Parent Support Articles
| Wellbeing – Young People’s Relationships with AI Chatbots A superb new report from Voicebox takes a look at how AI chatbots affect the mental health of young people and the findings are both positive and negative.. Some of the findings are: A chatbot admitting to self-harm and initiating extreme role-play.Sexual dialogue.Lack of empathy and interpersonal skills.Unrealistic relationship expectations.IMPORTANT FOR PRIMARY SCHOOLS: Remember that when you see any report referring to teens and social media you don’t bypass it. To be on social media (as we know many young children are), you have to be at least 13 years of age (for most), therefore to that platform any user is at least teen-aged.You can read the full report HERE. National Crime Agency – Strategic Assessment The NCA have released their strategic assessment of serious and organised crime for 2023 and there are some stark conclusions: The biggest group of offenders in the UK are those that abuse children – up to 830,000 offenders in the UK alone.Fraud accounts for more than 40% of all crime with more than 75% of that committed from overseas. IMPORTANT – one of the primary pieces of advice we give to children and young people is to check spelling and grammar (e.g. phishing emails, websites etc.). With large language models such as ChatGPT being used more and more by criminals we need to put this advice into context and inform students that AI is very much changing the landscape of online risks.You can read the full NCA report HERE. Resources – Cyber Security With October being cyber security awareness month I had picked out some resources that may be useful for school and parents:The National Cyber Security Centre have some great resources for 7-11 year olds. Cyber Sprinters is a digital game that can be played on phones, tablets and desktop computers with activities to learn more about cyber security. Great for the classroom or home. You can view the resources HERE.Internet Matters have a whole range of topics and resources related to issues such as phishing and ransomware, privacy and identity theft, doxxing and more. You can view the resources HERE.Also from Internet Matters and very useful for parents is an interactive guide to creating secure accounts, e.g strong passwords and two-factor authentication. You can access this HERE. For Parents – Protecting Children from Explicit Content It is easy for any person, any age, to stumble across inappropriate and explicit content online and for parents this can be challenging. Internet Matters have a range of resources available to help parents including: Tips and tools for website/content filtering.What to do if your child sees explicit content.Resources for further help and support.You can see all the sections HERE.Additionally, with everything that is going on around the world at the moment it’s important that parents know how to minimise the negative impact of what their children may be seeing. The Mental Health Foundation have put some advice together which i think would be very useful. You can find this HERE. Online Safety Subscription Service Keeping staff and parents up to date with online safety risks and issues is time-consuming and often costly. I am introducing a new subscription service which does the work for you in a flexible, cost-effective way. There are 3 models: staff only, parents only, staff and parents. The service will be going live after October half-term, you can find full details plus costs HERE and if you are interested just let me know. Online Safety Leads Course This is an online, self-led course which has been running for a couple of years but the platform the course was hosted on became a technical nightmare to manage. I have found a new platform and have ported the course over, it’s now much better.The OSL course goes into much greater detail for those staff (e.g. DSL’s, Computing Leads) who have a more involved responsibility for online safety in relation to curriculum, policy, management, risks and harm, filtering and monitoring and much more. You can see more details on the new platform HERE. Online Safety Training (staff, parents and students) As well as in-school training (staff, students, parents) and virtual (Zoom/Teams) I also offer cost-effective pre-recorded video training as follows (each purchase includes a 12 month licence to use as many times as you wish within your setting): STAFF INSET There is a primary version plus a secondary/college version, the most recent videos were updated and re-recorded at the end of August 2023 to make sure they’re right up to date. They take staff through the risk basics (content, contact, conduct and commerce), the spaces that children occupy online (games, YouTube and social media) plus the latest risks and issues with supporting advice and guidance. The video can be streamed or downloaded to the school network. If you would like to see a sampler video you can access the 4-minute introduction HERE. Cost: £95.00 plus VAT (cost per school, not per person) for a 12 month licence. For Multi-Academy Trusts or if purchasing for a number of schools, discounts are available. Just email me and let me know how many schools you would like to purchase for. PARENTS The days of parents online safety evenings were often a struggle to get parents to attend, so I have created a series of 7 short videos for parents. On purchase, I will send you a MS Word document. This document contains the text, supporting links and video links for 7 emails (or other school communication) which you just need to copy, paste and send out to parents at a frequency of your choice (e.g. one a week). You are also welcome to add your own text. Cost: £149.00 plus VAT (cost per school, not per person) for a 12 month licence. For Multi-Academy Trusts or if purchasing for a number of schools, discounts are available. Just email me and let me know how many schools you would like to purchase for. GOVERNORS/TRUSTEES This video, recorded in Aug 2023, is similar to the staff video but from a governance context. Lasting for just over an hour it covers what online safety means, the risk categories, the online lives of children/young people, followed by a few simple questions that governors can consider with advice and guidance. Cost: £95.00 plus VAT (cost per school, not per person) for a 12 month licence. For Multi-Academy Trusts or if purchasing for a number of schools, discounts are available. Just email me and let me know how many schools you would like to purchase for. SECONDARY STUDENTS This is a series of 10 videos, each of which are short (between 8 and 12 minutes) covering a range of different topics. These are ideal for showing in assembly to promote further classroom discussion/debate or within the classroom to go deeper into the topic. You will be able to download these videos for future use, or even use for virtual learning by sharing the link with students. The cost is £179 (plus VAT) for all the videos, not each. Full details and a sample video can be found HERE. |
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