Happy new year, I hope you had a wonderful, relaxing break with your family.
My plan over Xmas was to completely switch off. This didn’t happen, I ended up working every day apart from Xmas day and new year’s day. But it was my own fault, I made the foolish error of asking Google Gemini to take a really critical look at my website in terms of design, clarity, value of information, search engine optimisation and much more. And wow it was critical but in a really good way, so I asked Gemini if it could do better and it said yes. It came back with a great visual design concept and not only that gave me extremely accurate, step-by-step instructions to implement all the changes. Cue many days of making changes but I’m really pleased with the end result.
As you can imagine, not too many online safety updates over the festive period but I have put a couple of things that may be of interest. The first update is some information on a couple of things I’m working on early 2026.
New Resources I’m Working On
Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on some new resources. I can’t give an exact timescale as it tends to be evening/weekend work as I’m out travelling to schools a lot, but to give you a heads up:
- Free lessons for KS1 children – these will be a small series of AI generated storyline videos looking at the key messages for younger children (e.g. speak to a trusted adult). I looked at doing something similar last year but the character consistency wasn’t very good, that’s changed now and I’m quite happy with the results.
- Cyber security training video for staff – I have been asked about this a few times so I’m going to get to work on it. I predict it will be a 1-hour video for all school staff to watch going through key principles of cyber security from a school context. I will be making this free for all Online Safety Pro members, for non-members I will have to charge a small fee.
- Social media handout for parents – this will be free for all schools to send out to their parents. Specifically the handout will concentrate on the more popular apps used by children and young people, with explanations of what parental features are available and links to good resources to implement those features.
All of these will be announced via this blog and my weekly newsletter once they’re available.
New Child Protection Authority
You may have already seen this, but if not it looks like the Department for Education in England are creating a new Child Protection Authority. Announced mid-December they state that reforms to protect children from abuse will be significantly strengthened through the CPA who will be tasked with identifying emerging threats and driving accountability across the system.
This is an interesting development and, for DSL’s in particular, worth keeping an eye on.
For Parents – Family Gaming Database
When it comes to app and games reviews one of the resources I consistently share during parents talks is Common Sense Media who have thousands of unbiased and up-to-date reviews which can be really helpful for parents over and above age ratings. But when it comes to games specifically there’s an equally great site which is often overlooked called The Family Gaming Database. This is a fantastic resource with a plethora of information for families and currently 3,485 video games and 197 board games already reviewed.
