E-Safety

Children, now often referred to as 'digital natives', are growing up in an environment where technology and ICT is embedded and immersed in everyday life. Research  has shown how impressive a resource technology can be to both teachers and learners, working to improve both social development and academic attainment in primary schools.  Alongside the exceptional educational and social opportunities provided by technology, there exist, unfortunately, a number of dangers and risks. With an ever increasing use of ICT  in schools, and a wide-spread use of the internet to assist teaching and learning, eSafety is now high on the agenda in primary schools as cause for concern.

ESafety defined

The term eSafety can be broadly defined as:

"All fixed and mobile technologies that children and young people may encounter, now and in the future, which allows them access to content and communications that could raise issues or pose risks to their well-being and safety." (DfE, 2008)

Following the Every Child Matters (2004) legal act, eSafety has become embedded within safeguarding strategies, with particular focus on aspects of the 'staying safe' outcome required by the act.

Risks associated with eSafety can consist of:

• exposure to inappropriate content which may upset or embarrass children
• content which could potentially lead to involvement in crime or anti-social behaviour
• communication with strangers, leading to issues of sexual exploitation or abuse
• e-bullying, with technology used as an instrument to torment other children
• access to personal information and content

Digital education

While schools can provide a certain degree of protection against these sorts of exposure, children can never be fully secure from inappropriate content and communication. It would therefore seem important to teach digital education, giving pupils the ability to be critical or wary of particular materials, information, or communications they come across on-line. 

CBBC have in fact dedicated a whole section of their website to educating children on the dangers associated with ICT. CBBC stay-safe.
An example of one of their humorous, educational videos can be seen below:

Good fun huh.


For a comprehensive overview of eSafety, it may be worth having a read through The Department for Educations'  'Safeguarding children in a digital world' document, which works towards outlining and developing an eSafety strategy. Similarly the DfE provide a good introduction to eSafety in their 'Signposts to safety: Teaching eSafety at Key stages 1 and 2' document.

Right, that's me done.
Until next time.