UK Safer Internet Day

On Tuesday 11th February 2020, we supported the UK Safer Internet Day with a specific link to supporting our Upper Key Stage 2 children with keeping safe using social media. Our aim was for the children to understand their digital footprint and what the world can learn about them from this. We also wanted to help reduce some of the naiveties around what children are posting online and what each post actually tells other people about them.
 
To begin to develop this understanding, the children had the opportunity to become ‘detectives’ and investigate some staff members within the school. Careful consideration was taken when ‘setting up’ these teacher profiles and the information on them was not sensitive. We asked children to pay close attention to all the details to find out information about staff. 
 
In addition to this, w the children had the opportunity to understand what their own profiles are telling others about them. We used this time to allow the children to investigate their own digital footprint to aid them in understanding what the world can find out about them. Further to this, we demonstrated how to adjust privacy settings within different social media platforms and gave the children the opportunity to make the changes to ensure their accounts are private.
 
As Online Safety Leads, we made it clear to the children that we are in no way promoting the use of underage social media. However, we are aware that a large proportion of children at Park Street do have accounts despite the age restrictions and therefore we made it clear that it is our role to ensure we are educating the children in being safe.