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 provide a useful analogy for me to use.
Was the flapjack at fault? Or was it the person that threw the flapjack?
To some reading this blog it may seem like I’m going over old rope but it serves as a useful reminder; when I’m out and about I still regularly hear the same old sentence, “e-Safety? Our technician deals with that stuff”, or, “e-Safety? I don’t use the computers”.
e-Safety has as much to do with a PC (or device/app) as a car has to do with a burglar – it is just the mode of transport. The relevance is how that car is used, or how (and why) that flapjack is thrown. In other words it is often about the behaviour of the person putting themselves at risk due to inappropriate behaviour. That behaviour could be because of ignorance or apathy, but often there are consequences.
In a school context there are three primary elements to e-safety which I refer to as the governance:
Policy/liability
Technology (in this context I’m talking about how the technology is used, not what it is)
Safe use.
I’ll blog about these in a future post, but let’s also remember that e-safety isn’t always about the children and young people; there are consequences for adults too as this Headteacher allegedly found out.
A short, quick blog post, but hopefully serves as a good e-safety reminder.