e-Safety in Schools

Anti-bullying charity Beatbullying has launched a new website for young people. The revamped website includes social networking, blogging, music uploading and video features. It enables young people of all ages to share thier own videos, photos and upload/download music created by other users, as well as blog about their thoughts on bullying. The new site follows a new adult and professionals' website, which was launched earlier in 2008, and was developed after consultation with hundreds of young people. The site includes information and tips on how young people can keep safe when using the site itself and the internet etc in general.

Sarah Dyer, director of new media from Beatbullying, said: "It is absolutely crucial to engage with young people using the sorts of web technology they like. Our new site enables young users to communicate, interact and support each other online...We know how hard it can be to get young people interested and involved in anti-bullying messages and activities, but by making our website appealing and interactive, we can give young people an opportunity to explore, discuss and tackle this important issue by themselves."

The Beatbullying site is also launching a scheme in Secondary Schools called "Cybermentors", they are aiming to create groups of young people in every Secondary School who are trained to help and support their peers in an online virtual community, as well as on mobiles and other devices. By 2011, all 3000 secondary schools in the UK will hopefully be fully running the programme, which means a minimum of 150,000 schools-based mentors and a further 20,000 further and higher education students will be working to keep cyberspace a safer place. This network of young mentors will be dealing with incidents of bullying off line and online and working alongside Beatbullying, whether incidents are at school, out in the community, on social networking sites, messaging services, mobile phones, virtual communities or any other online environment.

Beatbullying also has it's own channel on youtube which includes videos and links from Beatbullying as well as other agencies/users videos and useful sites for Primary and Secondary pupils.

The UK Youth Online Unconference is a free event for anyone with an interest in how technology impacts upon, or can be used in, work with under 18s. It will be an opportunity to discuss, demonstrate and explore what the latest online developments mean for work with young people. It will take place on Saturday 27th September, 10am till 5pm in London. The event is being run on a not-for-profit basis and participation is free.

The event will be based around four themes:

Online safety and opportunity - keeping young people safe online, and balancing safety with opportunity.

Youth participation online - getting young people involved in decision making through online tools and environments.

Promoting services and messages to young people - online marketing and communication with young people.

Projects: youth work 2.0 - looking at projects and approaches to work with young people that make use of online technologies. 

For more information and registration details are available here

The poll of 1,000 UK children, aged 8 to 15 as well as 1,030 UK parents was commissioned by Garlik, which also said that parents are responding by covertley logging on to their children's social networking sites. One in four parents (25%) admits to secretly logging on to their child's social networking page, while 72% try to protect their children by monitoring contacts they make online. It also found that 26% of parents have set up their own social networking page to monitor their children's online activities.

The poll also found that the children surveyed spend an average of 1 hour a day on social networking sites. About a quarter of 8 to 15-year-olds admitted having strangers as friends on their social networking page. One in five surveyed said they have met up with strangers they have only ever encountered online. Two-thirds said they posted personal information on their pages, including their school and their mobile phone number.

The research follows the Byron Report in March, which warned that ignorance among adults about technology was leaving children vulnerable to online abuse. The Byron Report said: "Parents either underestimate or do not realise how often children and young people come across potentially harmful and inappropriate material on the internet and are often unsure about what they would do about it." 

A recent Ofcom report into Social Networking suggested that 27% of 8 to 11 year olds claim to have profile page on Social Networking sites. Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

The poll of parents found 58% said they had become more diligent than a year ago at monitoring their children's use of social networking sites, and 89% said they had spoken to their children about the dangers involved.

 A new "Kitemark for Child Safety Online has been launched with the Home Office and Ofcom to provide consumers - especially parents - reassurance that their children will not be subjected to undesirable web content."