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. 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 two 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 Aimee and Maryam in this blog post and look back at part one to hear from the other Digital Champions.
How did we become Digital Champions?
Aimee: We all had heard about the opportunity from various places, I received an email about it but I know it was also in the newsletters as well. We first did a survey answering questions about our involvement with the Digital Leaders Programme, our aspirations and our inspirations. Not long after we were chosen for interviews where we answered a few more questions about us as well as what parts of the Digital Leaders Programme we wanted to improve and finished with an activity where we had to plan a Safer Internet Day workshop. At the end of this, the successful applicants all received emails saying we had become Digital Champions which was incredibly exciting! Personally I found the process really fun and I would recommend every interested Digital Leader should try it next time.
What are you going to do as a Digital Champion in your school?
Maryam: As a Digital Champion in my school, I think what’s mainly important for us right now is settling the new students and new Digital Leaders into what the role entails. We aren’t only trying to combat internet safety, but internet equality – after all, it is a basic human right and is something that we all deserve, regardless of being offline or online. Currently my school are developing a scheme trying to combat this and spreading the message to our Year 7s and other younger years. Our inspiration mainly stemmed from not only my original goal as a Digital Champion – which was wanting a more positive internet, but what I heard from the other Digital Champions during the kick-off day. Their ideas of equality really struck something in me and has given me the courage to share it with my school. This is an on-going project and I hope that we are able to not only represent this for Safer Internet Day, but for all of our time at school.
One of our Digital Champions, Jess from Selston High School, was invited to attend the Safer Internet Forum in Brussels on 21st November 2019. Jess was selected to represent the UK within the Better Internet for Kids (BIK) Youth Panel, made up of around 25 young people from across Europe.
We asked Jess to tell us about her experience at the Safer Internet Forum. She provided us with a report detailing how she collaborated with young people from other countries and how she found the whole experience. Read Jess’ report below:
“The Safer Internet Forum is an event held annually to spread the word about positive Internet use and bring people together to share their views on different topics surrounding the online world. In 2019, I was chosen to represent the UK and speak as part of the BIK Youth Panel to help make a change for young people online, with the Safer Internet Forum being a way to express our views and take a stand for youth online.
Due to our limited time in Brussels, we needed to come up with ideas and ways to kick-start our campaign before reaching the conference itself. This was done through various web conferences, starting a couple of months before we were due to arrive. These online meetings helped us put together ideas, get to know each other more and ultimately prepare for the event properly. Lots of brilliant ideas were thrown around in these meetings about how we can spread our message, both online and offline, and how we can kick-start our campaign. In the end, we chose to go with an Instagram account, informing and helping young people to use the Internet positively and responsibly. You can find us at @bik.youthforyouth.
During my time at the Safer Internet Forum in Brussels, Belgium, I took part in lots of different activities and helped to prepare for our session within the Forum itself. Not only did we hold many discussions on important topics facing today’s youth online, but we also covered less talked-about topics such as helplines and misogyny in gaming. These activities helped is build skills in communication, teamwork and organisation. We also planned our session for the forum itself and discussed many things such as the survey we ran, how to present our Instagram account and speeches we would perform in our session.
Of course the forum itself was an incredible experience, however the other young people I met whilst there really was the highlight of my trip. Seeing how the Internet can bring a group of young people together from all across Europe really highlighted why I believe the online world is such an amazing place to be. After weeks of chatting with each other online, we finally all got to meet face-to-face and share our message to a wider audience. Everyone was so kind and supportive, it really was an experience I’ll never forget.
After attending the Safer Internet Forum, I learnt not only so much more about online safety, but also more about the power of the Internet; how it can bring people together, to share a universal message and help change young people’s lives online for the better. There is so much negativity in the media surrounding the online space, however this experience taught me that no matter where you are in the world, the Internet can unite us all and bring us together as one amazing, supportive community full of people just like you and me, and bring about a change online.
This experience has changed my life, and without the Internet, I never would have met such awe-inspiring people who are helping to make the Internet a better place for people like you and me. “
Thank you Jess for being an excellent representative for young people across the UK and ensuring that youth voice is heard. 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.
The Childnet team are happy to announce that the Digital Leaders Programme has recently reached two milestones! Take a read below to find out more about these milestones and how the programme has developed over the years.
How the programme started
The Childnet Digital Leaders Programme began with the aim to engage young people in online safety education in new and innovative ways. By speaking to young people directly, we found that they found online safety education more valuable and relevant when it was delivered to them by people their own age. By directly consulting with young people, teachers and educational settings, Childnet created the programme to give young people an opportunity to take the lead in online safety education, making it more impactful overall. The programme started in 2014 with just a few pilot schools.
How the programme has grown
The programme has grown tremendously over the last 6 years, impacting more and more young people in Primary and Secondary schools every year. Take a look at our Digital Leader Group map below or on our Impact and Reach page, which shows the reach of The Digital Leaders across the UK and beyond. As well as growing in reach, the programme has developed significantly over the years, now offering more participation and collaboration opportunities to the young people and schools engaged with the programme.
To date, the Childnet team have run four Digital Leaders Regional Events across the UK as an opportunity for Digital Leaders to meet, receive exclusive training and collaborate on ways to impact their school communities.
Other developments include the community newsletter which features monthly programme updates and announcements, and a programme Twitter account, @ChildnetDL, to showcase Digital Leader achievements.
The programme now also has a youth representative board, the Digital Champions, who help the Childnet team to ensure the programme remains youth led. We have seven Digital Champions who represent a youth voice, which is essential to the programme’s success. Learn more about the Digital Champions here and read part one of their guest blog post about their responsibilities and plans for the year ahead here.
Recent Milestones
We are proud to announce that the programme has recently reached two milestones. The programme has now had over 1000 subscriptions and over 4000 Digital Leaders have completed the training, qualifying as Childnet Digital Leaders!
Congratulations to all of these qualified Digital Leaders and thank you for contributing to the success of the programme. The programme relies on the support of dedicated teachers who lead the programme in their school and support their Digital Leaders in impacting their school communities, so a big thank you to all school staff who have been involved in their educational setting.
Digital Leaders are always impressing the Childnet team with their creative ways of sharing their knowledge and impacting their school communities. Take a look at some brilliant Digital Leader achievements here and make sure to keep an eye on the blog for regular programme updates and Digital Leaders achievements.
We are excited to see which milestone the programme reaches next, how it will continue to develop and what the Digital Leaders will achieve over the coming years.
The theme of Safer Internet Day in the UK this year looked at identity online and how young people manage, curate and navigate their online identity. Digital Leaders from five schools, a mixture of primary and secondary, attended the Safer Internet Day event at the BT Centre in London on 11th February.
Guests from the internet industry as well as services which support young people, government and policy attended the event which was organised by the UK Safer Internet Centre and hosted by Homyra, a Digital Leader from Mayfield School.
Digital Leader teams from Coopers School, Harris Academy Tottenham, Leigh Academy Blackheath, Stanburn Primary School and Woodcote Primary School attended and prepared and led activities around the theme of identity online for the guests, to encourage them to think about what this means to young people and whether everyone is free to be themselves online.
Digital Champions, Aimee and Cosima, were also in attendance to talk to guests about the Young People’s Charter. Take a look at our blog post about the Young People’s Charter and Digital Leaders’ involvement in the development of the charter here.
Young people give their thoughts on online safety
Homyra kicked off the event in the auditorium by welcoming everybody and introducing speeches from Marc Allera, CEO of Consumer Goods at BT, who spoke about how proud he was to host the event at the BT Centre as well as Will Gardner, CEO of Childnet and Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre. Will spoke about how important Safer Internet Day is, and how it can be used to to start conversations around young peoples’ lives online and talked about the breadth of activities that young people across the UK were doing to celebrate the day.
Will presented the Safer Internet Day research report, ‘Free To Be Me: piecing together identity online’ which looks at how young people manage, curate and navigate their online identity and highlighted the key findings from the research to the guests.
Aimee then delivered the youth keynote speech. She spoke about why she wanted to become a Digital Leader, what her new role as a Digital Champion involved as well as the importance of the theme of exploring online identity.
After the speeches, the guests were invited to take part in the Digital Leader led activities. Activities included drawing your own avatar to display your online persona, thinking about which scenarios are more likely to happen offline or online and looking at the things you do online that make up your online identity.
Guests received stickers for visiting each activity station. Aimee and Cosima also ran an activity which involved explaining the Young People’s Charter and asking the guests to make pledges in how they are going to champion the charter. Take a look at our blog post about the Young People’s Charter here.
Everyone then returned to the auditorium again for the final part of the event. This session involved a panel hosted by Natasha Devon MBE with panellists from a variety of organisations which support young people, such as The Mix, Girlguiding and Glitch. The Digital Leaders in attendance had prepared questions for the panel around the theme of how young people manage their online identities and what support there is for young people in managing their online lives. This created some great discussions among the panel.
The day was a huge success and we were so pleased to have so many Digital Leaders in attendance to lead the event and represent the entire Digital Leaders community. Thank you to the Digital Leaders who attended as well as their teachers and chaperones who supported their pupils on the day. Thank you also to the Digital Champions, Aimee and Cosima, for attending and speaking passionately about the Young People’s Charter, and to Aimee for her impressive key note speech. Thank you also to Homyra for being an excellent youth host, welcoming guests to the event and introducing speakers to the stage. All of the Digital Leaders in attendance were fantastic in their roles on the day.
Take a look at the Safer Internet Day research report here. And the Young People’s Charter here.
Make sure to let us know what you did to celebrate Safer Internet Day in your school by emailing [email protected], so that we can include your activities in a Safer Internet Day roundup blog post!
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.
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!
Safer Internet Day 2020 is on the 11th February and there are many ways to get involved! As partners in the UK Safer Internet Centre we have created a load of resources to help you get involved and start planning how you will celebrate now.
We want to make sure that Safer Internet Day 2020 is the biggest yet and reaches more people than ever before with messages of awareness and importance of online safety. There are many ways for Digital Leaders to take the lead in getting involved in the lead up to Safer Internet Day 2020 and on the day.
What is Safer Internet Day?
Safer Internet Day aims to inspire a national conversation about using technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively. Coordinated in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre the celebration sees hundreds of organisations get involved to help promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.
In the UK, we choose an annual theme that we think best suits the current landscape of online safety and the issues that young people may face online. This year, we are encouraging young people to explore how they manage their online identity and think about how the internet shapes their view of themselves and others.
We will look at whether the internet allows young people to experiment and express themselves, or if they feel limited in who they can be online, and how offline stereotypes and discrimination are challenged or reinforced online. By opening up conversations around online identity, we aim to inspire young people to support each other in being who they want to be, to celebrate difference, and help work towards creating a truly inclusive internet.
Have you started planning what you will do to celebrate Safer Internet Day 2020?
There are less than three months to go until Safer Internet Day 2020 and it’s the perfect time to start planning what you will do to celebrate and spread awareness of the day in your education setting!
How you can get involved
Brand new educational resources
The UK Safer Internet Centre – official coordinators of the day in the UK – have created a range of new educational resources focusing on the 2020 theme: Free to be me – exploring online identity.
These educational resources include lesson plans, assemblies and more and all focus on the theme of online identity, asking young people to consider whether they and their peers are truly free to be themselves online. These resources are split into age groups and there are many opportunities for Digital Leaders to support in running sessions using these resources.
Make sure your school registers as a supporter for Safer Internet Day 2020 and says what you will be doing to celebrate! Together we can make sure that Safer Internet Day 2020 is the biggest yet and reaches more people than ever before!
You can help Safer Internet Day to reach even more people by sharing your support for the day on Twitter now! The official hashtag to use to show your support is #SaferInternetDay. Follow @UK_SIC for updates and social media templates to share closer to the day.
Safer Internet Day 2020 modules on the Digital Leaders platforms
We will soon be releasing Safer Internet Day modules on both the Primary and Secondary Digital Leader platforms. These modules will support Digital Leaders in thinking about how they can take part on the day and engage the pupils in their schools with the topic of online identity. Keep an eye out for these modules appearing on the platforms in the next few weeks. After Safer Internet Day 2020 we will also be asking Digital Leaders to let us know what they did in school for Safer Internet Day and they will earn points and badges for letting us know!
How some Digital Leaders are already involved in the Safer Internet Day campaign
Some of our Digital Leaders feature in films for Safer Internet Day produced by our partner organisation in the UK Safer Internet Centre, SWGfL. The films are tailor made for use with 5-11s, 11-18s, parents and carers, as well as a film exploring the theme. Thank you to the Digital Leaders involved for your valuable contributions and for sharing your thoughts, thank you for your cooperation in the filming also. You can watch these videos on the UK Safer Internet Centre Website and look out for them being shared on social media.
Examples of how Digital Leaders were involved last Safer Internet Day
We were so impressed with the creative ways that Digital Leaders were involved in Safer Internet Day 2019 and can’t wait to see what Digital Leaders do to go even bigger this time around! Take a look at our round up of how Digital Leaders schools spread awareness about internet safety for Safer Internet Day 2019 to be inspired and start thinking about the ways your Digital Leader team could take part in Safer Internet Day 2020.
Let us know what your Digital Leader team have planned for Safer Internet Day and tweet us @Childnet DL #ChildnetDL as well as using #SaferInternetDay on the day.
