Educating our children about sensible and appropriate use of the internet is the key factor that will ensure, as far as possible, children’s safety on the Internet. Blocking and filtering is advised for KS1 children but from early KS2, as they become more technically aware, the only way is to teach guidelines on how to keep themselves safe. They should be introduced to Internet safeguards such as:

• not disclosing their identity and address to someone they do not know on line

• being aware of signs of inappropriate behaviour when chatting to people in a chat room.

• knowing what to do if this happens and make sure they can tell you about anything on the

Internet that makes them feel uncomfortable or unhappy.

Children need to be taught how to manage the risks and use the Internet in a constructive way that

will develop their ability to use it for all its different purposes in every day life.

Some safeguards that were discussed:-

a) Not safe for children under 13 to have a profile on FACEBOOK.

b) Parents should be checking online History to see what the child has been searching.

c) Check that the games with online access are safe and age appropriate.

d) Being aware which gadgets in the house allow online access and make decisions as to when to

allow unsupervised access eg. smartphones/tablets

e) Preparing children for secondary school where they might encounter cyber bullying.

Useful Websites

www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents – CEOP’s education site containing areas of interest for all age groups including parents and teachers.

www.facebook.com/clickceop – Let’s you “Like” the CEOP page. Also has lots of additional information.

http://www.childnet.com/kia/parents  – Childnet’s KnowITall page with links to excellent advice for parents.

http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/parents/parental-controls.aspx – Kidsmart site with links to enabling parental controls on most popular Internet connected devices.

http://www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf – Guide to using Facebook written especially for parents (PDF).

http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/parents/parental-controls.aspx – Advice on parental controls for gaming and mobile devices.

http://www.mumsnet.com – Online discussion forum with comments posted about popular issues.

http://www1.k9webprotection.com – Free content filter.

http://www.safesearchkids.com – Google Safe Search Kids.

http://www.squirrelnet.com – Squirrelnet – based on Google’s strict safe search criteria.

http://kids.yahoo.com – Yahooligans – fun site for children with games, jokes and loads of educational resources.

http://www.askkids.com – Ask Kids – “Safe” search engine for children. NOTE: due to the nature of the Internet no search engine can be 100% safe but this site and the sites above go to great lengths to ensure the content they provide is as safe as possible. Read the parents section for more information.

http://www.kidsclick.org – Click Kids – child friendly search engine designed by librarians.

http://www.iwf.org.uk – Internet Watch Foundation – Should you come across material which you think is illegal you can report it here.