Online Safety

ICT in the 21st Century is seen as an essential resource to support learning and teaching, as well as playing an important role in the everyday lives of children, young people and adults. Consequently, schools need to build in the use of these technologies in order to arm our young people with the skills to access life-long learning and employment

Information and Communications Technology covers a wide range of resources including; web-based and mobile learning. It is also important to recognise the constant and fast-paced evolution of ICT within our society as a whole. Currently, the internet technologies children and young people are using both inside and outside of the classroom include:

Websites
Learning Platforms and Virtual Learning Environments
Email and Instant Messaging
Chat Rooms and Social Networking
Blogs and Wikis
Podcasting
Video Broadcasting
Music Downloading
Gaming
Mobile/ Smart phones with text, video and/ or web functionality
Other mobile devices with web functionality

There is a significant amount of information from Ealing about their model of eSafety which can be reached by following the button below

Acton Gardens Primary School also has its own policy on Internet Safety that can be viewed by following the Internet Safety Policy

Home and Family Guidelines

Talk together, share experiences and have fun learning
Involve everyone in discussing & agreeing with your family guidelines and rules
Remember that sometimes what is acceptable for a 15 yr old child is not appropriate for an 8 yr old
Discuss regularly online safety and go online with your children
Communication is the key to safety
Keep anti-virus, spyware and firewall software up to date
Ask your internet provider for a service that filters out inappropriate sites (eg: pornography /race hate /extreme violence etc)
Enable your ‘browser safe’ search and/or consider using internet filtering software, walled gardens and child-friendly search engines
Delay buying your child a smartphone until they are older
Show how you will look at the browser history and will expect to see sites visited and will want an explanation should the history have been cleared in any way
If possible, keep the computer in a communal area of the house, where it’s easier to monitor what your children viewing. Never let children have webcams, or similar, in their bedroom
Talk to your children about why they should not give out their personal details (eg:, real name, address, mobile number, email, school etc) If they want to subscribe to any online service then make up a family email address to receive the mail
If you allow your children to use social networking sites (e.g: Facebook), make sure the privacy settings are set either to ‘Friends’ or Customise’ which allows you to restrict posts/photos etc, to be seen only by people you list
Insist that your children agree to discuss with you first if they are asked to meet up with some they’ve met online
Monitor & restrict the time your children spend online to help prevent obsessive use of the internet
Encourage activities away from technology!
Encourage your children, and all family members, to tell you if they feel uncomfortable, upset or threatened by anything they see online
Create a set of family guidelines that all families follow and agree on what will happen if they are not followed