Internet Safety Week at the LRC

We are smack dab right in the middle of Internet Safety Week 2014. Online safety is a focus all year long, but Internet Safety Week takes it a step further. During this special week, students and staff engage in important conversations and work through special mini lessons designed to cover a broad range of concepts.

Internet Safety Week would not be complete without a special display in the LRC. This year the librarians took on the challenge of getting the Safer Internet Day theme across, "Let's create a better internet together". We decided to utilise the very popular online game Minecraft to do so. Many of our students are avid Minecrafters had plenty of advice to give about the display. They quickly became part of the team and played an important role as creative liaisons 

Here a a few images which show how this wonderful display turned out. You can view the entire album on the LRC Facebook page.

Internet Safety Week

The teachers and students have been very busy creating internet safety videos for everyone.

We have begun collecting them all in a playlist for easier view, and they are also being posted on our Facebook page.

The short videos were produced by the KS3 students using Morfo on the iPads. The longer, Netiquette video was produced by Mr. Fastiggi in the Upper Primary school, with contributions by the upper primary school students and Mrs. Garcia in the LRC.

Have a look. We hope you enjoy and even learn something new from them.

Netiquette

Preparing for Internet Safety Week
Yesterday I put together a short Puppet Pals video for the Primary School, which attempts to explain what Netiquette really is.

The Apps
I have found that Puppet Pals is a great resource, once you have purchased the director's pass. It allows you to upload your own content and produce short videos that are easy to download as well as upload. Videos can easily be opened and edited in iMovie as well as dropboxed to a Mac where they can be edited and scored in iMovie and Garageband.

I also love Sock Puppets for this type of work and Morfo is great for head shots. In both cases the puppets mouths actually move with your voice. I have had trouble with Sock Puppets recently however, as the option to save to the iPad picture roll seems to have disappeared with the free version. Time to upgrade I guess....

Anyway I hope you enjoy our little video on Netiquette.

Internet Safety Week

It is Internet Safety Week next week at the ABC. 

During the week students will be participating in mini activities in Tutor time. 

We would also like to invite students to put together short 20-30 second PSA (public service announcement) videos which focus on teaching about internet safety. These can be recorded videos, animations, or even morfo, puppet pals or sock puppet videos done on the ipad or other mobile devices. 

Contact Mrs. Garcia or Hilda in the LRC if you are interested in participating.

For more information on keeping safe online, check out the Safer Internet Day Site and our ABC Web Fluency Lessons.

Safety, The Rules Have Changed and Then There's Facebook

Look both ways before you cross the street! Don't talk to strangers!  Some safety rules haven't changed at all, but the arena in which they are practiced has.

Image via CrunchBase

It's Internet Safety Week at our school and we decided it had to be a whole school event this year, which basically means that the majority of grades are directly involved somehow. In the Secondary School we have put together a series of mini lessons for form time, most of which contain short video clips, and hopefully lead to plenty of discussion. There are so many great resources out there to choose from, that we have been able to provide a fairly rich array of experiences for the kids. During the week we are also running assemblies for each grade which focus on web presence and safety settings. There is a clever video from the CEOP which we use in the assemblies and  which really gets the message across and spurs kids into action, when it comes to their online presence.  This leads me to Facebook.

We are aware that many of our students under the age of 13 have Facebook accounts, but do their parents know?  Let's face it, the kids are there for the apps and the cool factor! During our assemblies this week (after the video) a short demonstration is given on how to apply safer settings in Facebook, right at the point when the kids are starting to really worry about the information they have posted online. I've uploaded the presentation (which is not  mindblowing or terribly pretty, just a set of slides taking you through the process of adjusting your different settings). This presentation has also been posted on our ABCICT wiki by student request.  The response so far has been good. Kids are looking for help in adjusting their privacy settings.

So what message are we sending out? The message is simple. We know you may have a facebook account and if you are under 13 you shouldn't. Your parents need to be aware of it, be able to monitor your use of it and you need to ensure your behaviour is safe. We are not condoning it, but rather accepting that this is the case and trying to cover all bases in keeping  everyone safe. What's missing then? The parents of course.

Parents for whatever reasons are often unaware of the extent of their child's online activities and let's face it, kids (and other people) will lie about their age to get what they want, in this case an account.  Parents themeselves are an essential link in all of this. They need to be aware of the situation, regardless of their child's age, talk to their child about their experiences online, help them monitor friend lists, privacy settings and reinforce appropriate online behaviour.  Parents need to know. Sometimes its hard to get the message out.  In our case the school has started an online newsletter, which  intended specifically for the purpose of opening up the issues by informing and supporting parents in keeping their kids safe.

When you are focused on something like this good things often make their way to you. Just this afternoon a tweet came through on TweetDeck about a Facebook Safety blog post by Laura Deisley. Perfect! I've included it in this post as it contains an excellent set of guidelines for helping parents sort out their child's safety settings.

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