Health & Wellbeing in Integrated Learning Communities

Myself and my good colleague Jim Henderson attended the Child Expolitation and Online Protection (CEOP) training today in Elgin. Firstly, I would like to say thank you to Grampian Police for hosting and organising this event. It was really good to be able to attend, and I’m signed up to do the ambassador training too.

It was an event that gave the participants the resources to deliver classroom based sessions to children and young people of all ages about internet safety.  I’m not convinced it gave participants the skills, knowledge or even the training skills to create a safe environment to discuss these topics. Infact, I came away feeling more scared about what might be delivered to children and young people and their parents/carers.

To be honest, I thought that participants might have left horrified of ‘T’internet’ and would probably dissuade anyone from using social media. True enough the messages were there, the internet to children and young people is as dangerous as any offline world, but isn’t that the point, that ‘virtual worlds’ don’t exist anymore, that’s just life? Yes, encounters with people that we would never dream of getting in a car with, speaking to, or taking sweets from are just as real as they are online and now in our own communities and yes, they may be disguised in friendly faces we have built up a rapport with.

I’m up for much more education and ensuring that every child or young person can click a ‘report abuse’ widget and have the ‘critical thinking’ skills to assess what the situation is, taking into account of course any situations for vulnerable young people. That’s what needs to happen, in my view. I see this training as not a stand alone ‘fly in helicopter fashion’ subject in PSE, we should be conveying this in a cross-curricular CfE approach, especially given the new CfE Literacy outcomes and forthcoming Health and Wellbeing outcomes.

Yes, there is much education to be done, to educators and young people, but it has to be in context of the benefits of using emerging technologies and the inclusive aspects of self expression, not creating a breed of teachers too frightened to embrace new e-learning techniques.

Some good outcomes for me, I really liked the way new terminology was busted, no using ‘child pornography’ anymore as it suggests a social acceptability. The videos that were presented and are given out to CEOP trained professionals would be thought provoking when presented in the right context to children and young people. But surely this needs to be in the context of all the other education we do such as SHARE (Sexual Health and Relationships Education).

We have much work to do to ensure that this subject is covered as effectively as possible across the curriuclum for all our pupils and parents/carers, but we also need credible people to deliver this training, people that have a balanced, knowledgable view of said T’inernet..

Just a little suggestion to CEOP, they should include spokeo.com in their presentation to demonstrate how easy it is to track SNS activities of anyone and how about CEOP challenging SNS producers making privacy settings as standard so users have to click to them to be  public? Check out the BECTA stuff too and see what’s happening strategically. LTS also have a communications group to lobby for this issue.

You keep saying you’ve got something for me…Well, to be honest I have!! I came across this stonker of a website, it’s pure genius and am only too delighted to highlight it here.

It’s the kind of resource I could see any leader finding invaluable Walk Highlands pages offer a comprehensive guide to walking routes in each area of Highland, walks included range from family rambles to tough cross-country hikes and scrambling mountain ascents. Each walk is graded with little boot and bog factor icons (4 meaning you have to be as tough as old boots to do it), there’s also a great discussion board. I think it could also be used as a classroom tool, with it’s links to Google Earth etc to study surroundings.

Walk Highlands provides free waypoints to download to your GPS, both in Quo format, and as GPX files.  I recall hiking to my first munro Sgor Goaith a few years ago, this great website provided good quality photographs of all the beautiful scenes I must have missed on my way down due to the bad visibility - so it’s great to use retrospectively too!

The benefits of being outdoors, fresh air, head space, physical exertion and a sense of acheivement or belonging to something bigger, are important contributory factors for maintaining and promoting positive mental health. We’re now seeing walking and physical activity schemes emerge that GPs can prescribe or refer patients to! Now that’s far better, in my view, than any anti-depressant type medication.

Of course, I would always recommend implicitly to anyone going out to be safe on the hills. The  Mountaineering Council of Scotland provides specific guidance that must always be observed.