Computing and E-Safety

What can you do as parents?

As a parent, you’ll know how important the internet is to children. They use it to learn, play, socialise and express themselves. It’s a highly creative place of amazing opportunities. However, it may seem daunting and worrying about the risks your child/ren face online- such as bullying, contact from strangers or even the possibility of them seeing illegal or inappropriate content. As a parent, you can help your child, and yourself, become more e-safe by keeping up-to-date with technology and the issues surrounding them.

At home, sometimes children can be given unsupervised access to the Internet. This, potentially, allows them to access all kinds (both good and bad) and bring them virtually into their homes.

Here are some conversation starter ideas from www.childnet.com

• Ask your children to tell you about the sites they like to visit and what they enjoy doing online.
• Ask them about how they stay safe online. What tips do they have for you, and where did they learn them? What is OK and not OK to share?
• Ask them if they know where to go for help, where to find the safety advice, privacy settings and how to report or block on the services they use.
• Encourage them to help. Perhaps they can show you how to do something better online or they might have a friend who would benefit from their help and support.
• Think about how you use the internet as a family. What could you do to get more out of the internet together and further enjoy your lives online.

We want to help our parents to improve their own understanding of e-safety issues so they can learn to use the internet and all digital media in a safe, secure way. There are very good websites that offer information on how to keep e-safe online. Please see the following links:

Childnet

An organisation working directly with children, parents and teachers to ensure that the issues of online child protection and the safe and positive use of the internet are addressed.  Find great ideas on staying safe gaming and how to set parental controls too.

Think you know

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has set up its own website which has been designed and written specifically for children, young people, teachers, parents and carers. This site has information, games and videos matched to different ages of children and for parents too. It is a very good site but please ensure your child is on the correct age setting.

Kidsmart

Kidsmart is an award winning internet safety website for parents and those working with children. It has been developed by the children’s internet charity Childnet International and has excellent information on many of the technologies used by children, with guidance on how to ‘stay safe’ online.