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Online Safety

Happiness and Safety

Here at St Aloysius we are always keen to ensure the happiness and safety of our children and this includes on the internet. A lot of our pupils today are engaged with technology in a wide variety of ways. As well as using the internet for education, they also play games, socialise and invest a lot of their personality in the social and ever changing place that is the online world.

Your child is likely to use technology in school and at home. In school we endeavour to provide the skills to navigate the online world and safety is a very important part of that, so important that we deliver frequent online safety sessions and weave its messages throughout our whole curriculum.

Our school is committed to educating children to create digital citizens who contribute to the online world in a positive and considerate way.  Here are some resources and links to websites that maybe of interest to you.

Social Media

You can find some practical guidance for parents and carers whose children are using social media by clicking here.

Facebook is the most popular Social Networking site on the internet.  It was launched in 2004 and has an estimated 1.94 billion users.  You can find more information about how to protect yourself online, how to report issues and how to deactivate your account here.

Instagram is a photograph and video sharing application and is particularly popular with children and teenagers.  For further guidance of how you can stay safe when using Instagram, how to report any issues or how to deactivate your account click here.

Musically allows users to create, share and discover new videos.  It allows users to create short videos of themselves dancing, performing or lip-syncing to music and to share them online via their app.  As with other social media sites users can set their profiles to private or public.  You can access more information about musical.ly by clicking here.

Snapchat is a messenger app that allows you to send photos, videos, text and drawings.  The unique feature of Snapchat is that the message only stays on the recipient’s phone for a matter of seconds.  Further guidance on where to find privacy settings, report abuse and deactivate your account can be found here.

Whatsapp Whatsapp is a free messenger app that enables users to send messages, images, video and audio using the internet and is popular amongst children.  Further information on how to restrict access to whatsapp can be found here.

Online Gaming

Online gaming has changed the gaming world for our children, they can now play against other gamers at any time.  This world can be scary for parents who don’t necessarily access these games themselves.  Practical advice for parents can be found here.

It is worth noting that games are subject to similar age ratings as films are.  The system for rating games is called the PEGI rating, we would encourage you to familiarise yourself with these ratings which can be found here.

Reporting

There may be occasions where you need to report incidents that happen while online, this could be due to inappropriate language being used on a gaming platform, online bullying or another form of abuse.  If you need to make a report to CEOP, this can be done here:

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/

If you need to report something to a social networking site or a gaming provider you can find contact details of most of the popular social media and gaming providers by clicking here.

Want to speak to an expert?

Childline and O2 have teamed up to offer a free helpline for parents for any queries you may have regarding online activity, this could just be simple queries about online gaming or parental controls.  The free phone number is 0808 800 5002.