E-safety Parental Guide “You wouldn't let your child wander around the streets of London alone, yet millions of children are surfing the internet on their own and talking to strangers.”

The workshop We are going to cover:  The technologies children, young people and their families are using  Some of the challenges and issues they bring  Some practical ideas and tools that will help you stay in control

How do we use modern technologies?

Are you one of the 28% of parents who use the internet and describe themselves as beginners? 7% of children describe themselves as beginners!!!

Accessed anywhere, anytime Easy and fast access to wide range of information A key skill for life Great tool for individual work Why do we use ICT in the College? Enhance teaching and learning Motivational and fun

How are we protecting our students in West Somerset College? E-safety Policy E-safety Officer Child Protection Policy AUPs for each student School filtering Articles in the Comet E – safety training included in ICT lessons and mentoring sessions E-safety updates on the website Is it enough though to keep them safe outside the College?

Question to parents: What concerns you about your child’s use of technology?

Key issues/challenges

So…what should you do now? 1. Get involved in your children’s online activity and TALK. Check you know what applications they are using, especially chat rooms and games played with others online. Ask who their ‘e-pals’ are. Get them to teach you about how things work. 2. Support our College. Sign the Acceptable Use Policy and take an active interest in what your children are doing in ICT at school. 3. Encourage Internet use that builds on offline activities. It helps to keep the computer in a family room not tucked away in a child’s bedroom. Help your children to use the Internet for homework and leisure interests. 4. Use some of the tools on the computer to help you.

Conversation starters:

Tools:  Passwords  Google SafeSearch  YouTube Safety mode  Parental control on your Internet Service  Facebook privacy controls

Password do’s and don’ts Do change passwords for important accounts regularly (banking, iTunes, Amazon, etc.) Do make sure you know where did you write them down and who knows them. Do choose strong passwords (a good combination of uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers and symbols) Do create different passwords for different accounts and applications. ₓDON'T make obvious choices like your last name, first name, nickname, birthdate, spouse name, pet name. ₓDON'T use an alphabet sequence (lmnopqrst), a number sequence ( ) or a keyboard sequence (qwertyuop). ₓDON'T use a password shorter than six (6) characters

Google SafeSearch Google SafeSearch helps you to filter sexually explicit content from your search results. To turn it on: 1.Go to google.co.uk website. 2.Press “Search settings” in the right hand corner. 3.And tick “Filter explicit results”. 4.Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “save” to save results.

YouTube safety mode Safety mode hides videos that may contain inappropriate content flagged by users and other signals. No filter is 100% accurate, but it should help you avoid most inappropriate content. To turn it on: 1.Go to youtube.com and scroll to the bottom of the page. 2.Press “Safety”, tick “On” and press “Save” to save results.

Parental control on your Internet Service The 4 big internet providers in the UK – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media - provide their customers with free parental controls which can be activated at any time. They have come together to produce these helpful video guides to help you to download and set-up the controls offered by your provider. These can be accessed from:  You can set different age limits for your children so you can make sure they only see content appropriate to their age  They enable you to set limits on how long your child stays online and when they go online  You can allow or block specific programs, like Instant Messenger, or hardware like webcams

Facebook Privacy Settings

Basic information:  Certain information is visible to everyone on Facebook and can’t be customised.  Other basic settings can be changed.  Go to ‘Account/Privacy Settings’.  Click on ‘View Settings’ in the ‘Basic Directory Information’.  Decide who can see particular information. (“Everyone”, “Friends of friends”, “Only friends”)

Facebook Privacy Settings Block lists:  This lets your child block certain people from interacting with them, or seeing their information.  Click on ‘Edit your lists’ and you can enter in the name and address of people your child wants to block.

Facebook Privacy Settings Sharing on Facebook:  Click on ‘customise settings’ in the ‘Sharing on Facebook’ section  Choose who your child is happy seeing and commenting on things they share, post or are tagged in – your child can choose ‘Everyone’, ‘Friends of Friends’ or ‘Friends’

Next steps and useful links:  Take 10 minutes to look at and set the parental controls on all the devices in your home.  Go through the Facebook privacy controls with your child and any other social networks.  Set SafeSearch.  Try to have that first talk – it is important that your children know that you are supporting them.  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or check our website (under “Information” “Esafety”) regularly for useful links and e-safety advice.

Cd. next steps and useful links : Links (all of them are also available on our website):  - general tips on e-safety for both parents and students  - general tips on e-safety for both parents and students  - from parents and for parents  - advice, help and report centre  carers/parental-controls - guides on how to set up parental controls offered by BT, Talk Talk, Virgin Media and Sky.