‘The Morningside Web Outlaws!’ provide interesting characters which show children many of the real risks and dangers they could find online and what steps to take to keep themselves safe. E-safety is an important part of each computing lesson from Year 1 to Year 6 and children learn about a range of issues such as keeping personal information private and cyber bullying. Children in the Early Years learn about e-safety through stories and other relevant media. Morningside celebrates Safer Internet Day each year which focuses on children thinking about their role in creating a safer internet community for everyone.

The best way to protect your children online is to be informed yourself and make it part of your day to day life.  We spend years training our children to cross the road and stay away from strangers in the outside world in all the daily little messages we give them before we ever let them out there on their own.  Training them to be safe online should be an equal part of these safety messages, after all they can be out in the ‘world wide web’ from a very young age, unsupervised at times.  Use the websites below to help you find the best ways to talk to your children about keeping safe online.

***Please remember that Social Media Sites (e.g. Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, Instagram etc) have a minimum age requirement of 13+ in their terms and conditions.  Also Whats App and other internet based messaging services can only be used by 16 year olds and over.***

• Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre
• Childnet
• CEOP ThinkUKnow
• CEOP’s ThinkUknow parents section
• Digital Parenting Magazine from Vodafone
• Internet terms and Language: A Guide for Parents
• PEGI games rating
• Safer Internet Centre
• ‘Simple Steps to Parental Controls’

How to Deal with Concerns

If at any point you have any concerns about your child’s safety on line please report it to CEOP (a police led online crime and safety service).

CEOP always recommend the following;

• If you need urgent help, i.e, your child is in immediate danger such as meeting a stranger they have met online, then call 999.
• Don’t delete any emails, images or conversations related to this report
• Don’t contact the suspect yourself. Let us do the detective work

Most sites will have their own report buttons too or facility to block people and pages that cause you concern.

ESafety Workshop

Morningside runs regular e-safety workshops for the parents and carer of our children. Please look on the calendar for the latest dates. Here are some handouts from previous sessions:

• E-safety at Morningside
• Mind-the-Gap
• Herts-for-Learning-Instagram-Guidance-2014-v1.3
• Facebook-13-Combined

Chris Carter also recommends some videos which we do use in school but can provide great reinforcement or the perfect talking point and conversation starter with your children.

Lee and Kim’s Adventure is aimed at 5-7 year olds but as a school we will use this video up to Year 5.

Jigsaw is aimed at 8-10 year olds but as a school we will use this video in Year 6.

Parental Controls

Many of the large internet providers list details of how you can add parental controls and restrictions that you can put in place to restrict your child’s use of the internet in your home.  You can also add restrictions on individual devices.  Below are some links to relevant website which might assist you in this:

• Apple iOs (iphones, ipads etc)
• Samsung and android
• Windows

Websites

Google

Firefox – Firefox has an add-on called ‘Fox Filter’ which can be applied.

Internet Explorer does have parental/family settings. Please follow instructions below to set parental controls:

To set controls:

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Select “Tools” from the toolbar
3. Select “Internet Options”
4. Choose the “Content” tab
5. Click “Enable”
6. Adjust the slider to select the level you deem appropriate for your child
7. Save changes

YouTube