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!
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.
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.
