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Safer Internet Day 2023
Safer Internet Day 2023 took place on this Tuesday, 7 February, and, as with every year, Beechwood has focused on this topic in every Computing lesson this week.
This year’s theme is ‘‘Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online’.
The worldwide initiative is led in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre, and they provide many resources which offer guidance and help for parents when having discussions about this topic with your children.
At Beechwood, pupils marked this important day in the following ways:
Year 1 pupils were introduced to ‘Hanni and the Magic Window’ an analogous story that explains how to ask for help if young people discover something they don’t like on the Internet.
Year 2 pupils had a long discussion and played some games in pairs which were based around finding methods that made it easier for them to ask for help in general, but with specific reference to the use of the Internet.
Year 3 have begun to use the wonderful online Scratch community as they start to create their own games. This site, designed for kids, has a community and collaborative ethos, and pupils are encouraged to share their ideas and to comment on other children’s games. So, we discussed how this can be done safely.
Year 4 have been learning to create shapes and patterns using Turtle Logo and whilst doing this we discussed patterns in general, with specific reference to asking a friend or Trusted Adult when they notice a pattern they are uncomfortable with or unsure about.
Year 5 have been digging deeper into Scratch and have been using their well-developed skills to illustrate developing conversations in the form of interactive quizzes, which themselves are about Online Safety.
Year 6 have continued to learn about HTML and the way it is used to create websites and they have used this knowledge to see that anyone can make a website on any topic and that they need to constantly analyse and question the truth of anything they read when online.
Year 7 pupils have investigated the tragic story of Ghyslain Raza aka ‘Star Wars Kid’ and the way that online bullying 17 years ago, in the form of a spiteful meme over which head no control, ruined his life, even to this day.
Top Form pupils have been learning about Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, with a focus on the current phenomenon of ChatGPT. As they have done so they have learned that they need to be constantly ready to question the origins of anything they come across when online, and they need to adopt methods to scrutinise the information to ascertain its veracity.