e-Safety in Schools

 8th September 2009: Insafe Back-to-School campaign

 Insafe will celebrate the entry to the new school year and mark international literacy day with a brand new portal for increased interactivity. At its launch, the portal will feature information and activities for students and pupils and guide them to the national language websites of the 27 countries that make up the Insafe network. A blog and forum will provide a new platform for teachers to share their ideas and concerns, and the "safety issues" on the current site will be revamped to provide customized information and resources. Watch the Insafe site for more news.

 The e-Safety kit will go online in September 2009 after the success of Insafe's e-Safety toolkit (with over 320,000 copies disseminated across more than 15 countries), this resource for families and primary schools will become available online at http://www.esafetykit.net/ or directly through the Insafe portal. Initially the toolkit will be available in 6 languages, but the online version will gradually become available in more languages to provide monthly safety tips and fun activities as well as printable work sheets for teachers.

22^nd and 23^rd October: Safer Internet Forum 2009

This will take place in Luxembourg on 22nd and 23rd October and its main theme will be "Promoting internet safety in schools". The Forum will be open for stakeholders from NGOs, governments, researchers, industry representatives, including Internet Service Providers, mobile network operators, social networking sites, software developers. The Safer Internet Forum will be preceded by the INSAFE Pan-European Youth Panel and a Teachers' Panel. Both meetings will take place on 21 October in Luxembourg and will be closed to the public. The main conclusions of both the Youth and the Teachers' Panel will be presented during the Safer Internet Forum. For further information and registration to the Safer Internet Forum visit http://www.ec.europa.eu/saferinternet 

January 28th 2010: Data Protection Day 2010:

"Think Privacy" is the title of the 2nd annual DPD competition which encourages young people to reflect on their rights to privacy and data protection in today's information society. The challenge is for 15 to 19 year-olds to create a multi-media poster (anything from a talking poster to a video or powerpoint) illustrating their viewpoint; the prizes include trips to Brussels for the DPD award ceremony. Places are available at the event for school classes wishing to organize a visit to Brussels to coincide with the event which will be held in an EU institutional venue. For further information visit www.dataprotectionday.eu

9^th February 2010: Safer Internet Day:

Under the theme "Think before you post", SID 2010 will focus on how we're managing images online and consequently, how we deal with privacy in digital environments. Insafe will be launching a pan-European quiz on 1st February, targeting two age-groups: 5-11 and 12-15 year-olds. The quiz will be open to individuals or school classes who will compete with the objective of becoming increasingly aware of their role in protecting themselves and others online. An online SID Fair will showcase participating organizations across the world, and schools are invited to register the events they will be running to mark the day. .Information on Safer Internet Day will gradually become available on www.saferinternet.org from September. 

Teachtoday is specifically designed to help teachers manage the challenges, both inside and outside the classroom, presented by online technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, mobile internet services and services such as Twitter. The website has been designed closely with UK government and professional agencies including Becta, National Association of Head Teachers, teacher unions, local authorities and independent educational experts.

The Teachtoday website builds on the issues outlined in the 2008 Byron Report and the work of the DCSF Cyberbullying Task Force. It has a particular focus on problems that affect teachers directly; for example, where they are subject to malicious comments, videos or fake profiles posted on social networking sites by pupils.  These can all be instantly uploaded and shared virally using mobile technologies such as Bluetooth or internet access. The website also provides professional guidance for teachers' use of personal devices from using a mobile in the school environment, to blogging and social networking.

Teachtoday.eu provides teachers with valuable information and resources needed to manage the safe and responsible use of new technologies within the classroom.  It considers a wide range of issues that can affect children and young people today, such as cyberbullying, privacy, health concerns such as self harm and sexual grooming.

"Teachtoday.eu has been developed to ensure that teachers and the whole school workforce have the information and resources necessary to ensure they can deal with the ever changing challenges of new technologies," said Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of ATL, the education union. "We all recognise that changes in the way people share information online have happened so quickly it is almost impossible for teachers to keep ahead of their pupils so we felt, as the sector which works most closely with young people, that it was important to help them address this".

"The National Education Network welcomes the release of Teachtoday.eu. Online and mobile technologies offer astonishing opportunities for learning.  Teachtoday.eu considers both the personal and professional safety of Teachers alongside resources that can be used in the classroom.  Effective and safe use and navigation of the Internet is a valuable life skill for all," commented David Wright, National Education Network (NEN).

Teachtoday.eu is part of a wider industry collaboration which will see further sites launched across Europe.  It is developed in partnership with European Schoolnet (EUN), a not-for-profit consortium of 28 European Ministries of Education. EUN provides major European education portals for teaching, learning and collaboration