Happy New Year! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to make these eSafety blogs more digestible / accessible.  i.e. Short and to the point.

It does mean that I will need to post slightly more frequently but that is the trade-off.

TikTok 

One of the biggest tech trends for kids in 2019 was the rise of TikTok, a social media app that Common Sense Media have described as “what you’d get if you put YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram in a blender—and just kept it running ’til your brain exploded.” This year millions of kids flooded onto the app, and parents were at a loss, wondering what their kids were doing (or being exposed to) on this new platform.

TikTok is a video-sharing social media app available on iOS and Android which lets users create, share, and view user created videos. It’s main draw, however, is that users can record and upload bite-sized looping videos of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to popular music or soundbites, often for comedic effect.  These videos can then be further enhanced with filters, emojis and stickers. TikTok (previously music.ly) has been designed with the young user in mind and has a very addictive appeal. At the beginning of 2019 it was the iOS store’s most downloaded app.

Some useful advice can be found here from National Online Safety, but our advice remains the same as for all social media apps; please discuss your child’s usage of the app with them and check their posts and activities by reviewing their phones frequently.

https://nationalonlinesafety.com/resources/wake-up-wednesday/tiktok-guide/

Progress at STM

I’m delighted to feedback to you that there have been fewer eSafety ‘incidents’ at school this half term.  Digital Detox Week allowed me to emphasise a few reminders about phone use and school rules.  i.e. phones are turned off before being brought onto the school premises, storing phones safely (perhaps even not bringing them to school) and taking care about posting photos of one another, especially if in school uniform and indeed always seeking each other’s permission before sharing photos

Year 8 have finished a unit of work around phone technology and safety issues relating to phone use.  They have also been learning how to create online collaborative presentations, which facilitated a whole new discussion about online etiquette for effective collaboration.  Some groups chose to present various eSafety topics which enabled me to witness just how comprehensive their eSafety knowledge is.

Fake News / Misinformation

Last week’s general election highlighted the amount fake news and misinformation on social networks that we were subjected to.  Over 20000 different political ads were posted on social media platforms, many of which were highly targeted ads – using social networks’ digital profiling tools to home-in on specific voters.  Certain ads are being chosen for us based upon age, location, interests and gender.

“As social networks have grown, they’ve also amplified the voices of bad actors across the globe. Fake news has influenced global events, and algorithms care only about ‘engagement’, and keeping people addicted to platforms without substance.” From https://wt.social/

Unlike commercial advertising, accuracy and fact checking for political adverts aren’t currently legal requirements in the UK.  In Singapore a new law has been introduced requiring political advertising transparency about the amounts paid and the number of placements and views of an ad.

Educating our children about the poor reliability and indeed deliberately inaccurate information that they are likely to encounter on the web can be brought to life by talking through our own difficulties and experiences online.

Quarter of young people ‘seriously dependant’ on their smartphone

A new study has been looking into young people’s relationships with their smartphones.

The researchers, from King’s College London, found that almost a quarter (23%) were seriously dependant on their phone, and if they couldn’t use it they became ‘panicky’ or ‘upset’.  The study also discovered that the young people found it very hard to control how much time they spent on their phones.

The researchers say this kind of behaviour is similar to that of addiction.  They worry this ‘addiction’ could have “serious consequences” to young people’s mental health, such as stress, a depressed mood, lack of sleep and not trying in school.

BBC Newsround did a special entitled ‘Is Tech Taking Over?’, looking at how much kids use technology, what they use it for and how they cope without it.

Is Tech Taking Over? A Newsround Special

I will be showing it to pupils in Years 6 & 7 the week after Christmas and asking them to discuss the advice on this BBC webpage.

 

5 Steps for Staying Safe Online this Christmas

Be Careful What you Share Online Think Before you Post Never share or reveal your passwords Be careful who you chat to Protect your identity – be careful not to reveal too much about yourself

 

Christmas presents to help improve typing skills.

Whilst teaching the new Year 5 pupils this year, the lack of familiarity with using a mouse and poor keyboard skills really stood out.  For the first time we are seeing significant numbers of pupils who are unable to type at a minimum speed of 10 words per minute.  To be clear, like a child who cannot read, this is really going to affect their ability to use a computer and complete computer-based assignments.

It turns out that the poor keyboard skills are due to increased use of tablets. Pupils are using one hand only to type and even when introduced to a real keyboard with keys, still use their index fingers on the space bar.  Typing skills are clearly diminishing.  Yes, we have speech recognition, but that has been around for over 20 years now, and we still spend good portions of our lives tapping away on a keyboard!  When I surveyed the Year 5 pupils, many of them indicated that they no longer had a computer with a physical keyboard in the house.

At school,  pupils use their school Google accounts to login to a typing tutorial site called TypingClub.com.  As well as providing some time and support in lessons, I encourage them to continue to use ‘Typing Club’ for homework, with the emphasis on regular small amounts of practice.  i.e. 10 mins per day for 5 days a week. The lessons are set up with a visual keyboard on-screen so users don’t need to look down at their fingers.  The on-screen visuals also indicate which fingers should be used.  On screen visuals are gradually reduced as the user progresses through the levels and completes the course.

If you don’t have a physical keyboard at home and you are looking for an educational present for you child, perhaps you might like to consider getting Bluetooth keyboard to use with a tablet or similar and give them plenty of encouragement to get on and use Typing Club?  Decent keyboards seem to start from about £15.

Have a great Christmas.

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Adapted from sources including:

• https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/an-estimated-1-in-4-children-and-young-people-have-problematic-smartphone-usage
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50668633
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50726500

 

 

This e-Safety bulletin looks at cyber-bullying and… this might sound strange, supporting children who bully others.

If you are new to St Michael’s, I would like to introduce you to the Dorset Police Safe Schools & Communities Team (SSCT) who came into school on Thursday to talk to the school about bullying.  SSCT define bullying as the repeated and intentional hurting of one person to another. Bullying has four main forms: physical, verbal, emotional and online.

Did you know that nearly 1 in 3 teenagers in Britain experience online bullying at some point?  To help pupils understand what is and is not bullying, the SSCT exemplified what sort of things are not acceptable online and discussed what the potential consequences of such performing such actions could be.

In case you aren’t aware, the SSCT produce a quarterly online safety newsletter for parents which covers lots of useful up-to-date, pertinent information relating to young people. This is a ‘for parents’ newsletter, so I wouldn’t recommend it for direct dissemination to children as it doesn’t pull any punches in highlighting what some of the worst outcomes have been as a result of children’s use of technology.  In this post, I summarise a couple of the key messages from the latest SSCT newsletter and put them into context against the latest statistics about online bullying.

Bullying and Bullies

Until recently most guidance has been focused on what to do to support a child who is the victim of bullying. However, more recent research indicates the importance of instigating support for a child who has been bullying others. 

The traditional view of bullying as a learnt behaviour

Young people can learn to behave in a discriminatory way towards others who are different to them, for example those with a disability, different colour skin, gender, religion or nationality. If family or friends express discriminatory views, a young person can either believe this is the appropriate way to behave or may feel obliged to behave in this way to fit in.

In the online world, it can be that a young person simply does not understand the impact that their behaviour is having on another person. In face to face interactions, we rely heavily on voice tone, facial expressions and body language to understand communication; online, much of this can be missing.

 

Much online bullying happens alongside other forms of bullying such as face to face assaults or verbal abuse.  However, where bullying happens online, there are some additional issues. Firstly, online bullying can happen 24/7, so giving young people a break from their devices, especially overnight can help both victims and those bullying to break the cycle. Secondly, the online space can make bullying easier because sharing or posting something unpleasant can happen extremely quickly with just one tap or click, and you are buffered from the emotional response of the victim; in addition, the internet can mask the identity of the perpetrator of the behaviour. Lastly, the reach of the internet can mean that as well as comments being shared quickly, they can be shared far more widely than was possible in the past.

England’s schools ‘worst for cyber-bullying’

An international study says, headteachers in England are more likely to face problems with pupils bullying online and misusing social media than in any other developed country.  The report from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) reported the experiences of more than 250,000 teachers in 48 industrialised countries and regions.

It showed particular problems with cyber-bullying in England’s schools.  The survey indicated an increase in bullying, driven by online bullying and harassment and problems caused by social media.

Of the heads in England surveyed:

·         14% of schools faced problems each week caused by “hurtful” material posted about pupils, compared with an international average of 2%, with the United States having the next highest proportion – 10%

·         27% of schools faced problems each week caused by pupils receiving “unwanted contact” online – in the form of cyber-bullying, compared with an international average of 3%, with Australia having the next highest proportion – 16%

When you see these sorts of statistics, you have to wonder if our culture is feeding an attitude that leads to bullying?

The view of the bully as the victim

Bullying behaviour can be a coping strategy for a stressful or traumatic situation, including being bullied by someone else, family splits or bereavement. Some people will seek to humiliate someone else to feel powerful because they lack that feeling of power and control over elements of their own lives. Those that have been bullied are twice as likely to bully others, and if the underlying issues are not resolved, a negative pattern of behaviour can follow.

The latest research indicates massively high proportions of  bullies being the victim of previous bullying incidents.

Anti-bullying week at St Mike’s

At St Michael’s we try to exemplify a culture of respect towards the diversity of people around us and to explore, understand and value that diversity rather than propagating any biases or ill feelings towards any groups of people.

Our key messages from anti-bullying week has been to help pupils understand their own and others’ roles if they witness bullying of any sort, to understand how they can help deter bullying and the importance of reporting it to an adult.

 

You can access the SSCT newsletters and sign up to them here.

https://www.dorset.police.uk/help-advice-crime-prevention/safety-in-your-community/ssct/

The Information and text above has been adapted from the latest SSCT newsletter along with some statistics from the BBC.

Sources:

https://www.dorset.police.uk/media/60724/ssct-online-safety-parents-autumn-2019.pdf and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48692953

 

Welcome to the first post of the St Michael’s eSafety Blog for the new academic year.  For new parents, you are receiving this email as a parent of a child at St Michael’s to try to help inform and share information about the latest e-safety concerns, initiatives and events that affect our children in the digital world today.

I write a blog post about once or twice a month and this post gets emailed to you to make it easy for you to access.  You can unsubscribe from this if you wish, but I would urge you not to please as sometimes the messages address important issues and concerns about things that have happened or are going on at school.  If you want to read any previous posts, you can access them at https://stmms-esafety.home.blog .  Which is also linked below in the footer.

This post reports on the Digital Detox week we have just undertaken at St Mike’s.  60% of pupils with mobile phones took part in trying to reduce their phone usage for the week.  Some turned their phones off for the entire week whilst others tried to reduce their usage by 50%.  Pupils were asked to evidence this with a screen shots of their usage apps in order to get rewards.  Thank you to those parents that got involved in this and helped your children send me this information.

The desired outcome from the week was to make pupils (and perhaps parents) a little more aware about the extent to which they use their phone in order to help them to self-regulate.  To do this we raised awareness about the different screen time / usage apps that are available and encouraged pupils to turn them on and monitor their own usage.

Whilst iPhones and many of the newer Android phones have usage stats / screen time / digital wellbeing / digital balance apps available through the settings menus, some Android phones do not.

If your child (or you) do not have a screen time / usage app, the ‘Screen Time’ app on the Google Play store looks to be a good option.  It’s free and there aren’t any adverts or in app purchases.

As a result of pupils turning the screen time app on, I was able to get some data on phone usage across the school.  An average of 7.5 hours per week has come out from the survey, however there were quite a few extreme outliers in this figure.  About a dozen of the older girls recorded usage stats of more than 40 hours, that’s 6+ hours per day!  Some boys reported regular gaming habits of between 2 to 4 hours every day.  More on these stats in my next post.

In summary, I hope the week was useful in raising awareness of phone usage and also managed to serve as an example to some, about just how addicted to our phones we actually are?  Thank you to all the parents that got involved, I hope to build on this week with another Digital Detox week for Lent.

 

 

It’s been a while since my last e-Safety post.  Not to say that there haven’t been issues to discuss!  The events and issues we have encountered at school, have all been part of a bigger picture that have lead us to consider a number of options about what we do as a school.  Lots more on this next year but for now, here is some current news on mental health issues, a perspective on real life skills and news of a digital detox week at the end of September that I need your support to instigate.

In the news this week:

INSTAGRAM

With research showing that Instagram is the worst social media platform for young mental health (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39955295) Instagram has started an experiment by removing the number of likes from a post.  This is a result of a number of users, particularly teens, removing posts that don’t get enough likes for fear of seeming ‘unpopular’.

The feature, which is currently being trialled in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand removes publicly viewable ‘like’ counts from individual posts.  Instead of a ‘like’ count being displayed using numbers, images will only show that a few users “and others” had liked a particular post.

“We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get” say the company.

Account owners will still be able to view exact like counts in a separate page that only they can see.  At this stage, it’s unclear whether it will become a permanent feature. Instagram also hasn’t not said when, or if the service will be available to UK users.

Taken and adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48134723

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MENTAL HEALTH

Duke of Sussex Prince Harry has warned that social media can be “dangerous”.

He also said the platforms can be “addictive” and that they are all the more dangerous “because it’s normalised and there are no restrictions to it”.

Prince Harry was talking about how social media platforms can have a harmful effect on young people’s mental health and how it’s really important for young people to talk about how they’re feeling.

Taken and adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47811521

MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

Coincidentally, this week the BBC have reported on a mental health crisis in primary schools.  Referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) from UK primary schools have risen about 50% in 3 years.  They are seeing more and more children with a variety of problems that are getting more and more difficult to manage.  At the same time, CAMHS have had financial cuts imposed on them and as a result, it is not unusual for school to have to wait more than a year for a first assessment to be made for children who have experienced extreme mental health distress.

Image taken from https://ummahsonic.com/world-mental-health-day-important-ever/

REAL LIFE SKILLS

Obviously it’s difficult to identify a single root cause for this explosion of mental health issues, but perhaps this summer holiday will present an opportunity for your children to reduce screen time and ‘keep it real’.   Perhaps you could help your child build upon their real life skills?  For example, in a recent survey I did with our Year 7 pupils, about a third said they could not tie two pieces of rope together and a half said they did not know how to tie a reef knot.

In another recent national survey conducted by Ordnance Survey, some of the real life skills highlighted as ‘endangered’ were:

• Reading a map
• Using a compass
• Tie a specific knot
• Knitting
• Starting a fire from scratch
• Baking bread
• Identifying trees, insects and flowers

Finally, I would like to like to give you advanced warning of a Digital Detox week I am planning for the last week of September.  The idea being that our pupils spend a week free from their phones, social media and gaming.  Certificates, rewards, justifications through logs and screen shots will be the outputs of the week with the intention that the learning outcome will be a greater awareness of how we spend and manage our time.  It’s not going to be easy for many of us, but I do hope with your help and support, the majority of our pupils will give it a go….and persevere when it gets tough!

Of course, parents are encouraged to join in as much as possible during the week.  I know it will be almost impossible when so much of our business and social communication is based upon WhatsApp and Facebook, but perhaps if we at least try to minimise our online communications as much as possible for that week, we might all discover something about our own habits?

St Michael’s Digital Detox Week – 8:20am Mon 29^th Sept to 3:15pm Friday 2^nd Oct 2019

Choose Life, Not Likes!

STM LEAVERS

If you are the parent of leaver and do not have any other children at St Michael’s, you will be removed from this mailing list and will not receive any more posts via direct email from the blog.  You may of course continue to view the blog in your browser or subscribe via RSS feed via your own mail app if you wish to do so.

Last Monday we had a visit from the Dorset Police Safer Schools and Communities Team (SSCT) to talk to pupils about their online habits and the associated risks.

PC Barnett talked about how some pupils have been putting themselves and their friends at risk with their online activities.  She talked about the importance of making their online profiles private to prevent random people from seeing everything they post.

Of particular relevance was the message she gave out about profile pictures. She talked about how in every under age criminal case she has had to deal with over the last few years, the victim had used a real and recognisable photograph of themselves for their profile photo.  She advised pupils to replace their photos with another image that would not potentially attract an online predator.  Real photos of young people posing to make themselves look attractive are just beacons to online predators.  It shouts out that this is potentially someone who is not very online savvy and might be coaxed into making a mistake which might enable the predator to gain some sort of power over them.

Pupils also heard about how inappropriate content (messages, images and videos) are being passed around. There are a lot of people out there. Whilst many are good, some are just unpleasant or even unsafe.  Pupils were encouraged to speak to someone if they encounter anything they are concerned about online.

I could identify the following key messages from the talk.  Hopefully pupils picked up on most of these.

• Profiles – keep them private
• Only allow people to follow you / friend you that you know personally (don’t accept friends of friends that you don’t actually know)
• Tagging friends is not a good idea, it provides a network for predators to exploit
• Do not use recognisable photos of yourself as your profile picture

I know some pupils are pretty skilful at creating unrecognisable photos of themselves by using a mirror and the phone with flash in front of their face or just taking pictures or a portion of their face or the back of their head.  Here are some examples.  Do please check the profile photos your children are using.

You can subscribe to the SSCT Termly eSafety Newsletter here…

https://www.dorset.police.uk/help-advice-crime-prevention/safety-in-your-community/safe-schools-communities-team/

We now have a lovely new internet connection at St Michael’s and with that comes the opportunity for pupils to access a whole host of brilliant web services.  These online services obviously raise a number of safety concerns, so as always, we put measures in place to try to ensure safe but usable access to technology.  This post covers the concerns and respective measures related to online cloud services and email accounts.

Pupil’s at St Michael’s have now been issued with their school email accounts and Microsoft Office 365 accounts.  ‘Office 365’ is a web-based version of Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. One of the biggest advantages of Office 365 is the ability to work from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Because it’s entirely cloud-based, you can access your email, files and Office programs (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) from any location on any device.

All year groups now have access to Office 365.  This allows me to teach pupil’s how to use these services so they can start to become more familiar and confident with cloud-based environments and working practices.

This now provides us with the opportunity to use some of the excellent free online services available via the web, that provide records of achievement and allow pupils to save work.  For personalised access to these services, pupils require an email address to authenticate the user and potentially reset passwords if required.  For this reason I have given all Year groups access to their Office 365 accounts.

Pupils are registered with Office 365 using their school user ID and domain.  For pupils we use the stmms.online domain.  All pupil’s that have attended their ICT / Computing lessons in the last couple of weeks have been introduced to their Office 365 accounts, specifically how to access, send and receive emails.  They were given clear instructions about email etiquette, i.e. being polite, considerate, respectful and to not spam large groups of people. They have also been reminded to remember ask permission before sending or uploading a photo of anyone.

In terms of the safety aspect, I am of course concerned about spam, scams & phishing.  These topics are now scheduled for repeated coverage in increasing depth to all year groups as part of our computing curriculum.

It terms of internal safety issues, my main concerns are:

• communication with parties outside of school
• communicating inappropriate messages to large numbers of people.
• password security

Safety Measures

I have configured all pupil’s email accounts to prevent them from emailing anyone outside of the school domain.  i.e. they can only email staff and other pupils.  This does not stop them receiving emails.  For instance, they can still receive emails from parents containing information or a photo to use in their work.

Students cannot mail any of the existing groups or create their own groups.  This should help dissuade anyone from trying sending inappropriate emails to everyone.

Password security remains an ongoing concern as too many pupils have to write their passwords in their PNBs due to too often forgetting it.  Passwords must be a minimum of 8 characters long and have three from the follow types of characters; upper case, lower case, numbers & special characters.  They cannot contain year of birth, names or initials.

I would appreciate any help you are able to give to help your child select and remember suitably strong passwords that they do not have to write down.  If you have a look on page 101 of their PNB, you should find details of their accounts and possibly a written password.

The main problem with password security is the potential for other pupils to hack into someone else’s account and impersonate them online or delete their work.  Clearly a situation to be avoided!

I do cover password management techniques as part of our syllabus, but because passwords are such an important part of our modern world, talking about this with your child is becoming increasingly important.

With the advent of email communications comes the potential for pupils to send inappropriate messages.  If this happens we do have the ability to set filters to block inappropriate language and alert me.  However, I prefer to take an approach where pupils learn to take responsibility for their actions, rather than trying on the old ‘I was just testing the filters’ excuse.  (Been there, tried that before!)  If a pupil does send inappropriate messages to another student, we will give them a warning, record the misdemeanour on their school records and send their parents/carers a copy of the email.  If they repeat the offence, we may have to disable their Office 365 access.

I hope this post help provides a little more clarity about some of the things we are doing in school and what pupil’s may be accessing at home.  As always, please do talk to your child about exactly what they are doing online….and on their phones.

 

 

Smart Watches

I started talking to pupils about smart watches before Christmas because some students had made poor choices and were using them to receive and respond to text messages during lessons and others had chosen to play games on them during assembly.  Pupils have reacted well to the message about ‘responsible use’ but I am cautious about the presence of smart watches in school because of the evolving technological ability to provide near-mobile phone functionality on the wrist.

This post explains our current attitudes and policies in practice for smart watches and mobile phones.

A brief introduction to smart watches.

At the most basic level, smart watches can monitor motion activity, tell the time and transfer activity data to an app on our phones.   More sophisticated smart watches can work as an extension of our smartphones and notify wearers when they have an email, text message or social media notification.  They can also allow the wearer to reply using simple pre-configured responses if they are paired and nearby the user’s phone.  Location based services using GPS are now commonplace and we can also buy smart watches that will accept their own SIM card and allow the wearer to make calls and access services without the need to pair a phone.  We are also seeing phones with embedded cameras, most of which are to facilitate FaceTime style communications but others that are designed for taking photographs and videos.

These devices have real health benefits for pupils and put time management back onto the arm of the child.  Kids love them because they are fashionable and a status symbol.  Parents are able to use family tracker apps that allow them to see a child’s location via GPS on their children’s smart watches and phones.  They can even report on exercise levels alongside kids tracking and analysing their own activity levels.  For better or worse, you’ll be able to track your child’s every move soon…but that’s another debate!

Some of the newer watches are compatible with Apple and Android Pay, services that allow people to buy products with the swipe of a watch and push of a button. So now, instead of ‘borrowing’ £10 before heading out, your child can make any payments required with their watch, assuming it’s linked to your account, and therefore your credit card!

The problem schools are facing is that whilst some smartwatches are very obviously not traditional watches, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between ordinary watches, smart watches that rely on Bluetooth connectivity for services, and true phone watches or camera watches.

Without an easy way to tell if students are communicating with someone outside of school or taking photographs, many schools have already taken the decision to ban these watches.

Whilst we recognise the health and safety benefits mobile phones and smart watches provide our pupils, we must of course prioritise the safety and privacy of every student and ensure they these devices do not interfere with learning.

Whilst we do not have a Wimborne Academy Trust ban on smart watches (yet), my own approach is to encourage pupils and parents to make the right choices about the devices you purchase and bring into school.  At the moment I am not aware that any pupils have a full-on phone watch that accepts a SIM card and I have yet to see someone with a camera watch.  While this is the case and as long as students turn off their mobile phones before entering the site, it looks like we can leave the responsible use bit in the hands of the pupils.  However, if pupils do start bringing these devices into school and stop making responsible choices, I can see no other option but to ban smart watches.

Of course, there will come a time when nearly all smart watches come with these features as standard, so I guess what I am saying is…smart watches will have to be banned soon.  Until we reach that point, please consider carefully what devices you buy your children in terms of what you expect them to be able to bring to school!

For info, smart watches are banned from all examinations nationally.

MOBILE PHONES

The Wimborne Academy Trust has established a policy for mobile phones that provides information for teachers, pupils, parents and carers about the use of personal mobile phones during school hours and when on site.  This policy also applies to pupils & staff during school trips and extra-curricular activities both on and off the school site.

The policy has arisen because mobile phones do present a number of issues for us as a school. For example:

• The high monetary value of many phones. They are a valuable piece of equipment prone to loss and theft.
• The integration of cameras into phones leading to potential child protection issues with regard to pupils filming events, each other, inappropriately taking pictures of events/each other and using or distributing images inappropriately.
• The potential for mobile technology to be used to bully other students.
• The potential to use the phone for communication whilst in class or at break time.
• The ability to access the internet and bypass the school’s safety filtering. (Fortunately, we are blessed / cursed with extremely weak mobile phone reception so this is not a significant concern.)

At St Michael’s we recognise that personal communication through mobile technologies is an accepted part of everyday life but that such technologies need to be used well away from the vicinity of vulnerable children.  We understand that mobile phones are owned by a significant number of pupils and recognise the need for parents to give their children mobile phones to protect them from everyday risks involving personal security and safety. There is also increasing concern about children travelling alone on public transport or walking to school. It is acknowledged that providing a child with a mobile phone gives parents reassurance that they can contact or be contacted by their child if they need to speak to them urgently.

We do not consider it realistic or desirable to prohibit phones being brought to School, nor is it logistically possible for School to collect phones in each morning and return them in the afternoon. It is the responsibility of pupils who bring mobile phones to school turn their phones off before they enter the school premises and to not turn them on again until they are off site. This ‘gate policy’ has for the most part been respected by the majority of students and appears to be working well.

The decision to provide a mobile phone to their children should be made by parents or carers and it is incumbent upon parents to understand the capabilities or the phone and the potential use/mis-use of those capabilities.  Parents / carers should be aware if their child brings a mobile phone to school, they should leave it locked away in their locker/bag when they arrive. To reduce the risk of theft during school hours, pupils are advised to keep them well concealed and not ‘advertise’ they have them.  Parents are responsible for arranging any necessary insurance to provide the required cover in the event of loss or damage.  Parents should note that low security lockers are only provided to Year 7 & 8 on payment of deposit for a key.  We do not have enough lockers for all Year 7 & 8 students.

If a pupil needs to contact parents/carers in exceptional circumstances during the school day, they should communicate their need through the school office.  Likewise, the school office remains the appropriate point of contact for urgent messages for pupils.

Phones or any device with a camera should NEVER be taken out of bags in changing rooms.

A Parent’s Guide – What you need to know

I am sorry, but there are going to be a couple of eSafety bulletin posts this week as there are a few issues that you need to be made aware of before half term.

Apex Legends

There’s a new craze on the block.  EA Games’ purchase of Respawn Entertainment at the end of 2017 has resulted in the new free-to-play battle royale title, Apex Legends.  This hit the market just over a week ago, giving anyone the ability to download the game and play it.  It’s currently the most popular game on Twitch, the live streaming video platform primarily centred around online game play.

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“A battle royale game is a video game genre that blends the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game with last-man-standing gameplay.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game

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Apex Legends has been marketed as a ‘better than Fortnite’ alternative or upgrade, now that the Fortnite craze has become ‘old news’!  And since it’s a digital title with no retail version, the age rating might not always be very be obvious once you are past the initial ‘splash’ screen.

Apex Legends has been given an ESRB Rating of T (Teens) for Blood and Violence, which by their definition means the game is mainly made for those who are 13-years-old or older. The ERSB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) is an American self-regulating rating board with a voluntary code of conduct for retailers.

PEGI on the other hand, is a legally enforced European rating system. Apex Legends has been given a PEGI rating of 16 because it “features sustained depictions of violence toward human characters and moderate violence.”

From what I understand, the game does contain a lot of violence for a battle royale game, despite only having minimal blood in an attempt to make it more ‘palatable’!

At school we have heard reports of pupils going home over the weekend to download and install Apex Legends, telling parents that ‘everyone at school is playing it’.  When parents have questioned this, there has been anxiety about not being able to join in and feeling excluded.

I can’t speak about what is happening in every pupil’s home, but I suspect that this is not the case and parents that are aware of the game’s age rating, are probably not going to allow their children to play the game and will re-direct them back to Fortnite: Battle Royale instead.

Do please contact me if there is anything else relevant to Apex Legends or if you have any other concerns.

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What is Fortnite?  (From ChildNet)

Fortnite is an online game, Battle Royale is a part of Fortnite where players do not have to pay to play. In Battle Royale, the free segment of Fortnite, 100 players compete against each other to be the last person standing in player vs player (PVP) combat.

Users are playing against people of different ages from across the world, and Fortnite has in game audio chat so that players can talk and interact with each other as they play.

What age rating is Fortnite?

Fortnite has a PEGI rating of 12, PEGI have said this is due to the: ‘frequent scenes of mild violence. It is not suitable for persons under 12 years of age’.

This PEGI rating only takes into account the content in the game and not the contact element, where players may be exposed to swearing and offensive language from strangers in voice or on-screen text chat.

https://www.childnet.com/blog/a-parents-guide-to-fortnite-battle-royale

 

The personal computer revolution brought about massive change in the work place.  Mobile phones and the incredibly clever apps that run on them have and still are bringing about huge social change.  For instance, in 2001 the first phone with a camera became available.  This resulted in a behavioural change, where once phone use was acceptable in public sports changing rooms, the advent of the camera phone, resulted in everyone knowing that you should NEVER take you phone out in a changing room to allow people to get changed without fear of being photographed or videoed.

Problematically, this widely adopted rule has not been absorbed by the next generation.  The familiarity of photographing and filming themselves and each other has resulted in some of our students becoming oblivious to these very clear standards of behaviour.  Please do have ongoing conversations with your children about where it is and is not acceptable to use phones.

This leads us on to the issue of sexting…children taking revealing selfies of themselves and then forwarding them onto friends (or strangers) via a messaging service.  Whilst we would like to believe that the children at St Michael’s are far too young to get involved in such potentially damaging and illegal activities, I feel it prudent to direct you to the following statistics.

Click here to go to full size, original image.

For those of us parents who didn’t grow up with camera phones, the biggest question about sexting might be: Why?

I’m sure there are many reasons why kids sext each other. They might do it to get attention, to flirt, as a thoughtless impulse, or even as a joke.  Peer pressure is also a factor in texting, especially from members of the opposite sex. A study reported that of those who sent sexts, 51% of teen girls blamed “pressure from a guy,” while 18% of teen boys cited pressure from girls. I suspect that kids might even feel pressured to send sexts to compete for the attention of those they like.  Others are simply making their first sexual forays and use sexting as an outlet to learn more about sexual activities.

Regardless of the reason, it is a risky behaviour that could land any vulnerable teenager in trouble.  Whilst the constituent of St Michael’s student body is mostly children in their tweens (pre-teen years), we do know that behaviours and habits that are usually associated with older children are becoming more common with younger children as they mimic their older contemporaries.  It is important for you to be aware of this picture and to judge when you should talk to your children about such matters.  As part of such conversations talk about ways in which sexting can be harmful, this Digital Parenting blog post should help or this article from the VeryWellFamily site.  Let your children know that they pay for their sexting in emotional and legal ways. If sexual based pictures land in the wrong hands, then what may have started as innocent fun, could suddenly become a very serious issue.

In Computing and ICT lessons, our eSafety curriculum schedules sexting to be taught after Feb half term in Year 8.  I am resistant to moving it forward into Year 7 as I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss with the majority of Year 7 students.  However, I do plan to bring it forward to the start of Year 8 next year because it is has become evident it is needed sooner rather than later.

PRUDE MOMENT

Yes, you read that right!

I take a view of childhood development, that children will push boundaries to explore the results of doing so.  It’s basically part of learning by trial and error.  When children start taking and posting provocative or suggestive photos of themselves….like the ones they are inundated with every day in advertising media and within their social media streams…and they start to get favourable responses, then they tend to keep going further and further until they get a bad response.  For me this starts with the pouty / sultry pose, is quickly followed by carefully edited profile pictures to increase the beauty factor and increase online interest and popularity.

And onwards to sexting…..

My apologies if this post has pushed parents a little out of their comfort zone and brought awareness of some teenage issues to your doorsteps a little early.  My feeling is that is better to make you aware of this stuff so you can coach and develop your children’s attitudes as part of your family conversations rather than wait for something to go wrong.

It would be great to refer back to years of research about ways to approach bringing up our children in the digital age.  However, we are in uncharted territory. All we can do as parents is try stay informed and guide and support our children as best we can!

Do feel free to email me if there are topics you would like me to cover.