Online Safety

If you’re wondering how you can help your children to enjoy the internet and keep them safe at the same time, you’re certainly not alone. Many parents find it a challenge. But with toddlers taking to touch screens like ducks to water and so many education and entertainment opportunities online, it’s vital that you take action early on. By setting boundaries and offering support from the moment they first log on, you can help your children to thrive in the digital world.

A new online safety campaign called Internet Matters launched recently. Funded by four of the UK’s leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media – the campaign follows the introduction of their ‘whole-home’ parental controls – read more at www.internetmatters.org

Setting up ‘Parental Controls’ to help prevent age inappropriate content being accessed in the home and on mobile devices – read more at www.saferinternet.org.uk/advice-and-resources/parents-and-carers/parental-controls

Parents and carers need to be aware of ever changing new technologies and trends in order to better educate our children how to protect themselves. Watch a few of the eSafety awareness videos and technology articles below, if any of these raise concerns you’d like to know more about, then please speak to the school office.

“How do we safeguard our children and guide them to become web-SMART?

The internet is an integral part of children’s lives, enabling them to undertake research for school projects, develop problem solving skills through strategy adventure games and access information, which allows the opportunity to learn from the wide variety of material and games available on the internet.

Setting some family safeguards and agreeing eSafety rules will help children understand the importance of keeping safe and ensure they know they can always talk to you or a trusted adult, such as a teacher, if they see anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.

• It is advised for parent/carers to locate the computer children have access to in a family area, not a bedroom, to supervise children as they learn what “appropriate use” really means.

• It is recommend a responsible adult sets their browser home page to a recommended ‘Safe Search Engine’ and checks websites to ensure they are age and content appropriate. Child friendly search engines apply higher level filtering systems to help you safeguard your child at home, however no site is guaranteed ‘safe’.

• What may be considered a safe site today might not be tomorrow. Pay particular attention to image advertisements as they can change each time the web page is accessed, and for this reason parents and carers are advised to set the security levels within a browser, such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, with appropriate levels of security.

• For secure online learning environments, such as username membership sites, please set the URL site address as a ‘Trusted Site’ (security settings) in your browser’s Tools/Internet Options.