Safer Internet Day 2010

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. The topic for 2010 is "Think B4 U post!".

Anything anyone posts online remains there for an indefinite period and accessible for everyone. This can have serious consequences.

Children and teenagers need to be made aware that they can control their online identity.

So the advise is:

- use the privacy settings offered by social networking services.

- select friends online that you can trust.

- publish your own photos only after thinking carefully about the potential consequences.

- publish pictures of your their friends only with their permission.

To support the day the SWGfL are running a competition. Children are invited to create an E-Safety SWGfL Merlin minisite with advice, links to useful resources, discussion boards and more… or a 30 second Radio or TV commercial promoting E-Safety. See here for more details.

The release of the new Online Safety Planner – the next step for the 360 degree safe software which allows any agency working with children to validate just how safe their own internet provision is. This was successfully rolled out to schools in November 2009. For more information on this go to www.360safe.org.uk

The release of an update of the Golden Rules film, aimed at parents to help themselves and their children to be safer when using the internet. The current version of this film is available to view at http://www.swgfl.org.uk/Staying-Safe/e-Safety-Movies

CEOP has produced some great resources for KS1 as well as advice for how to support Safer Internet Day. Go to their site here.

Big Brother can be a good guy

No, not an article about reality TV shows that have outlived their welcome, but rather a quick thought that struck me recently. There have been several media storms in the last year or so about the collection of personal data. These storms are often triggered by the loss of some of this data on a train and we are right to be concerned about that. However, it is sometimes good to be reminded that in today’s technological age, all this data can lead to good things. Here is an article that shows how a mobile phone, a website and some quick thinking lead to a happy ending for one little girl.