As part of our Internet safety week KS2 and parents were invited to Mrs Steedman Internet Safety Assembly where we looked at keeping safe online and guarding our personal information.
Mrs Steedman introduced the assembly and showed the children how she uses Instant Messaging to keep in-touch with friends. We used the projector in the hall to carry out a live chat with Kayleigh34 a former pupil at the school.
The children then watched a CEOP video illustrating the reasons why we keep our personal information secure. Including not giving away our name or contact information on the Internet.
At the end of the video the children realised that Mrs Steedman HAD given personal information to Kayleigh34 without really knowing if Kayleigh34 was who she said she was! Mrs Steedman asked Mr Gallop to come to the hall immediately to see what could be done.
After a discussion with the children Mr Gallop revealed that he had pretended to be Kayleigh34 in order to show Mrs Steedman and KS2 the potential dangers of revealing information to people you do not know. So Mrs Steedman’s details were in fact safe and we were all very relieved.
Some of the children said they would be changing their online profiles immediately as they may be giving away too much information about themselves.
The children returned to their classrooms and continued discussing the information they had learnt and their own personal experiences of the the Internet and social networking websites and technologies.
PARENTS
We must point out that our Internet filters block social networking websites including instant messaging websites and clients so no children or staff have access to these through school computers.
However social networking websites and IM are important technologies used in business and for the sheer fun of communicating with family and friends. So our aim is to give children the skills to use these tools and the web smartness to remain safe while doing so.
We do run an internal IM server which can only be used on the school site and this is what we used for our Internet Assembly.
If parents or children have any questions or concerns about Internet safety then please contact Mrs Steedman.