E-Safety - the Whats, Whys and Hows
The world wide web is a daunting and sometimes scary place, if only for its unfathomable size! There are however ways of staying safe online, this is called E-safety. E-safety is the umbrella term for personal safety online, it could be protecting private information, playing and watching age appropriate games and films online or preventing cyber bullying among other things.
Childnet.com has a section for primary children to view that includes SMART rules. SMART represents five aspects of e-safety: S is safe, not giving out any personal information; M is meet, online friends are still strangers and organizing to meet them is never advised; A is accepting, online accept and open messages from known sources; R is reliable, double check information found online by researching different websites and sources; T is tell, always tell an adult about any worries, confusions or other online queries. The use of SMART as an acrostic means it is a memorable way of ensuring e-safety is well implemented.
The link below is a video that gives an example of a potential online threat and the importance of educating children at home as well as at school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5kW4pI_VQw
There are many anti-virus programs available online that work to prevent viruses and pop-ups like those seen in the video.
I hope that this short blog on e-safety has increased your knowledge of the subject as a whole and that you and your children will be safer for it.
