Blog – Latest stories tagged ''

As part of our partnership with Fantastict, a national provider of educational consulting and training services, Joe Basketts, Education Director at Fantastict, shares his thoughts on e-safety strategy.

The new briefing paper from Ofsted (released September 2013), is much more detailed and comprehensive than previous, making specific reference to an e-safety curriculum, how parents are engaged, training for staff and how the school website can contribute to informing parents and keeping them up to date. Reference is also made to schools that have obtained the E-Safety Mark or other recognised standard.

The Ofsted briefing paper lists indicators of inadequate practice as:

Understanding responsibilities with regard to e-safety is the first step towards achieving Good or Outstanding practice. However, the critical success factors lie in having the knowledge and skills to translate this understanding into workable strategies and processes within the school environment.

There is a wealth of support available to assist schools in raising e-safety standards in line with the new guidance, an excellent example of this being E-Safety Support. Given the breadth of materials and sources available, it can sometimes be difficult to navigate the choices and identify which are most relevant to specific needs or will help address the most pressing issues.

At the same time, some learning experiences are much more effective when supported by directed or face-to-face training. For example, online resources are excellent for providing insight into a topic, but cannot replace valuable peer-to-peer engagement which can only truly be realised through group workshops.

In the same way as some content is better delivered in a workshop environment, when it comes to e-safety and indeed wider ICT and school strategies, external benchmarking will also provide great insight and a fresh perspective. For example, 360 Safe is a leading audit tool which can give a complete picture of a school’s current e-safety policy and practice. Working with an approved 360 Safe consultant, the school can then prepare a development plan which ensures the very best practice according to Ofsted guidelines.

As with any aspect of school operations, understanding where you are as compared to where you need and want to be, is an essential part of strategy development – and a process where an external viewpoint and objectivity can help save a lot of valuable time and add significant value.

Computers are now common place in schools. However, despite the perception that today's young people are tech wizards, it's possible that their parents actually had a better comprehension of what computing is.

The BBC model B computer entered schools in the early 1980's. In addition to the large range of application software that developed over the years, one of the main strengths of the machine was that it offered a simple introduction to programming.
Contemporaneous 'home computers' developed by Sinclair, Commodore and their ilk similarly fuelled the appetite for computing in the young such that computing activity was often times split between playing games and writing programs of their own.

It is no coincidence that the UK games and software industry grew so rapidly at the end of this decade, and it was the years immediately after this generation graduated college that the Web grew so big, so quickly.

As computers became more mundane and every office desk sprouted a PC, the education around computing started to concentrate not on computing but on the use of computers. This is only to be expected, preparing young people for working life necessitates developing the skills they will need in employment and so writing basic programs gave way to using word processors, spreadsheets, design packages and the dreaded presentation.

Consequently, although today's school children are more familiar with computers and computer based devices, it could be argued that they understand less about their inner workings, capabilities and implications.
A computer is a tool. However, unlike a tenon saw for example, which has evolved with the input of craftspeople over hundreds of years to be a precision instrument with a specific optimum method of use, the computer is a highly flexible device ripe for use in any number of innovative new ways.
The concern is that by concentrating education on current usage, the potential for invention is lost.

A recent Government Report has highlighted this and has suggested a refocusing of ICT towards a greater degree of development and creation.

Of course, it's not just about computers any more. The Web evolved beyond an electronic publishing platform many years ago and is now better characterised as a computing platform, complete with distributed processing and data storage features and functions.
The notion of computing is now so closely tied with the connectivity between computers that in years to come it is likely that the invention of the PC and the subsequence connectivity of the Web will be seen as one and the same revolution.

From an e-safety point of view, this is all very important. Time and again we see preventable issues with communication technology being rooted in lack of understanding or comprehension as to the repercussions of our online actions. By focusing computing education on computing practice rather than scope and capability we risk not correctly equipping our young people to critically assess their actions now and in the future.

It is no small task. We are faced with training our children for a future involving societal practice and jobs that don't yet exist, which will utilise technology yet to be invented. The best way to do this is as with other subject areas, to provide a solid foundation of first principles which can be applied to new problems as they arise.

We are delighted to announce that E-safety Support has now partnered with e-safe education, providers of a unique forensic monitoring service of online and offline devices.

The service offered by e-safe education is a fitting addition to the lessons, policies and guidance offered here at E-safety Support as the e-safe System helps in the education of e-safety issues which in turn will allow schools to move away from a locked down, restricted ICT system.

In the simplest of terms, the e-safe service monitors devices for inappropriate material and behaviour, on-line and off-line. All incidents are reviewed by a specialist team of forensic experts and child protection specialists who escalate actual and potential risks requiring intervention to school staff. The Service is simple for schools to deploy but is backed up by some very sophisticated technology.

To enable schools to evaluate the e-safe service and provide a measure of current e-safety levels and possible areas of vulnerability across the organisation, e-safe offers a free of charge confidential field trial of its unique e-safe Service. The trial requires no ICT Support team involvement beyond the granting of appropriate permission for the work; access to the IT environment; and communication with the school leadership concerned. The duration of the field trial is typically 4-6 weeks during which the school experiences the full e-safe service with all incidents reviewed by child protection and forensic experts; those requiring intervention are escalated against a pre-agreed protocol to nominated school safeguarding staff.

Download the e-safe data sheet here