Safer Internet Day-Week 2021

 Safer Internet Day is celebrated at the ABC for an entire week each year. This year Safer Internet Day 2021 will be celebrated globally on February 9th, 2021 with a focus on the theme, Together for a better internet"

Here are some driving statements and questions to prompt powerful conversations focused on this topic:

• Let's face it the internet is a powerful place to connect with others, but issues can occur.

• How could we work together as a class, a school, a country or a planet to make it a better, safer place for everyone to connect?

• Can you think of a few ideas that you as a student would be able to do to help make this happen?

(saferinternetday.org)

This coming week students in each grade will work on a series of short mini lessons during tutor time and Life Skills. In doing so they will explore a variety of positive and negative impacts of the internet, as well as the various ways to conduct themselves in a safe, ethical and positive manner online, while making the most of the positive opportunities that are available.

We encourage you to browse our resources by grade level and engage in conversations with your child which focus on these topics.

We have also provided a list of videos for conversation starters as well as additional resource collections from leading organisations, lower down on the home page, which we hope you will find useful.

Let's make every day a safer internet day, together!

Internet Safety Week 2015

Our ABC Internet Safety Week , also known as Safer Internet Week, starts on Monday.

During the week students will learn more about safe online practices through daily mini lessons, assemblies and focus activities in lessons.

We have been  talking to students and parents about online safety, providing strategies and holding practical workshops for the past 7 years and although progress was slow initially, most of our community is aware of the issues and can apply certain strategies in their daily lives to help ensure that they remain safe online and make social networks work for them.

If you are on the lookout for good resources to use with your students,  have a look through the Mini Lesson resources we have compiled.

Here are three short videos done by the younger students in their after school club.  They contain very brief messages, which offer advice for staying safe online.

These videos were fun and easy to produce using the school iPads.

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.

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Advice For Parents On Safer Internet Day (news.sky.com)


• Online safety for five-year-olds (news.bbc.co.uk)


• Safer Internet Day for 5-7 year olds (guardian.co.uk)