, who loved technology and on-line gaming. He was groomed via the internet and sadly murdered on February 17th 2014 by someone he met on-line. This foundation has been set up in his memory to help other young people to enjoy playing on-line but to be aware of some simple rules to stay safe. Remembering that the friends you make on-line are not like your real friends. “Play Virtual/Live Real”.​

If you would like to be involved in No Tech 4 Breck day, you can download a sponsor form here

With the explosion of technology and accessibility the importance of digital safety is clear for all… however what are the skills kids need to prepare them for the exciting world ahead and when should we start introducing them?

Traditional online safety has focused on high schools, however as parents of even nursery age children will say (myself included) their kids can be proficient in using iPads. That’s why we believe in giving kids the skills before they engage with the technology is a far more effective way of delivering real sustainable change and impact.

The key to engaging children in online safety is to trust them.

So what are three essential digital safety skills children need to develop to prepare them for life?

There’s a long list of smaller practical elements including copyright and plagiarism, however my headline skills would be:
1. Assessing risk - It’s important kids can identify what risk factors are and how to respond to each, irrespective of the platform or device
2. Know what to disclose - There are plenty of examples when it’s okay to share certain information and keep others back
3. Develop digital self awareness - From digital footprints, to use of capitals and profile photos, an appreciation of your digital persona is essential for understanding how the world interprets you and your actions. As adults we have grown up with social networks and the internet, however we expect children to be fully competent in these areas, without giving them the opportunity to experience them in a safe way.

The power of peer mentoring
Teams of eCadets in primary schools across the UK have an inspiring impact in embedding key online safety learning because they lead on the subject across their whole school community.

They do this through being a focal point for other pupils to chat with about all aspects of online life, as well as delivering class inputs on a wide range of curriculum-linked areas.

So should children just experience online safety through IT classes? No there's great examples of coordinators in arts and craft empowering the children to make their own robots to illustrate computers we use. In early years the learning can come through colouring competitions to learn what computers are through to digital footprints. Pupils can even create audio clips to explain what a digital footprint is - here is one created by a Mini eCadet.

As digital safety grows and evolves it’s important schools have three pieces to the jigsaw in place to ensure they are getting the maximum impact – training for teachers, technical resilience (filters) and empowering the pupils. Together these three components provide a safe nurturing environment to help the future generations of digital pioneers get the most from the learning opportunities to prepare them for life.

We would like to thank our new partner and guest blogger, Henry Platten from eCadets, for his thoughts on this topic. To find out more about Henry and eCadets, click here.

Latest report from BBC Newsround reports 3/4 of children aged 10-12 have a social media profile

Put simply 75% of children are breaking legal terms and conditions, a shockingly high number. As we know once the 50% mark is reached it is very difficult for parents not to bow to peer pressure as they do not want their children to miss out or be labelled as “uncool”. The problem is self perpetuating resulting in such high levels of young children using age inappropriate apps. Why is it that in the online world such terms and conditions are just blithely ignored?

The online and offline world seem to operate with very different sets of instructions. A recent straw poll saw 100% of year 5 and 6 children say they had watched or played a game with a rating of 18. When posed the same question with regards to films only 3 hands went up. Despite all the good work that goes on with organisations such as NSPCC, PEGI, SwGfL to name but a few the message is clearly not getting through to parents or children. How do educational professionals deal with this, as the saying goes “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. E-safety seminars within schools are notorious for low attendance, with parents either deliberately or naively turning a blind eye.

In the Ofcom report on Children’s media use parents cited the main reason they did not, for example use safe search, was because they trusted their children. Trust is not enough, children must be protected. There is a difference between “trust” and “protection”. We need to educate parents that even if you “trust” your child you still need to protect them. Children wear cycling helmets – this is not because we don’t “trust” them to fall off their bikes – it is because we want to protect them.

For the first time, children are now spending more time on the Internet than watching TV and are accessing content unsupervised at an increasingly younger age, so rather than turning a blind eye, parents should be actively discussing Internet use with their children. If parents are familiar with the online playground their children are in, they will at least have some notion of the potential risks. And once they do know where their children are hanging out, they then have the opportunity to suggest safer alternatives such as ChatFOSS. Afterall, we don’t want to prevent young people from learning how to use social media properly as it is integral to modern life. By showing them safer alternatives which teach them the principles without the risks, it’s like teaching them to ride a bike with stabilisers.

Happily, the majority of underage usage of apps such as Instagram, twitter and facebook is entirely innocent, however that does not mean such usage does not bring with it risks. The reported increase in mental health issues that is being attributed to social media seems to have no impact on parental decisions. Can the recent Newsround report stating that 37% of children who use social media underage are friends with someone they have never met encourage parents to be more involved in e-safety? I hope so.

We would like to thank our latest guest blogger, Alicia Coad, for her thoughts on this topic. To find out more about Alicia and ChatFOSS, click here.