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On 10th Feb 2010 Ofsted published the ‘Safe use of new technologies’ report.  This is a report based on 35 one day e-safety inspections that have been carried out in a variety of school settings.  The report discusses the findings of the 35 inspections and examines the features of schools that had outstanding practice as well as ones that were found to have unsatisfactory practice.  You can download and read the report from here.

Last week at an ICT Mark update Ruth Hammond showed a poster that Becta have produced entitled ‘Safeguarding children online.  How e-safe are your school and learners?’

This is a really useful poster and you can order it or download it for free from here.

http://www.forensicsoftware.co.uk/index.htm

Cybermentors

http://cybermentors.org.uk/

Children from the charity talked about issues facing young people online. Cybermentors are young people who have been trained to act as mentors and guides to other young people online. They are supported by Senior Cybermentors who are HE/FE based students. BBCounsellors   are also on hand and they are fully qualified BACP accredited counsellors who are available 8am to 10pm to assist and counsel young people who are being bullied. Partners carrying the Cybermentors logo direct young people to the site.  The law and CEOP are contactable for serious issues around online behaviour.

Becta Presentation

 Neil McLean, Executive Director Institutional and Workforce Development gave a presentation on Safeguarding Next Generation Learners. He talked about the educational challenges facing children today, such as Continuous change, High Expectations, New roles, and the Changing nature of childhood. He stressed the positive aspects of new technologies while giving everyone responsibility for safeguarding children – “Protecting children whilst they are in our care and educating them for when they are not.”  While many children are confident computer users they still “do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.”

Becta Accreditation: – enables educational organisations to purchase accredited internet products and services from providers that maintain specific standards of service, including safeguards for internet access.

Policies and practice: – Main recommendations:-E-safety co-ordinator, Policy and management team, Roles and responsibilities, Checklists of AUPs and Incident log. The Becta’s school website can be found at http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/esafety

NEW! DCSF Cyberbullying guidance
www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/behaviour/tacklingbullying.   

 www.digizen.org/

CPD resources for trainees, practicing teachers and adults who work with children: – Childnet’s  Know it all

Training for professionals: – Think you know, EPICT, UCLAN

Inspection: – It’s in the School Evaluation Framework: 4b the extent to which learners adopt safe and responsible practices in using new technologies, including the Internet. Now strengthened by the Laming review. Ofsted has also designed the new school inspection framework which will apply from September 2009 so that it will have a stronger focus on safeguarding. The current inspection framework already includes a judgement about whether safeguarding arrangements in schools are satisfactory but this will be strengthened in the new framework with a grading on a scale from 1(outstanding) to 4(inadequate) for a school’s safeguarding arrangements. Any school which receives a grade of 4 will also be likely to be awarded an inadequate grade for its overall performance and will need therefore to make urgent improvements. These arrangements will ‘raise the bar’ about the importance of safeguarding for schools and will also facilitate the identification and dissemination of best practice.

What about the children themselves- “Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe – this isn’t just about a top-down approach. Children will be children – pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.”  Dr Tanya Bryon, Safer Children in a digital World. The report of the Bryon Review.

UK Council for Child Internet Safety
UKCCIS

• Officially launched 29 September 08 as result of Byron Review
• over 100 organisations chaired by Home Office and DCSF Ministers
• a Child Internet Safety Strategy, to be delivered early next year
• The strategy will:

–        establish a comprehensive public information and awareness and child internet safety campaign across Government and industry including a ‘one-stop shop’ on child internet safety;

–        provide specific measures to support vulnerable children and young people, such as taking down illegal internet sites that promote harmful behaviour;

–        promote responsible advertising to children online; and

–        establish voluntary codes of practice for user-generated content sites, making such sites commit to take down inappropriate content within a given time.  

Warwick Presentation – Safeguarding Children in a Digital World – talked about the Warwickshire e safety solution:-Websense Internet Filtering, Policy Central Enterprise Monitoring and CyberSentinel Home Application. The Websense website has a WCC customer case study report.  http://www.websense.com/docs/CaseStudies/casestudy_warwickshire_county_council_uk.pdf

For information of Forensic software go to http://www.forensicsoftware.co.uk/FSL_Education.htm

 Channel 4 videos – Anna Richardson, Journalist and TV Presenter, reviewed the making of “The Sex Education Show vs. Pornography” for Channel 4 and how ease of access to pornography influences the views of young people towards sex and relationships.

Starting this week Becta will be initiating the next phase of our Next Generation Learning campaign – on regional radio, in national press and on key websites. Becta is specifically targeting those parents who are engaged in their children’s learning and are willing to communicate the benefits technology can have to other parents and also school staff. The campaign will also be targeting parents who are engaged in their child’s learning but are still wary of using technology for learning.

We have produced a couple of packs of material along the theme of ‘Here’s how…’. These packs:

• outline the benefits of Next Generation Learning
• dispel some of the barriers and concerns over technology
• offer a view as to what Next Generation Learning in practice should look like
• offer the Next Generation Learning Charter as the way in which schools can work towards becoming Next Generation Learning ready
• encourage parents to get involved.

These materials will be available by texting in response to the adverts, or for order / download from the campaign website http://www.nextgenerationlearning.org.uk.

How education providers can become Next Generation Learning ready

Becta has launched a national initiative called the Next Generation Learning Charter. The initiative is designed to encourage more English schools to show their commitment to the effective use of technology. By working through the self-review framework, they can move confidently towards becoming Next Generation Learning ready.

To find out more and to sign up to the Charter, or encourage schools you are working with to do so, please visit www.becta.org.uk/nextgenerationlearningcharter.

To find out the other ways Becta can help those working in education become Next Generation Learning ready, visit www.becta.org.uk/nextgenerationlearning.

How you could ‘celebrate’ your school’s Next Generation Learning excellence

Becta is now calling for nominations for the 2009 ICT Excellence Awards. The fourth stage on the Next Generation Learning Charter, these awards aim to identify and reward whole school excellence in ICT.

If you think your school approaches ICT in outstanding or innovative ways, or you know of a school that does, then go to www.becta.org.uk/excellenceawards for more information, to view previous winners and to make a nomination.

Becta have launched a new Emerging Technology section to their website.

The Emerging Technologies for learning area draws together news, research, analysis and views around technology developments and trends relevant to education. It aims to provide an environment for debate on technology futures within the education community and those serving it, encouraging dialogue and building shared understandings about the future.

This is a Becta initiative, closely linked to the Becta self-review framework, aimed at ‘providing better learning opportunities through the effective use of technology.’  The Charter has four stages:

1)      The school makes a public statement that it is committed to the process of improving education through the use of technology (more details from https://selfreview.becta.org.uk/about_next_generation_learning_charter)

2)      The schools commitment is recognised

3)      The school achieves ICT mark accreditation

4)      The school applies for the ICT Excellence awards

We would encourage all schools to visit the website to find out more about the Charter and to publicly make the commitment to enhance learning in their schools through technology, no matter where you are on the spectrum – everyone has to start somewhere!

SSAT in association with Becta are inviting Secondary Schools (the invite has also been extended to LA’s) to a free half-day workshop of Online Reporting. This is an opportunity for Schools to find out more about the governments expectation that by September 2010 all secondary schools will be offering parents secure online access to information about their children’s learning and experience of school. As part of the workshop schools will be advised to consult with their local authority on moving towards online reporting and will also have the chance to discuss with leading practitioners how ICT is being exploited to improve parental engagement.

Shropshire Schools might like to attend:

ACN1007752 West Midlands 21st Nov 08, 10am Conference Aston, Birmingham
ACN1007753 West Midlands 21st Nov 08, 1.30pm Conference Aston, Birmingham

For immediate confirmation of your delegate place(s) and access to venue details, book online at www.ssatrust.org.uk/events. Please note you have to be registered on the SSAT website in order to view and book events.

Registration is free and open to all via the homepage at www.ssatrust.org.uk. If you are unable to book online or for further information please email engagingparents@ssatrust.org.uk or call Lyn Currie on 020 7802 9054.

Every week it seems there is a front-page headline proclaiming another government agency data stick lost, or a laptop stolen exposing personal details of thousands to persons unknown.  Clearly the amount of damage done will be limited to the nature of the data exposed and how accessible it is to those who have obtained it, but exposing personal data to persons unknown could be career-threatening.  Data that is encrypted to a suitable level will never present a security risk yet many teachers carry data sticks that contain personal details of pupils such as names, Unique Personal Numbers, details of academic achievement and behavioural/health issues – all wide open to the next person who picks up the mislaid data stick in the street.

Schools need to assess the risks of sensitive data being removed from their systems.  A Shropshire County Council policy for schools information security can be found here, and  Becta offers some Data Security advice for schools .  One of the basic Technological safeguards suggested is that removable data be encrypted.  Data encryption used to be a potentially arduous and expensive task.  It’s not so difficult or expensive any more and with this in mind it might be suggested that encrypting personal data held on portable devices is essential.  Becta offers a list of data encryption programs that are of varying ease to use.

Having just installed TrueCrypt I can confirm that this is a user-friendly program and I would be happy rolling out to teachers to encrypt data sticks.  It has versions for Mac OS-X, Windowsand Linux.  Data can be encrypted on an entire drive or simply within one folder/directory, and the ecrypted directory can be hidden altogether to prevent data from being demanded under duress (although I can’t see this being a problem with the majority of the kinds of information we have in education).

Now to think about an article concerning  encrypting emails…

Becta is pleased to announce that ‘Emerging technologies for learning- volume 3’ has just been published. This follow-up edition complements the first two ‘Emerging technologies for learning’ publications from 2006 and 2007.

The ‘Emerging technologies for learning’ series aims to help readers consider how emerging technologies may impact on education and learners in the medium term. The publications are not intended to be a comprehensive review of educational technologies, but offer some highlights across the broad spectrum of developments and trends. It should open readers up to some of the possibilities that are developing and the potential for technology to transform our ways of working, learning and interacting over the next three to five years.

Copies can be downloaded from www.becta.org.uk/research/reports/emergingtechnologies

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Recent high level security breaches concerning loss of personal and sensitive information have highlighted the need to update security guidance.  Please see latest advice from Becta at:

schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=lv&catcode=ss_lv_saf_dp_03&rid=14734