Siobhán and Fabian from the Childnet Digital Leaders team recently visited the Barnfield Primary Digital Leaders. They were very impressed with what the team have already achieved in school as well as their plans for the next few months!
The team have completed the core training modules and have also run assemblies in school for Anti-Bullying Week and Safer Internet Day. The assemblies were such a success that after watching them other pupils wanted to become Digital Leaders too! We want to say well done to the Barnfield Digital Leaders for making such a big impact in their school already. No doubt that the team will make an even bigger impact in the next few months as they have impressive plans to share their online safety knowledge and support pupils in their school to keep safe online.
The team’s plans include writing for the school newsletter and running a school poster-making competition. We think these are fantastic ways to get their online safety messages out to the whole school and to encourage pupils to think creatively!
Whilst visiting them the Barnfield Primary Digital Leaders also shared their top online safety tips with us. These included:
Don’t share your personal information
If you receive nasty messages, you don’t need to reply
Always tell an adult when in doubt
Be careful who you talk to online
Be kind online
We had a great time visiting the Barnfield Primary Digital Leaders and talking to them about their role as Digital Leaders in school. Thank you to Ms Vessey and the fantastic Digital Leaders for welcoming us to your school. Good luck and keep us updated with what you achieve!
If your Digital Leaders would like a school visit from the Childnet Digital Leaders team, then please get in touch at [email protected].
Make sure to keep us up to date with what your Digital Leaders achieve in school by emailing [email protected] and tweeting @ChildnetDL.
Tuesday 11th February saw the celebration of Safer Internet Day across the world in over 170 countries. The theme of this year’s campaign in the UK was ‘Free to be me: Exploring identity online’, encouraging young people to explore how they manage their online identity, and how the internet shapes how they think of themselves and others.
We asked Bella, one of our Digital Champions, a few questions around the theme and she provided some enlightening and insightful responses which you can find below.
1) Why is it important for all young people to be free to be themselves online?
“For many young people, particularly as the generational divide between our and our parents’ generations widens, access to the internet can equal a person’s access to certain safe spaces that they would not be able to access ‘in real life’. This means something, and whether or not a person feels comfortable in a certain community online should be the qualifier for it allowing young people to ‘be themselves’. These spaces should be commended for accommodating people regardless of race, sexuality etc.”
2) Why is it important to have different groups represented online? Why is online representation important?
“The intense diversity of some sites, such as Tumblr and Instagram, really helps to confront and challenge people’s opinions and understandings of the world where in their current situation offline they may not be. Issues that do not pertain to certain people are still raised by others online, and therefore those people learn something valuable about the struggles and the successes of other communities – and therefore the importance for diversity and the concept of ‘free and equal’ online. Representation online is so critical in my own experience because LGBTQ+ folks in my area are not so common publicly – to be presented with people that are ‘like you’ online, regardless of what that means to an individual, provides a critically important sense of validation and strips away the isolation many feel in their offline situations. This is why visible and healthy representation must be paramount.”
3) What is the best thing about diversity online? What is the worst thing about diversity online?
“The best thing (for me personally): the communities that form around aspects of diversity, particularly when those aspects are not universally or widely celebrated offline. The internet is so critical for providing (particularly) young people with a set of others like them whom they can communicate with and share their experiences with, and anonymously, if need be. These communities build up a validating sense of self worth for those who might otherwise be lacking it.
The worst thing (for me personally): In the quest for diversity, which, today, particularly with regard to sexuality, tends to produce more views/clicks, things like ‘queer-baiting’ have come into existence, whereby shows etc. falsely advertise inclusion and tolerance in order to draw in a subset of the population interested by this. The use of diversity as a weak and commercial factor in media is increasingly becoming a problem; I believe distinctions should be made for showwriters and media executives between healthy and unhealthy representation in order to bate this problem in the future.”
4) What is your one wish for the future of the internet?
“I hope we are able to overcome this idea that hate speech is a quality that should not be dismantled online because of the policy of freedom of speech. I’m aware that a number of social media sites (i.e. Twitter) have removed a considerable amount of ‘hate speech’ content under cyber-laws and legislation, and have received criticism from radical communities which resent the idea of restriction of certain materials – and while freedom of speech in a political sense is incredibly important, I believe that comfortable diversity for the large majority cannot be achieved until hate speech and free speech are separated properly by legislation and social media policy.”
5) If you could tell parents, teachers, and the internet industry one thing about online identity, what would it be?
“It is so important to encourage children and young people to develop a healthy online presence early, and, perhaps even more so, to put forward a level of trust in letting them do this. ‘Watcher’ apps are increasingly popular and they should not be underestimated in the sense that they do make online identity a more restricted concept if people feel as though they cannot express themselves, and in some cases, this is damaging to a person’s ability to socialise. Children and young people might misrepresent themselves a little bit online, but it is critical that ‘healthy identity’ is promoted and taught; that is, cultivating an image that you feel comfortable with, while also understanding there are limits.”
Thank you, Bella, for your passion for this topic and for being so open with your thoughts. Find out more about our Digital Champions here and take a look at their plans for the year ahead as well as more information about their role within the programme here.
Welcome to the February post of our monthly achievements and updates blog. Here we congratulate schools who have completed their training over the past month and share good news stories from Digital Leader schools.
Well done to the Digital Leader teams from the following schools who have recently completed their online training!
Anderton Park Primary
Caldershaw Primary School
Christ Church CE (VC) Primary – 2nd cohort!
Christ the King RC Primary School – 2nd cohort!
Foxhills Junior School
Frogmore Junior School – 3rd cohort!
Kinsley Primary School – 2nd cohort!
Our Lady and St Rose of Lima Primary School – 2nd cohort!
Rochester Independent College – 2nd cohort!
St. Louise’s Comprehensive College
St Olave’s Prep School
Safer Internet Day is in just a few days, on Tuesday 11th February. Make sure that your school has signed up as a supporter for the day. Download the education packs here if you need some last minute activity ideas for the day and make sure to use the social media guide to engage in the social media campaign on the day. We can’t wait to see what Digital Leaders across the country do for Safer Internet Day 2020. Make sure to tweet @ChildnetDL@UK_SIC so we can see what your team are doing on the day and retweet you!
Digital Leader School Visits
Over the past month the Childnet Digital Leaders team visited St. Martins School in Derby and Penwortham Primary School in London to talk to their Digital Leader teams and find out more about what they are doing in in their roles at school.
St. Martin’s School
We visited St Martin’s School along with Phoebe and Kate from the Childnet Education team and were very happy to be involved in the assembly where the team were announced to the whole school! Siobhán was able to present the school with two certificates in the assembly and they received their Digital Leaders badges also. Well done to the team for completing the training, we are impressed with what they have already accomplished such as making a game with internet safety messages as well as a leaflet for all parents/carers. Thank you to the Digital Leaders and their teacher, Sam, for welcoming us to their school. Take a look at our blog post to find out more about our visit and see the fantastic leaflet that the St. Martins’ Digital Leaders created.
Penwortham Primary School
We visited Penwortham Primary School Digital Leaders last month and really enjoyed hearing about their exciting plans for the future. They shared their ideas for the year with Charlotte, including their plan to have a ‘Digital Leaders Day,’ which would be a day to allow pupils to try out the role of being a Digital Leader before applying. What a brilliant idea! One of the Digital Leaders had also created a wonderful poster for Safer Internet Day which included a poem they had written:
‘Be safe,
Be yourself,
Be you,
Not someone else.’
Take a look at our blog post to read the fantastic article that the Penwortham Primary School Digital Leaders wrote for their school newsletter. Thank you to the Digital Leaders for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us and Ms Berner and Ms Shipsey for hosting us.
We love visiting Digital Leader teams in action, if your team would like a visit then please get in touch at [email protected].
We are looking forward to working with Digital Leader teams throughout 2020 and really excited to see what Digital Leaders achieve this year! Please share with us what your Digital Leaders team have been up to. Email [email protected] or tweet us @ChildnetDL#ChildnetDL to be included in the next update!
The Childnet Digital Champions are Jess, Bella, Maryam, Niah, Oyinkan, Cosima and Aimee. They are a group of Digital Leaders from across the country who were successful in applying to be ambassadors of the Digital Leaders Programme, representing the Digital Leader community and supporting the Childnet team. Find out more about our fantastic Digital Champions here. The Digital Champions had their kick-off day on 23rd January at Facebook offices and the day was a chance for the young people to get to know each other, find out what to expect in their role as a Digital Champion and lots more!
Here is part one of two blog posts written by the Digital Champions which explains what they got up to on the kick-off day and what to expect from them in the coming months. Hear from Cosima, Jess, Niah and Bella in this blog post and hear more from our other Digital Champions in part two.
What did we get up to on our kick-off day?
Cosima: We all arrived at Facebook, signed in and waited to be taken in, it was the first time that all of the new Digital Champions met and it was so nice to finally see each other face to face! We went upstairs to a room on the 8th floor, there were loads of snacks and drinks which they said we could have. After we all introduced ourselves; new and existing, and the Childnet team told us a little about themselves too we decided to play some icebreakers. I’m sure that I speak for all of us in that after we made recipes from our favourite foods and scattergories we felt like we had been friends for ages! Some time and snacks later, the existing DC’s told us a little more about their experiences and highlights of the role and what kind of things to expect. We then were given an amazing tour of the Facebook offices. They had a giant phone, Instagram carriage, pick and mix, emoji game, work pods and much more. We were all thinking how if we worked there we would never get any work done as there are too many cool things to do! Once again we collected some snacks and drinks and then went back to our room! The Childnet team talked to us about upcoming events and tasks and then it was time for lunch, the best part! During and after lunch we talked some more (like a lot!) and set in stone the expectations and requirements for our time as Digital Champions and we talked to by another member of the Childnet team who asked us for our views on some pretty cool things. After a long, packed and fun day we said our goodbyes and took a trip to the pick and mix! It was a really great and enjoyable day that we won’t be forgetting in a hurry.
What are the team of Digital Champions going to do?
Jess: As a team of Digital Champions, we want to speak as the youth and for the youth. We are all from so many different backgrounds, and we can harness this diversity to speak out about issues facing young people online in our area and come together to voice our peers’ opinions. The Digital Champion team and I are ready to make young people’s voices heard and speak out for our internet!
Which part of being a Digital Champion are you most looking forward to?
Niah: The part of being a Digital Champion I am looking forward to the most is having the opportunity to support young people in making positive decisions online outside of my school community, as well as working with young people from all different backgrounds to take on Digital Leader roles and positively grow the online space.
For some of the Digital Champions this is your second year in the role. What advice would you give to the new Digital Champions?
Bella: To the new Digital Champions, I’d definitely say to twist your role in your school and on a local level especially into something you can harness to pursue relevant things you’re interested in seeing improve in your local area. For instance, my Digital Leaders and I have done a lot on safety for the LGBTQ+ community online, because we’re mostly involved in the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) here at my school. If you choose a ‘specialty’ you’re super invested in, it will pronounce you as a seriously capable young leader and it’ll give you the confidence you need to approach a leadership role. That’s how it’s been in my experience.
These pages contain tips, advice and resources to help young people and their families enjoy technology and the internet together in a safe and positive way. We encourage Digital Leaders to share these top tips for Safer Internet Day 2020.
Top Tips for children and young people
These pages include top tips about staying safe as well as the ways young people can express their identity online and help create an internet where everyone is free to be themselves.
The advice pages for young people are split into three age appropriate sections:
The top tips for 3-7 year olds centre around being proud to be yourself, the things you can do online, as well as where young people can go if they need help.
The top tips for 7-11s look at being proud to be different, respecting others and expecting respect yourself, and what they can do if they need help online.
The top tips for 11-18s look at how young people can embrace and support difference online, as well as the way that young people can use the internet to explore and find out more information.
These tips are a great way to ensure that parents and carers are supporting their children and giving them the tools to stay safe and positive online. They highlight ways to have a conversation, take a balanced approach and to make use of the tools available.
There are also accompanying films and resources that parents can use to explore online safety this Safer Internet Day.
Further resources you can use
We have created Education Packs, which are tailored made for 3-7s, 7-11s, 11-14s, 14-18s and parents and carers, along with some guidance for educators. Available in English and Welsh these free packs include lesson plans, posters, presentations, activities and more!
Our Safer Internet Day films have been produced to complement the Safer Internet Day Education Packs. The films act as an extension of the packs and as such aim to be conversation starters around the topic of identity online.
To keep up to date with the latest Safer Internet Day news you can:
Join the UK wide conversation with the #SaferInternetDay and #freetobe hashtags
We can’t wait to see what Digital Leaders get up to on Safer Internet Day and the creative ways that they celebrate. Let us know what your Digital Leader team get up to for Safer Internet Day 2020 on twitter @ChildnetDL#ChildnetDL.
Welcome to the January post of our monthly achievements and updates blog. Here we congratulate schools who have completed their training over the past month and share good news stories from Digital Leader schools.
Well done to the Digital Leader teams from the following schools who have recently completed their online training!
College Town Primary School
Pallister Park Primary
Queen’s College
Sarum Hall – 2nd cohort!
Selston High School – 2nd cohort!
St Patrick’s CE Primary Academy
The John Bamford Primary – 2nd cohort!
Walkington Primary School – 3rd cohort!
Warwick Preparatory School – 2nd cohort!
A quick round up of some fantastic tweets from Digital Leaders schools over the past month, highlighting some of the impressive achievements of their Digital Leaders:
We are looking forward to working with Digital Leader teams throughout 2020 and really excited to see what Digital Leaders achieve this year! Please share with us what your Digital Leaders team have been up to. Email [email protected] or tweet us @ChildnetDL#ChildnetDL to be included in the next update!
Welcome to the December post of our monthly achievements and updates blog. Here we congratulate schools who have completed their training over the past month and share good news stories from Digital Leader schools.
Well done to the Digital Leaders teams from the following schools who have recently completed their online training!
Barnfield Primary School – 2nd cohort!
Bredon School – 2nd cohort!
Bromley High School Juniors – 3rd cohort!
Clayesmore Preparatory School – 2nd cohort!
Cumnor House School for Girls
De Bohun Primary School – 2nd cohort!
Highworth Grammar School
The King’s Ely Secondary School
Northampton High School Junior – 2nd cohort!
Oakington Manor Primary
Reed’s School – 2nd cohort!
Royal Masonic School for Girls – 3rd cohort!
Royal Russell – 2nd cohort!
Sawtry Village Academy – 2nd cohort!
St Martins School
The Belvedere Academy
The King’s Ely Secondary School
The William Henry Smith School
Cardiff Regional Event
Last month we had our fourth Regional Event in Cardiff. The event was an opportunity for young people across the region to collaborate on ways to share their online safety knowledge with the pupils at their schools. The young people also received exclusive training from the Childnet Education Team who present sessions and workshops at schools all over the country.
Thank you to the schools that attended the Digital Leaders Regional Event in Cardiff, thank you to the Digital Leaders in attendance and the teachers who supported throughout the day. Special thank you to St. John’s College Juniors for hosting and Ms Howells for working with us on the event. Your preparations helped to make the day run smoothly!
Digital Leader school visits
Danielle visited Moss Park Junior School last month to see what their Digital Leaders have been doing and to hear about their plans to share their knowledge with the rest of their school. Thank you to the Digital Leaders for spending time talking to Danielle, she was really impressed with your hard work!
Digital Families Hackathon
Thank you to the Digital Leaders from JFS who came to the Facebook Digital Families Hackathon event. Max, Jessica and Eva, your contributions were valuable and we are grateful for your participation and input.
Anti-Bullying Week 2019
Well done to all of the Digital Leaders who celebrated Anti-Bullying Week and Odd Socks Day in their schools. Thank you to all of the Primary and Secondary Digital Leaders who completed the ‘Run activities for Anti-bullying Week 2019’ module on the training platforms and told us about the activities they had done to celebrate. Look out for a blog post featuring a roundup of the activities that Digital Leaders told us they did in school to celebrate Anti-Bullying Week and to help stop bullying in their school.
We particularly liked this tweet from Bromley High School Juniors, showcasing how their Digital Leaders led Odd Socks Day in their school with their funky odd socks!
Congratulations to Grovelands Community Primary School Digital Leaders
Digital Leaders from Grovelands Community Primary School made a video about Screen time and are featured on the ‘social news’ section of their school website, well done team! https://grovelands-school.co.uk/
We love to see Digital Leader groups getting creative with how they can share their online safety knowledge and Grovelands Digital Leaders clearly learnt a lot from the Screen Time and Healthy Balance module!
We challenge your team to make a video to share what you learn in the next training module you complete! Let us know what your Digital Leader team have achieved to be featured in this blog or our community newsletter!
Please share with us what your Digital Leaders team have been up to. Email [email protected] or tweet us @ChildnetDL#ChildnetDL to be included in the next update!
Primary and secondary pupils from across Cardiff attended an exclusive online safety training event led by Childnet’s expert team.
Last year, following requests from young people on the programme, Childnet introduced Regional Events. These have been successfully run across the UK as an opportunity for young people to share ideas about educating their peers on online safety, and to learn more from the Childnet team.
We held our fourth Childnet Digital Leaders Regional Event at St John’s College, Cardiff on 25th November. It was a great opportunity for Digital Leaders and other young people from across Cardiff to meet and discuss online safety topics, as well as receive some exclusive training from the Childnet team.
Young people learn about reporting online
At the Regional Event, the main topic covered was reporting. The Childnet Education Team prepared an interactive session with lots of activities for the primary and secondary pupils in attendance to help them to engage with and understand this sometimes tricky issue.
The day started with some quizzes and activities to help everyone get to know each other and to start thinking critically about different aspects of online safety. The rest of the day was focused on the important topic of reporting and the ways we can support our friends and share what we know about reporting with them. This took the form of a session led by Amy and Marie from the Childnet Education Team on the most important things to know about reporting.
The Piranha Pitch
The day built up to the final activity, the Piranha Pitch, which involved groups of young people pitching ideas to the judges (the Piranhas – or the not-so-scary teachers!) about how they could share their knowledge on reporting with their peers at their own schools.
We were really impressed with the excellent pitches and creative ideas, including plans for workshops where young people would match the report buttons with the services they are found on and drama activities where young people would explore in which circumstances to make a report. After much deliberation, the Piranhas chose the yellow group as the winners! The judges really enjoyed their idea for an interactive workshop with multiple elements including a quiz, poster and video.
Take a look at the winning group with their certificates below.
Testimonials
Danielle Antha, Project Manager of the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme, said:
“The Childnet team were delighted with the engagement of Cardiff pupils at our fourth Regional Event. They provided thoughtful and unique contributions to the event, and their presentations were full of character and of such an excellent standard that the judges had a very difficult job in choosing a winner. The young people present should be proud of the work they have done; they are all shining examples of how seriously young people in Cardiff take this issue within the online safety space and how hard they are working to help others be safe online as well.”
Aneira, a Digital Leader from Cathays High, said:
“I thought it was really fun and it’s nice to know that adults want to know children’s opinions instead of always asking the other adults. It was nice to engage with students who are younger than me and teach them a little bit about what I know and them teach me things that I don’t know.”
A massive thank you to St John’s College, Cardiff for hosting and to Mrs Howells for being so helpful in the organising of the event.
Thank you to all of the schools that attended, the Digital Leaders that were in attendance for being such great examples of the programme, and all of the teachers at the event who supported the young people throughout the day – we would not have been able to run the event without you!
Welcome to the November post of our monthly achievements and updates blog. Here we congratulate schools who have completed their training over the past month and share good news stories from Digital Leader schools.
Well done to the Digital Leaders teams from the following schools who have recently completed their online training!
Cathays High – 3rd cohort!
Norwich High Prep School Junior – 2nd cohort!
St John Bosco RC Primary School – 3rd cohort!
Swavesey Village College
Welland Park Academy – 3rd cohort!
Digital Leader school visits
Many thanks to the following Digital Leader schools who hosted us for visits throughout October. We want to thank all the Digital Leaders and Digital Leader teachers at these schools for their hospitality and enthusiasm. We were hugely impressed by the insights we received from the Digital Leaders, and the impact they are making in their schools.
Parc Eglos School
Thank you for welcoming Danielle and showing her what you have been working on as Digital Leaders. Danielle was really impressed by your enthusiasm and excellent ideas and we are excited to see the impact you continue to make!
JFS School
Thank you for hosting Siobhan and Fabian and helping us to develop our upcoming secondary module. Your questions and thoughts on the topic were invaluable. Keep an eye out for some of the JFS Digital Leaders appearing in the new secondary module which will be released very soon!
Forest School
Thank you for welcoming Amy and Becca to your school and helping us to develop our upcoming primary module. We really enjoyed talking to you about the module topic. Look out for some of the Forest school Digital Leaders in the upcoming primary module!
If your Digital Leaders would like a visit from the Childnet Digital Leaders team then please get in touch at [email protected]
Please share with us what your Digital Leaders team have been up to. Email [email protected] or tweet us @ChildnetDL#ChildnetDL to be included in the next update!
Childnet is excited to be offering a limited-time offer for schools who are both enrolling on the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme and booking an Education Visit.
This is a fantastic opportunity for your school to combine the benefits of our unique programme with the expert knowledge and advice shared during our Education Visits, helping you to create a whole school approach to online safety.
With online safety playing a key role in many young people’s online lives, it’s important that teachers and young people alike are equipped with the skills they need to stay safe online. 85% of teachers we asked said that the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme has helped their school’s staff fulfil their safeguarding duties.
What is the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme?
The Childnet Digital Leaders Programme is a peer-led online safety programme in which pupils complete core training modules on our online training platform to qualify as Digital Leaders. They are then equipped with the skills and confidence to spread their online safety knowledge in their school communities and complete ‘Team Achievements’ in doing so.
The platforms have been updated for September 2019, and new bonus modules will be added every term on both the primary and secondary platforms!
Our annual survey of the platform found that 92% of Digital Leaders said the training made them feel more confident about educating pupils in their school.
What is a Childnet Education Visit?
At Childnet our team of online safety experts offer online safety training sessions for young people, parents, carers, and members of the children’s workforce.
A typical activity day for pupils consists of a maximum of four sessions throughout the day, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the package booked and age of your pupils.
We also offer stand-alone parent and staff training sessions as well as lunch and learns for companies or parent groups
The Childnet Education team are excited to present refreshed and updated presentations featuring up to date advice for the new academic year.
By booking both an Education Visit and enrolling on the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme, you will receive 25% off the 1 year programme subscription, plus 30% off the Education Visits you book (excluding travel expenses and VAT).
How do I get the discount?
To redeem this joint discount offer, please complete the Education Visit booking form on the Childnet website, and register your interest in the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme.
You will then be able to discuss the type of sessions you would like to book with the Education team and have the opportunity to preview the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme online platform with a free guest login. For more information on the guest login, please visit our guest login blog.
This joint discount offer is only available until 31st October 2019, so don’t miss it out on this opportunity to embed a whole school approach to online safety this year! If you have any questions at all, please get in touch here.
