Safer Internet Day Promises

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Mrs Whittaker

The theme for Safer Internet Day 2015 was “Let’s create a better internet together”. Safer Internet Day is coordinated by the UK Safer Internet Centre and it aims to promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people. The day offers the opportunity to highlight positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community.

During Term 1, the Year 5 classes explored this concept over several weeks and discussed the responsibility we all have to help create a kinder online community. They produced the following video titled “Safer Internet Day Promises“.

Click here to watch on SchoolTube

Let’s Create a Better Internet Together

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Mrs Whittaker

During the week of Tuesday 11th February, students in Year 4, 5 and 6 participated in Safer Internet Day 2014 through Cyber safety workshops held in their classroom. The theme for Safer Internet Day this year was “Let’s create a better internet together” and students discussed the responsibilities that they can take to make the internet a better place.

We discussed how it is not one person’s responsibility to make the internet better, but everyone’s. Young people, parents, educators, industry and politicians can all contribute to the main aim of fostering the positive and eliminating the negative online.

Students watched the following video from the Safer Internet Day website, and then discussed how the images and lyrics related to challenges that they may face when using the internet.

Finally, the students were asked “What are some rules that everyone should follow to help make a better internet for everyone”. Here are the responses from one of the year 5 classes that they posted to a collaborative wall on the lino website.

For more information about Safer Internet Day and Cybersafety, visit the following websites and resources.

Term 1 2013

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Mrs Whittaker

A Busy Start to the Year

Term 1 was an amazingly busy term as far as ICT developments go at St Michael’s. Over the Christmas holidays we had a brand new server installed and some new cabling to the Junior Primary building, which will set us up nicely for future broadband developments and wi-fi access to the server and the internet from every classroom and building around the school.

Acer Tablet PCs

At the beginning of the term we received delivery of 90 Acer tablets for our Senior students to use throughout the year. Along with the 30 that we already had from last year, there are now enough for each Senior student to use throughout the school day. The students were very excited to receive these tablets and have been using them in class for research, communication, collaboration and presentation of assignments and class work.

iPads

Thanks to our Parents & Friends Committee, we have been able to purchase 15 more iPads. Together with the 15 we purchased last year, we now have enough for students to have one each when they are loaned out to their class. We have loaded a lot of apps on the iPads, for all year levels, in the areas of Literacy, Maths, Science, Christian Studies, Books, Word processing, Presentation, drawing and multimedia creation. The built in and free apps such as the Camera, Google, Facetime, Skype and Voice Recorder have also proved very popular.

Cybersafety

The 10th Safer Internet Day was celebrated worldwide on Tuesday 5 February 2013 with the day focusing on online rights and responsibilities. The key message this year was “Connect with Respect” and the our Senior students participated in an interactive workshop where they learnt about their online rights and responsibilities. The students voted that the most important online rights were safety and privacy and the most important online responsibilities were respecting others, managing their time online and abiding by school policies. You can watch one of the videos that they watched by clicking here or visit the Cybersmart website at www.cybersmart.gov.au for other great cyber safety resources.

Later in the term I ran more Cybersafety sessions with Year 3 and 4 students, where we learnt about ‘Keeping Personal Information Safe’ and ‘Cyberbullying’. We learnt about this from Hector the Dolphin and his friends at the Cybersmart Website. Click here if you would like to visit this site.

Making Advertisements

In the second half of the term, the year 5 classes inquired into the transdisciplinary theme ‘How we express ourselves’ by exploring the central idea ‘Advertising attempts to influence the way people think and act.’ As part of their assessment, the students worked in small groups to invent a product, design a logo and a slogan for the product, and then create a 30 second advertisement for the product. After the students had planned and videoed footage for the advertisment, they spent several sessions in the Computer room using Windows Live Movie Maker to edit the video clips and add music, voice-overs, captions and special effects. The students commented about how they had learnt a lot about working in teams, using Movie maker and the challenge of condensing all of their video footage into only 30 seconds!

Super Super Energy Max

Jelly Shoes

Blogs

All of our classes now have a class blog where they can share information, news, photos and resources with families and the wider school community. All families should have now received instructions on how to access these blogs and they can also been accessed from the Parent Portal on the Parent Information page of the School website. There is also a blog for Creative Arts, German, Physical Education, Library and ICT. Families would also have received instructions for subscribing to these blogs so that they are sent an email whenever anything new is added. Please ensure that you do this so that you receive immediate notification of important news.

Edmodo – Turning a Classroom into a Community

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

To quote from the document The role of ICT in the PYP, written by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (2011). .

ICT provides opportunities for the transformation of teaching and learning and enables students to investigate, create, communicate, collaborate, organize and be responsible for their own learning and actions. ICT allows students to make connections and reach a deeper understanding of its relevance and applicability to their everyday lives.

At St Michael’s, the year 7 class has been using the Web2.0 tool Edmodo to practice the 21st century skills mentioned above, especially communication, collaboration and connections.

To quote from the Edmodo website

Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.

Edmodo has the look and feel of a social networking website and as such, is an excellent safe tool for engaging students and teaching them about Cybersafety and ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information technologies.

Edmodo is used effectively in the year 7 classroom to

Discuss hot topics, enabling students to practice persuasive writing in a post/reply style format and also to apply ethical principles of etiquette and respect.
Submit journal entries and assignments for teacher comment or marking. Students upload Microsoft Word documents, the teacher adds comments and then the student accesses or downloads the marked document.
Communicate events via a calendar.
Collaborate by uploading documents and website links to a shared library. This is an excellent way to group resources for a particular Unit of Inquiry, ICT skills session or other research activity.
Communicate homework requirements.
Communicate with students who went on the recent exchange trip to our sister school in Fiji.
Do all of the above activities from outside of the school, from any computer with internet access.

Here is an example of a class discussion about war.

Safer Internet Day 2011

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Mrs Whittaker

ItsMoreThanAGame poster

Tuesday, February 8th was Safer Internet Day 2011. This annual international event is coordinated by In safe ,the European network for internet safety, and supported in Australia by the ACMA. The cyber[smart:] website outlines the theme and key messages of the day as follows :

The theme ‘It’s more than a game, it’s your life’ will be used to promote safer and more responsible use by children and teens when using social networking sites and will highlight the importance of protecting privacy and digital reputation as well as the need for good online etiquette.

Key messages for Safer Internet Day are:

Control your digital reputation – things you post online now can affect you in the future.

Protect your privacy – make decisions about who sees your information.

Be a good friend– treat others online as you want to be treated.

Here at St Michael’s, Mrs Whittaker, our ICT Support Officer, spoke to 3 of the senior classes about cyber safety issues relevant to their age groups. The key message was “Think Before You Post”. The students were surprisingly savvy about a lot of online activities and contributed enthusiastically to the discussions. To view the PowerPoint presentation that the students saw, click here.

Technologies

Creating new tasks, previously inconceivable … (R Puentedura)

Category Archives: Cybersafety