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.

Jim Henderson, IT Learning Co-ordinator and I are attending the Child Protection and Online Protection (CEOP) training in Elgin later this month. We’re hoping to use this opportunity to develop twilight seminars for parents, carers and other professionals in Highland school communities.

I have a little bit of an ulterior motive here…We all know that when we hold evenings for parents/carers or encourage them to come in for a health related topic it’s really difficult to engage with those who we probably need to speak to the most. It’s true that if you hold a ‘health’ evening the kinds of attendees tend to be the ‘worried well’. In essence we are probably are increasing health inequalities working in this way.

However, looking at the tremendous work that has been going on in East Lothian by Ollie Bray, this is exactly the kind of topic that captures the interest of  virtually all parents/carers. I just see this as a fantastic opportunity for people to come and have a postive experience by coming in to the school, possibly a way to introduce other health topics and foster better relationships with parents/carers who have in the past been difficult to reach.

Hopefully Jim and I can develop a seminar that will encourage a good turn out and is balanced with good internet safety techniques, highlights and enthuses about the untapped potential of the internet and imposes the importance of skills such as ‘critical thinking’ for young people.