E-Safety

New!

Online Safety Guides

We send out online safety guides each week with our newsletter via ParentMail. These guides are written specially for parents and cover a wide range of topics. You can also access the full range of guides by following the link below:

 

New!!!

Dan Hawbrook, the e safety officer for the Stay Safe Partnership / Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Board,  is producing some short video clips for parents.  Each clip will be no more than 3 minutes long and the first two clips are 'a quick chat about game ratings' and 'a quick chat about parental controls'.  The aim is that more clips will be produced over the summer.

To use these clips, please follow the link below:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxMnZ02Sl1AbtIhq-m3rrVQ

Introduction

 

All children use computers at school, at home or in places like libraries and clubs, and our school is keen to use the benefits of the internet to support children’s learning. The internet provides children with excellent opportunities for learning and communicating with friends. But sometimes, children don’t realise that they can be as much at risk online as they are in the real world, and many parents feel they don’t know enough about the internet to protect their children from the risks.

 

This page aims to help our parents keep their children safe online by providing information on the risks and what action they can take to protect their children when they use the internet.

How children use the internet.

 

At school and at home, your child may use the internet to:

• find out information

• send messages to friends through email and instant messaging like MSN

• talk to people online in chat-rooms, blogs and forums

• share information about themselves and talk to people on social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo or MySpace

• share files and download music, games and film.

 

Using the internet can help your child to:

• improve their achievement at school

• learn important computer skills

• improve their confidence and communication skills

• develop their hobbies and interests

• find a wide range of information to help them with schoolwork

 

 

Risks

 

These can be:

• Viewing unsuitable and adult material on websites; Web searches can come up with a lot of information and images, and some of it may not be suitable for children. They may also receive emails that have unsuitable images, links to adult websites or viruses that attack the computer.

• Forming online friendships with adults who pose a risk to children; Some adults may use chat rooms to meet children online by pretending to be a child themselves. They may build up a relationship with the child with the intent of sexually abusing them; this is known as ‘grooming’. Children may also share personal information or photographs of themselves on social networking sites that allows them to be contacted or located by unsuitable adults.

• Buying over the internet; Children may be tempted to reply to advertisements and offers they receive over the internet and give out financial information that can lead to fraud or identity theft.

• Cyber bullying; Chat rooms, mobile phone texts, instant messaging, social networking sites and emails can all be used to bully children by sending offensive or threatening messages or posting mean comments online.

 

What Schools do

 

School computer systems are designed to protect your child from many of these risks by blocking children’s access to unsuitable websites and supervising computer use in the classroom. All Saints school will already have discussed internet safety with them.

 

What can you do?

 

Faced with all these risks, parents may be tempted to just stop their children from using the computer, but most children will be able to access the internet in other places or even on their mobile phone. The best thing to do is to teach your child how to keep themselves safe online and take the following action yourself;

• talk to your child about the dangers of using the internet, show an interest in what they are doing and agree the ‘golden rules’.

• let your child know how important it is to tell you about any suspicious contacts or incidents of cyber bullying so you can take action.

• teach your child the basic rules of “netiquette”, behaving responsibly on the internet and keeping messages polite.

• let them know what kind of sites they can and can’t visit and try to encourage them to only use regulated chat rooms and social networking sites that are designed for their age group.

• take an interest in their online activities; talk to them about what they are doing and who they are talking to.

• contact your internet service provider (for example; BT, Virgin etc) for advice on family security settings and parental controls that can filter internet content, block viruses or spam email to your computer or limit access to certain websites.

• use a child-friendly search engine such as Yahoo!Kids, CBBC Search or Kidsclick to block out unsuitable websites.

• if your child accidently visits an adult website or opens an unsuitable attachment, don’t over-react; this may make them less likely to tell you the next time.

Useful websites and addresses E-safety