This week the Guardian Teacher Network has resources to help you teach pupils how to stay safe – and how to conduct yourself – online. Mike Britland starts the article with the following food-for-thought...
“In recent weeks, the problem of safe and appropriate use of the internet, and specifically social networking sites, has been brought to the fore. There has been the high-profile incident involving Stella Creasy MP and the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who both received death and rape threats due to their campaign on Twitter supporting women who highlight online abuse. There has also been the tragic suicide of Hannah Smith, who took her own life as a result of the bullying she suffered online through the ask.fm website.As such, esafety goes beyond staying safe, it's also about how you conduct yourself online – digital citizenship".
It doesn’t matter if you agree with the term ‘Digital Citizenship’ or not. Mike is absolutely right to steer people away from the term ‘esafety’. It is possible to be safe but that doesn’t always help you gain wisdom or become more resilient against risk. For example, I am pretty sure that I would safe from any road traffic accident if I had never seen or been in motor vehicle or near a road. BUT, the day I had to drive a car or cross a road because I needed too would be the day I suddenly because extremely vulnerable and at significant risk.
As I have said time and time again – it is about responsible use and not about saying ‘no’, locking or blocking.
Anyway, Mike has
done a good job of pulling together some up-to-date resources for teachers to
help them teach Internet Safety and Responsible Use. These resources include the
cartoons that I commissioned as part of the 2011
Education Scotland / Scottish Government Internet Safety and Responsible Use
Conference and some of the Information
films that I created on
behalf of InSafe in 2012.
The article also features resources and advice from @mattbritland, @esafetyadviser and @teachertoolkit.
Ollie,
A great read as ever and I agree entirely with what you say. I think part of the problem is that e-safety has so many meanings to so many people: at home it is one thing, in school it is another. To a child it is something different to a parent, and to a Headteacher it is different to that of a class teacher.
Further, the fundamentals are entirely different dependent upon the audience: a governor, police officer, teenager, young child.
The "saying no" whether verbally or technically (blocking) has got to stop.
After all these years, I think we're still a long way from this being a reality. In part this is to do with an awful lot of scaremongering, and assumptions that all children are in danger.
Posted by: Esafetyadviser | September 02, 2013 at 05:11 PM