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 back to a new school year, we hope you had a great summer break and are eager and inspired to make impact as a Digital Leader in your school and community!
In this blog we have put together some top tips to help Digital Leaders make a great start to the school year (as well as providing some handy information for teachers), helping you to kick off a fantastic year of online safety education in your whole school.
Our back to school top tips:
Make activities and sessions relevant to your audience
Why not get the other pupils in your school to think about some key questions like: What did you do online over the holidays? Have you or any of your friends experienced anything online over the holidays that other pupils or parents would benefit from hearing? Make the activities you run in school engaging and effective by keeping them relevant and up to date!
A great way to start your first team meeting of the new term is to discuss the things you did online over the holidays, as well as what you learnt about life online.
Engage the new pupils at your school
This September your school will have lots of new pupils coming in to year 7 and it is a great opportunity to let them know where they can go for support with questions about online safety. Why not use this as a chance to think about what you have learnt as a Digital Leader, and how you can share this with them?
Remember: you have a really important role which can inspire the new pupils to want to become Digital Leaders too!
Plan your activities for the whole year
The start of the school year is a great opportunity to plan for the whole year ahead, and to make sure that you are having the biggest impact possible in your school throughout the year! Take a look at our online safety calendar to pick out the campaigns that your team would like to involve your school in (link to online safety calendar).
Inspire your peers by becoming a Digital Champion
Exciting news alert: We are recruiting even more Digital Leaders to join our team of Digital Champions! Our Digital Champions are a group of Secondary pupils who are great examples of what it means to be a Digital Leader. They are ambassadors of the programme and act as our youth representative board.
If you are a qualified Digital Leader, would like to support us in creating modules and developing the programme and help us to make sure the programme is reflective of young people’s experiences, then please apply!
Take a look at last year’s Digital Champion profiles and look out for more information about how to apply to be a Digital Champion in the next few weeks!
Get creative
There are so many different ways to share knowledge in your school community and we always love to see how original and creative Digital Leaders can be.
Last year Digital Leaders made t-shirts, hosted Digital Picnics, made films and so much more!
For the new school year we challenge you to be creative in sharing your online safety knowledge and keep us up to date with what you achieve to be featured in our blog and newsletter.
Collaborate with other Digital Leaders across the UK
We encourage you as Digital Leaders to share ideas and work together in your teams (and with your teachers) to maximise your impact!
The ‘Community’ section of the Digital Leaders platforms is also a great space to share your ideas and top tips, or to get advice from other Digital Leaders. As the new term starts make sure you keep an eye out for our ‘Prize Posts’, these are new Community posts from the Childnet Digital Leaders Team where you can get some great rewards if your share your opinions on topics and questions set by the Childnet Digital Leaders Team.
Keep up to date
Stay up to date with what is happening in the Digital Leaders community. We will now be sending our monthly community newsletter to Secondary Digital Leaders as well as Digital Leader teachers. We love to keep you updated and share the accomplishments of Digital Leaders!
Information for Group Leaders
Let us know if your Digital Leaders have their own top tips or want to share what they have planned for the year ahead! Tweet us @childnetDL or email [email protected].
We can’t wait for our next Digital Leaders Regional Event on 25th November which is taking place in Cardiff and is an opportunity for Digital Leaders across the region to collaborate with each other. Get in touch at [email protected] if your Digital Leader team would like to attend the event.
