Teaching Internet safety is an extremely important topic. There are a wide
range of sites and activities that you can use with children to help them
to understand how (and why it is important) to keep themselves safe online:
- Make an e-safety poster. Look here for some examples.
- Make a Powerpoint presentation / Textease document explaining how to
stay safe online.
- Discuss with the children what is meant by ‘personal information’.
Discuss who you would be happy to share different types of personal information
(name / address / phone / post code) with (your doctor? a man on the bus? David
Beckham? your teacher? your best friend’s uncle?).
- Discuss different ways of communicating (telephone, mobile, texting,
letter writing, chat rooms, email, sign language, morse code). Identify
how each type of communication is used, and the benefits / drawbacks of
each (is it face-to-face? is it instant communication, or do you have to
wait for a response? is it free / costly? is it formal / informal?). Identify
which types of communication are appropriate for different purposes (would
your teacher contact your mum / dad via letter / chat room etc?).
- Play the ‘True or False?’ game. Ask children to answer
questions truthfully or by lying. Can other children work out who is telling
the truth and who isn’t?
Discuss the implications of this when reading information on the Internet
/ in emails / in text messages etc.
- Ask children to explore a particular website, and write a review of
it for those who haven’t seen it.
- Create a ‘Useful websites for children’ booklet to encourage
children to visit safe sites.
- Use drama to get children to explore what might happen if:
- someone was being bullied via email. How should they / the bully
/ parents / teachers react?
- someone was receiving threatening text messages on their mobile,
- someone posted a rude message on Superclubs Plus,
- someone made a web page called ‘I Hate My School’.
- Explore these websites:
- Watch some of these
Teaching Videos about Internet Safety.
Do you have any other ideas, activities or resources linked to Internet
Safety? Email them to me at mark@teachingideas.com or leave a comment below
to share them with others....
