Last Tuesday, 5th May, we joined with other schools around the world by taking part in Safer Internet Day activities.

All elementary and middle years students took part in age-appropriate workshops to help gain awareness of how best they can protect themselves in the age of technology in which we live.

The students in MYP demonstrated excellent leadership. Having taken part in a workshop led my Ms. Bansal, they reflected on the most important messages to share and planned a short presentation and a workshop to carry out with the elementary students. Here you can see some MYP students guiding a discussion with grade 3H to help them to create their digital footprints.

Here, some of the grade 7 and 8 students are sharing some internet safety tips with the children in grade 4K.

Elementary students also had internet safety lessons with their class teachers. They produced digital and paper posters to share what they had learned. Students in grade 5 made fantastic digital books to remind people of how to stay safe online.

One topic that was of great interest to teachers and students was staying safe while gaming. A grade 4 student proved to be very reflective about this. She took action by changing her username on Minecraft from her real name to something more ambiguous.

The students’ discussions and creations showed a very good understanding of how to look after themselves in this digital age. A thank you to all teachers and students who made Safer Internet Day 2019 a great success!

We invite parents to spend some time with their child, reassuring them that they can speak to you or their teachers if they are worried about anything they encounter when using technology. It is also important for parents to also take some time to regularly monitor their child’s internet usage. It is highly important that parents only download games for their child that are suitable for their age, for example, the popular game Fortnite has a minimum age requirement of 12 years.

We highly recommend the following websites for guidelines on how parents, at home, can help their child:

(English) https://www.webwise.ie/parents/

(Italian ) https://www.generazioniconnesse.it/site/it/area-genitori/