Blog – Latest stories

Childnet launch the 6th Childnet Film Competition in partnership with PhonepayPlus

Childnet have launched the 6th Childnet Film Competition to encourage young people to create a short film to educate their peers about staying safe online. Teaming up with the UK regulator, PhonepayPlus, this year’s competition will boast a whole new category and a new upper age limit of 18 years, meaning that even more schools and youth groups can get involved!

As Becky Nancarrow, Education Projects Officer at Childnet, said "for the last 5 years our film competition has given primary and secondary schools, as well as youth organisations, from across the UK, the challenge of creating a short film about internet safety. This year secondary schools will be able to get even more creative, as they are given the opportunity to illustrate another part of their digital lives through film.”

This introduction of a 2nd category for secondary age pupils is as a result of Childnet teaming with up with UK premium rate services regulator PhonepayPlus' PhoneBrain competition. The PhoneBrain category aims to help young people understand the costs involved in using premium rate services, like buying apps and entering text or phone competitions without getting charged more than expected.

As Peter Morton, Head of Communications at PhonepayPlus explained “the PhoneBrain competition aims to engage and educate as many young people as possible in using their phones safely and confidently without stacking up unexpectedly high bills. Last year’s competition saw entries from schools and youth groups from across the country and we are really pleased to be working in partnership with Childnet this year to reach even more people with the competition.”

Across all three categories Childnet are looking for creative, imaginative films which reflect a positive and inspiring message. The top three films in each category will be invited to a private screening at the BFI in London and the winners will be awarded film kits, including a Canon DSLR and green screen, for their schools.

Think your school or youth organisation has what it takes? Then here’s how to enter:

Choose your category and follow the competition brief:

• Primary (7 -11 year olds) – a 60 second film exploring the theme, A good online friend is someone who…
  
• Secondary (11 – 18 year olds) – a 2 minute film exploring the theme, A better internet is up to us
  
• PhoneBrain (11 – 18 year olds) – a 2 minute film exploring the theme, App Traps & Bill Shock – Do you know how much your phone is costing you?

If you would like to register a group of talented young people you know, then please send an email to film@childnet.com. The closing date for entries is Friday 12th June 2015 at 5pm

Winning team from the Primary category 2014:

“Taking part gave the children a defined goal to aim for and the ability to better understand the needs for vigilance online. In addition, they picked up skills in planning, filming and editing the final entry which are not only valuable, but things they can take forward into other projects at home and school.

Winning the competition has been such a boost for the school and the children involved…This has turned what was easily a very rewarding experience, into something much more enriching and far-reaching.”

Winning team from the Secondary category 2014:

“They enjoyed the opportunity to create something focussed and demonstrate their knowledge of the topic as well as showcasing their technical skills. As a school we have encouraged students to be very conscious of their online presence and the films created this year demonstrated the understanding that the girls have developed. As for winning, the girls had convinced themselves that third place was honourable so to win was fabulous and the big cheque was taken on a tour of the London sights. The whole school is proud of the girls and we’re already encouraging the students to think of ideas for 2015.”

A back to basics explanation of e-safety in relation to schools

Back in 2012, Ofsted added e-safety to their school inspection requirements, placing more demands on the school timetable, school budgets and school staff. These requirements extended way beyond the classroom, encompassing the “whole school community” within the schools expected scope of delivery.

But now, almost 3 years later, it’s still easy to find staff members in schools who are unclear as to what e-safety is, let alone know who is responsible for making it part of the school agenda. Is it ICT? Is it pastoral? Is it SLT? In our experience, it’s everyone!

There are many statistics regarding the use of ‘connected devices’, incidents of cyber bullying and indeed teachers falling foul of inappropriate use of social media which support the need for e-safety awareness across the school, but what is e-safety?.

Firstly, let’s tackle the term ‘e-safety’. This can also be called ‘internet safety’, ‘online safety’ or ‘web safety’. E-safety is often defined as the safe and responsible use of technology. This includes the use of the internet and also other means of communication using electronic media (eg text messages, gaming devices, email etc).

In practice, e-safety is as much about behaviour as it is electronic security. E-safety in this context is classified into three areas of risk:

• Content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material
  
• Contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users
  
• Conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm.

Quoting directly from the Ofsted inspection briefing, e-safety (in the context of an inspection) is described as the school’s ability:

• to protect and educate pupils and staff in their use of technology
  
• to have the appropriate mechanisms to intervene and support any incident where appropriate.

A good way to see how your school fairs against the Ofsted requirements it to ask yourself these 5 questions:

1. How do you ensure that all staff receive appropriate online safety training that is relevant and regularly up to date?
   
2. What mechanisms does the school have in place to support pupils and staff facing online safety issues?
   
3. How does the school educate and support parents and whole school community with online safety?
   
4. Does the school have e-safety policies and acceptable use policies in place? How does the school know that they are clear and understood and respected by all?
   
5. Describe how your school educates children and young people to build knowledge, skills and capability when it comes to online safety? How do you assess its effectiveness?

These questions, along with examples of good / outstanding practice can be found here

It is essential that all members of school staff (teaching and non-teaching) are aware of e-safety and their own responsibilities when using the vast array of technologies now available for both personal and professional use. For pupils, it is no longer acceptable to simply have a firewall in place to prevent them accessing certain sites from the school network – the vast majority have a connected device in their pocket they could use instead, making education on this topic essential. And parents must also be made aware of e-safety to ensure that good practice continues outside of school grounds.

For more information about e-safety for staff, E-safety Support members can download a guide to E-safety from your dashboard. If you are not an E-safety Support member and would like a copy of this report, join our free membership package.

The legal and ethical issues of completing online surveys

I’m not sure about you, but in these times, it seems that a day doesn’t pass by without either a pop-up occurring on a website that I happen to be browsing, asking me if I would complete a survey or an unsolicited post appearing on my Facebook newsfeed making the same request – usually, however, these are cunningly disguised as ‘clickbait’ to a potentially interesting article. Now, probably, if you are like me, you ignore these requests, but there are people out there who do complete them, otherwise why would companies spend so much money writing them and persistently sending them out as part of their endeavours to discover our habits and ‘likes’ so that they can hone their advertising campaign?

But what are the legal and ethical issues of completing these online surveys?

To companies, online surveys present a number of potential benefits:

They are a cost-effective way of collecting data,

A researcher can potentially access larger numbers of participants who are much more widely spread geographically and,

They can be used to reach groups that are more difficult to access using more traditional research methods.

To us, the humble participant however, the online survey is something that we should have a healthy wariness of.

One large area of concern when completing online surveys is personal Internet security. When a company requests that you complete a survey for them, they may also ask you to accept a ‘cookie’ from them. Unfortunately, this is not a tasty chocolate biscuit, but a snippet of code that is generated by the company’s web server and stored on a participant’s computer after they agree to accept the cookie. It then tracks the user’s browsing habits and sends this information back to the company for them to use in their targeted online advertising. This is how Facebook displays adverts and sponsored postings that miraculously all appear to be within user’s areas of interest.

Another issue with a number of online survey services is that of confidentiality. This is due to the ability to share survey accounts between numerous account holders and therefore a situation could arise whereby you complete one survey attached to an account, but not only can the author of that specific survey see your information, but anyone with access to the account (who may not necessarily be part of that particular survey project) can also see it.

When completing surveys, it is imperative that any survey provides an introductory page that allows you to specifically state your consent for the information that you offer, as well as clear and concise information about how the data will be used. If this consent is not asked for then, legally, the information cannot be used. The introductory page to a good survey should also give clear and obvious warnings if it covers potentially sensitive areas and should refer to sources of further support and information on the issues.

Two other areas that participants in surveys should be aware of, is their right to withdrawal and their right to omit certain information. You should always have the ability to exit the survey at any point but you should be aware that any responses up to that point maybe retained. If you don’t wish for this to occur then you could backtrack through the survey and erase any answers you have made. Surveys should always offer you the option of not providing a response to any question, in other words you should not feel pressured or intimidated into thinking that you have got to provide an answer to a question.

As a consequence of the popularity of online surveys, more people are participating; however, this has caused a rise in the number of people giving false or fraudulent information within surveys. For instance, giving a believable, but false name, may not necessarily cause a problem, but giving incorrect addresses can lead to severe consequences. This is due the common habit of people giving the address of their local shop, school or even the address of their neighbours as their own. If this is discovered, there is a possibility that legal action could be brought against the perpetrator. There is also one survey (although it is not be online at present) that you are legally bound to complete correctly and that is the National Census – complete this fraudulently and, if you are found out, you will be in serious trouble.

There are also non-legal reasons for not giving false information on surveys. A lot of companies use given details to send out sample products or even to take part in prize draws, so if you give a false name and address you may never benefit from these offers.

Online surveys are now part of our digital lives and despite being annoying and irritating to some people, it’s unlikely that marketing departments will stop using them in the near future and therefore, it is up to you and I - the digital public, to be savvy about what we should and shouldn’t be presented with when we are requested to complete an online survey.