Earlier in the month Groupall's International Business Development Manager Steve Baines spoke to Education Technology about e-safety.
Steve believes that children are often "blissfully unaware" of the dangers presented by the Internet, because social media can show them a skewed reality. He said that "several hundred 'friends' on social media makes them feel confident, well-liked, popular etc, but as we all known, these 'friends' may be anything but."
He thinks that schools should be embedding e-safety into the curriculum regularly and that this should be the case for all age groups. A suggestion he has is asking them questions such as 'How many of your online friends have you actually met in person?'. This highlights that they may not know much about online 'friends'.
Steve thinks that an effective way to embed the importance of e-safety into students is to involve them in the development of safeguarding policies. This is because 'if the children themselves are involved in developing and agreeing the policies they are far more likely to understand the reasoning behind them and to comply with the guidance and rules within them'.
You can read Steve's piece on Education Technology here.
Let us know how the school you work at (or the school your children attend) addresses the topic of e-safety on Facebook or Twitter.
