Health and Safety task

ICT in the classroom- E Safety

1. Who is responsible for eSafety in schools and what are the key issues?

The employer (the LEA, education authority or governing body, depending on the category of school) should provide health and safety policies and should ensure that schools put these into operation. However it will be up to the head teacher and/or the class teachers to ensure these policies are being used correctly.

Key issues in health and safety for ICT include:

Comfort

Desks and Workstations

Seating

Monitors

Keyboards

Interactive Whiteboards

Software

Noise

Heat and Light

Personal Safety

Electrical Safety

Mobile Equipment

Hazardous Substances

http://www.eriding.net/ict/health_safety.shtml

1. How are parents and carers informed about eSafety?  Where can parents find out about health and safety issues regarding their children’s use of the internet?

The majority of primary schools appear to publish their policies on ICT on their websites, accessible to everyone including parents. If a parent doesn’t use the school website, they would be expected to contact the school if they wanted more information on the schools eSafety policy. The person to contact would depend on the school, but it would often be best to contact the class teacher with any issues, and then someone else is this cannot be resolved.

There will often be guides online relating to local policies, such as this one, for parent information on how to keep their child safe using the internet.

https://shareweb.kent.gov.uk/Documents/childrens-social-services/protecting-children/E-safety/e-safety-children.pdf

There is also a document available for general guidelines on internet safety for children, which parents can access for more information.

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/ukccis%20advice%20on%20child%20internet%20safety.pdf

1. What are the rules about photos of children on a school website?

It is not an offence to take a photo of a child taking part in school acitivities, however if you wish to use this photo on school material including the website then a consent form must be signed by the parent/carer. 

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6015788

1. How long should you allow a child to work on a pc (in health and safety terms!) 

There seemed to be no legal or clearly defined limit on how long a child should spend on a pc. The only guidelines given were on unofficial websites explaining how it was important to have breaks if you are working on computers for long periods of time, but this was not exclusively for children and often would not apply to children but full time office workers.

Digital identity:

It is important to make your your digital identity (what people can see about you on the Internet) is appropriate. You can check this by simply typing your name on Google and exploring the search results. However, if you remove your digital identity completely and you have no internet presence at all it may create suspicion and people may wonder why this is the case. It may appear you have something to hide.

Session 1: Web2

In our first ICT session we created these blogs to post our lesson reflections and follow up tasks on them. Although it will take a while to get used to using them as it is my first time, I think it will be useful to reflect on our lessons and be able to look at everyone elses reflections too. Not only are these blogs useful for us in training, but we can encourage children in school to use blogs for educational purposes. If you choose to do this in your classroom you must consider safety and privacy. Ensure that children don't use their full names and have their privacy settings set so they cannot get messages from people they do not know.

In our first session we focused on the idea of web2 and how it can be used in the classroom.

Web 2 is a term used to describe web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites. We discussed some examples of this including: Youtube, Flickr, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, and many more.

Using Web2 in the classroom:
Here are a few examples of some ways that web2 can be beneficial in the classroom. Of course there are endless examples, these are just a start.

Skype: You can use Skype, a video calling program, to speak to and see a classroom in another part of the country or another country. You could set up a question and answer session to find out about each others classrooms.

Google Earth/Maps: Google Earth and maps could be very useful in geography to show the children a place digitally if it is not appropriate to travel there.

Blogs: Allowing the children to produce and share their own blogs will encourage them to be productive and reflect their opinions for their classmates to see. Knowing that their peers are looking at their blog will encourage them to write it to the best of their ability.

YouTube: YouTube is extremely useful in the classroom as you can access videos of almost anything. This is great for demonstrations where it is impossible to produce real life examples.

DropBox: This is a tool for storing and sharing files. It is great for teachers to share their ideas and resources with each other easily.

Hope you enjoy the rest of this blog!