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RYE ST ANTONY SCHOOL IN OXFORD WELCOMES BACK SMOOTHWALL ON SAFER INTERNET DAY
Today on Safer Internet Day, online safety company Smoothwall will be visiting Rye St Antony School in Oxford to deliver an interactive workshop for pupils, parents and teachers on the importance of staying safe on the internet.
Following last year’s success at Rye St Antony School, Smoothwall will today be taking three assemblies for Years 5 & 6, Year 9 and parents & carers, tackling topics such as the potential risks of social media, stranger danger, online gaming, digital wellbeing, Facebook check-ins and many more.
As part of the new Safer Internet Day slogan to ‘Create, Connect and Share Respect’, children at the Oxford school will be encouraged to create positive online communities with their school friends. Interactive sessions and activities such as quizzes will be used to keep the children engaged and make them mindful of what can be offensive, harmful or damaging.
The workshop comes as research by Smoothwall shows teachers are ill-equipped to help tackle online safety in the school on their own; over 6-in-10 (62%) don’t believe they are fully supported and 84% believe the government should be doing more to help train and prepare them around internet safety in the classroom.
A further 41% of teachers said online safety isn’t taken seriously enough in the school and 77% do not believe that companies like Facebook and Google are doing enough to protect young people.
Claire Stead, Online Safety Expert at Smoothwall and the company’s ambassador, will be talking to children about the importance of staying safe online: “We’re delighted to come back to Rye St Antony, after our hugely successful trip on Safer Internet Day last year. The slogan might have changed, but the message certainly hasn’t: in this digital day and age, we need to be protecting children as much as we can from the potential risks they face online. Whether through social media, chatrooms or gaming, there are more avenues through which kids can be exposed, but it’s not just young people that need to be educated on the dangers.
“At Smoothwall, we feel it’s just as important to engage with teachers and parents who aren’t as digitally confident as children, which is why we’re having separate sessions for adults too. Keeping safe online is an issue that affects everyone. That’s why today is so important for building confidence, raising awareness and promoting safe use of the internet – but doing so in a way that engages everyone.”