What has e-Safety got to do with My Little Pony?

e-Safety continually challenges me; the Internet continually fascinates me.

It is a world where everything and anything goes from the extraordinary to the downright weird, and it is one of the fundamental principles of e-safety: don’t believe everything you read; question everything.

I’m a firm believer in freedom of speech and the right to express oneself, but I also believe there are boundaries particularly when it comes to children.  Quite frankly I don’t want my children exposed to some of the dross ...

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e-Safety – Using videos for collaborative discussion

e-Safety quite often concentrates on risks and behaviours, but if you really want to know about e-safety it is a good idea to step out of the box now and again and take a more holistic view of technology and the Internet.

Have a search on various social networking sites and see how students are finding e-safety lessons incredibly boring; using the same old videos and resources over and over again (don’t do this, you can’t do that) is creating a ...

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e-Safety and your Data – Password or Encryption?

The Ofsted e-Safety Inspection Framework makes reference to data on PC’s, laptops etc. being encrypted.  This ties in with the Data Protection requirement to keep personal data safe and secure.  Not only is the loss of personal data a potential safeguarding issue, the ICO is free to punish (financially) for data breaches.

What is personal data?  If you want to read the ICO’s horrendously complicated definition you can see it Continue Reading →

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e-Safety and Flapjacks

What has e-safety got to do with flapjacks?  Not a lot really, it’s an analogy.

According to news reports today a school is banning triangular flapjacks after one was thrown in the face of a student causing injury; instead the only flapjacks allowed are square ones.  But with media reporting you sometimes get only one side of the story, so I’m not going to disrespect the school by naming it in this blog but it does ...

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e-Safety and Risk Assessment (Updated 12 Apr 13)

e-Safety risk assessment is an important part of school governance.
Schools risk assess all the time; sometimes this is a formally documented process, sometimes it is assessment through experience.
The following is taken from my latest e-safety newsletter which is written specifically for schools.  You can subscribe for free HERE.

If you think about it, you are already risk assessing constantly: when you get into your car to go to work you take into account the weather, ...

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Parents e-Safety Survey Template

Parental engagement is an important part of whole-school and community e-safety. A fundamental part of this are the parents themselves.But if you don’t know what the parents do/don’t know, and you don’t know how children are using digital devices and the Internet at home you won’t know what you need to know. This is also a great way to prove to Ofsted that you are engaging with parents, as long as you can ...
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Writing your esafety policy – ten top tips

The e-Safety Policy is vitally important in school for a number of reasons, including:

  • To ensure there is a clear and consistent approach responding to incidents.
  • To ensure that every person responsible for the children is fully aware of his/her responsibilities.
  • To set boundaries of use (goalposts) of any school owned IT equipment, or personal IT equipment used in the school.

The following is a short “10 top tips” for creating your e-safety policy in school.  There are many more, but these are some ...

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e-Safety : it’s so boring!

What a strange thing to say; but it isn’t me saying it, it is the very people we are trying to help stay safe.

A quick scan through some of the more popular social media sites and you won’t have any difficulty finding posts from children and young people about an e-safety lesson they’ve had; from the downright derogatory to the “I’m never going on Facebook again”.

This is concerning; if we ...

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A pragmatic view of internet filtering from the perspective of school and LA

There was a great article from TES today (31st Aug 2012) regarding internet filtering in scottish schools.  The article quotes “…anger and frustration on the part of teachers – and a warning that by denying young people access to the kind of ICT to which they have easy access at home, schools are limiting the research skills and capacity of their pupils” – and I happen to agree.

This was also ...

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Dummies Guide to Internet Filtering (for schools)

Online safety incorporates many elements that I have blogged about in the past; technology is one of the elements which make up a toolkit to safeguard the child and to reduce the liability to the school.

I have a number of years experience as a Service Manager at a local authority specifically in relation to schools, and internet content filtering is one of those subjects which is always at the ...

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