Digital Champions Webinar

Published: 24th August 2023

Just before the Summer break, on July 13th we hosted our first Digital Champions Webinar and it was a great success! Quite a few Digital Leaders had expressed interest in learning more about who the Digital Champions are and what they do in this role. We truly value your feedback and always try to take it on board as much as we can, so we decided to plan an interactive Q&A session where everyone could have the chance to hear from them directly. Over 70 questions were submitted by Digital Leaders via our survey. We didn’t get to answer all of the questions during the session so we will try to get more answered in a blog in future!

Thanks to all the Digital Leaders who submitted questions in advance of the session. Some examples of the fantastic questions we received included: 

• “How did you become a Digital Champion? I would like to know because hopefully one day I can be a Digital Champion!” Mariyam, Southrise Primary School 
• “What are your three top tips to help children in their school?” The Digital Leaders from Notting Hill and Ealing Junior School 
• “What’s your favourite thing about technology and why?” Ida, Woodlands School  

If you aren’t familiar with our Digital Champions already, they are a small group of Digital Leaders who went through an application process in order to join our youth representative board.  They help the Childnet Digital Leaders team ensure that the programme is youth led. They represent a youth voice which is essential to the programme’s success and support us with module development, content creation, events and consultation, as well as representing the programme in the wider online safety community. 

During this session, they did a terrific job of explaining more about their role, online safety and projects they have been involved in. If you’re looking for inspiration for things to do as a Digital Leader, we encourage you to watch the video linked below. 

Some great quotes from the Digital Champions during this session: 

• Lauren: “They asked how can I be a better Digital Leader? I’d say going out of your comfort zone a little bit can really help. If you’re presented with an opportunity, maybe to do an assembly in school, or to take part in an activity, that’s a really good idea of just stepping out of your comfort zone and becoming a little bit more confident with what you’re doing.” 
• Aimee: “In my school I always tell people to be as comfortable as they can be and express themselves in how they want to be in the online world and do what benefits them and don’t feel pressured to do anything that doesn’t benefit them or would harm them in the long run. ”
• Indira: “It can be hard, especially online, to post things without feeling like it might upset somebody, because just like when we send a text, it doesn’t always come across how we would say in real life. So, I understand why the nerves would be there, but I think it’s important to just remember that we’re all still humans who make mistakes. And so if we’re aware of what we’re posting online, and we’re just conscious of how other people might perceive it, and then if we do make a mistake, because you know, mistakes are part of life, we own up to them, I think then the nerves can go away a bit, because if we just remember there are real people on the other side, there is more of an awareness, and we’re less likely to hurt somebody else’s feelings, at least on purpose.” 

The Childnet Digital Leaders team were so pleased with the level of participation from the Digital Leaders who submitted questions and the Digital Champions insightful responses and want to thank you all for your work!  

If you’re feeling inspired after watching this video and are interested in applying to become a Digital Champion, the applications will open in mid-September. Watch this space for more updates!