Category: Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety

curricular area and keeping learners safer online

cyber primary teachers

Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety for primary teachers

  go to cyber home

This section aims to provide ideas, information and professional learning to support primary teachers develop confident and responsible children and young people that are cyber resilient.cyber toolkit

The Teacher Cyber Toolkit is the main page for information, ideas and resources for teachers. It splits internet use into: consume, create or communicate and has resources and information for each of these.

go to Cyber Toolkit

Bongles Text imageThe Bongles is story for younger learners that introduces the basic concepts of keeping devices secure with passcodes. 
There are resources for teachers to support the learning.

go to The Bongles

CyberSprinters is an online game for 7-11 year olds that introduces the basics of cyber hygiene and security.
There are resources for teachers to support the learning.

go to CyberSprinters

CyberFirst Navigators is a series of interactive videos and supporting resources for 11–14 year olds.

go to CyberFirst Navigators

Cyber across the curriculum

Cyber resilience and internet safety can be incorporated into other curricular areas, below are links to those which are ‘responsibilities of all’. This has been kept concise for simplicity but there are many other aspects that could be explored by teachers.

cyber in literacy and english

More of the information we consume is now online, in the form of news, social media and literature. Learners need support to find, evaluate and make use of these texts.

go to cyber in literacy

 

cyber in numeracy and mathematics

More shopping than ever is done online. Learners need to understand how to set up devices and accounts with secure email and passwords, as well as how to identify and report scams and cyber threats.

go to cyber in maths

cyber in health and wellbeing

There are lots of areas of our lives now touched by digital technology and cyber resilience can help keep them safer, more private and fairer. 

go to cyber in HWB

Documents banner image
News Banner Image
Webinars Banner
Parents' Cyber First Aid Box

Parents’ Cyber First Aid Box

The Cyber First Aid Box is designed to support families recover from online harms.

Designed in partnership with Decode Cyber Solutions and Education Scotland’s Digital Skills team – it is a free resource available to everyone. 

Clicking on the image or link will open a new browser tab to the Cyber First Aid Box website. The site will ask a series of questions to help families determine the best response to a harmful online incident, including how to approach the subject with children & young people, possible solutions, and the first steps to recovering from it.

 

   go to cyber home

DigiLearnScot home

click this image to go to the cyber first aid box

Open the Cyber First Aid box

Save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus activity

Welcome

We want to alert you to our very important activity this week: we want the learners of Scotland to help us save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus!

 
This website has lots of great info about the octopus and ways for you to help it:

Octopus website

 

Once you’ve read a bit more about the octopus – have a think about how you could use your digital literacy skills to find out more about it and use this info to create some posters, slides and websites to raise awareness of the octopus’ plight and help save it!

tree octopus

Let’s get started!

Wait a minute, though… tree octopus?

Before you go making any resources we want you to check some things:

  • Who created the page and wrote the information?
  • Does it have pictures or video that show you the tree octopus?
  • Are there links to other sites about the octopus?

     

  • See inside the page

Teachers click here

What next?

Hopefully, you spotted the clues that the tree octopus isn’t real pretty quickly and pointed this out to your teacher!

We think that by learning some of the skills used to make the fake info on this website, you’ll be better prepared to spot other info like this and know how to check it for accuracy.

We want you to create your own fake animal awareness campaign. You’ll need to think of an animal and then imagine it living in a biome, or habitat, that isn’t it’s natural home… like a mountain-dwelling narwhal or Arctic elephant!
Then you’ll need some facts that sound believable, even though they’re not true – so things like what your imaginary animal eats, where it sleeps and how big it is.

Finally, you’ll create some online content, maybe using slides, websites, blogs or even a video.

You can share these with us on twitter: @DigiLearnScot

Activity 1 – fact finding and note making

  • Use your web browser to find out three (or more) facts about an animal
  • Then pick a biome it wouldn’t normally live in and find out three facts about that place and how animals normally survive there
  • Make notes of this info as you go – it’ll come in handy later

 

teachers might want to use some of these ideas to expand upon the features of fake news and unreliable sources:
Digital Media Literacy: The Blur Between Facts and Opinions in the Media (gcfglobal.org)

Digital Media Literacy: What is Fake News? (gcfglobal.org)

Activity 2 – photo manipulation

The photos on the octopus site were faked and so are many other photos online and in newspapers and magazines too. 
Read this page to find out more about manipulated photos

You don’t need fancy software to edit photos, here are some tips:
PowerPoint – remove background
Keynote – instant alpha

  • Start with a background photo of the place your imaginary animal is going to live – add it to your app
  • Then add the photo of your animal
  • Now, use either the remove background in PowerPoint or instant alpha in Keynote, for example, to cut out any background on your animal picture
  • It should now look like your animal lives in the place you have as the background

Here’s my mountain-dwelling narwhal from earlier:

Activity 3 – making fake news

You now have an imaginary animal, some facts about it and a photo proving its existence – now all you need to do is put it together and share it with the world to convince them of it’s existence!

You could have a look at these:
https://www.beano.com/games/random-animal-mash-up 
https://switchzoo.com/newzoo/zoo.htm 

There are lots of great tools for creating and sharing content online, here are just some of them:
Sway

Glow blogs

Slides

Sites

We can’t wait to see your fake news imaginary animals on twitter!

ALL CREDIT FOR THE OCTOPUS CONTENT TO THE SITE’S OWNER: Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (zapatopi.net)

digital wellbeing award

The Digital Wellbeing Award for Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety – Digital Schools Award

The Digital Wellbeing Award for Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety is designed to provide education professionals with the resources and support required to help pupils safely navigate the digital world.

Schools that successfully complete the programme receive a nationally recognised award by Education Scotland.
Register your school 

 

Find out more about:

Digital Schools Award

Digital Wellbeing Award

Level 4 Resources for Cyber Fundamentals and Internet Safety

Education Scotland have collaborated with Girvan Academy in South Ayrshire to produce a set of resources that combine the SQA level 4 units in Cyber Security Fundamentals and Internet Safety.  These resources reinforce our belief that every learner should have the knowledge and skills to use the internet and online services safely, allowing them to spot potential risks and recover from any potential harm, they face while using online services. 

 

 

The following teaching resources have been created:

 

Assessment evidence  

The assessor will use the portfolio approach to generate evidence that learners have achieved these units. 

A learner must complete the Getting Started with Online Accounts booklet, one of the relevant ”Getting Started with Chromebook/iPad’ booklets (depending on what device they have set up), and then the assessor must complete an observation checklist for every learner:

  • Assessor answer booklet  
  • Observation checklist  
  • Learner profile  

 

The teacher answer booklet and prior verification certificate can be downloaded from the SQA secure site.

technology assisted harmful sexual behaviour

Communicate: technology-assisted harmful sexual behaviour with Stop It Now

The Stop It Now! programme is designed to help teachers support learners with Technology-Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour.

   go to cyber home

DigiLearnScot home

School guidance document for responding to TA-HSB

Education Scotland Tackling TA HSB Digital Resource

Back to Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety

Technology Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour (TAHSB) is unfortunately an issue that educators deal with on a daily basis. It impacts on friendships and relationships of everyone involved. However, it is important that educators understand what it is, how to identify it, and how to support the learners involved. 

Stop It Now! Scotland is part of a child protection charity that believes that the key to preventing sexual abuse is awareness among parents and community members. They work to build public confidence in recognising and responding to concerns about the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

With their experience of delivering the Rosa project in Glasgow, they were are an obvious choice to support us to develop our TAHSB professional learning course. This course is designed to support educators to:

  • develop their knowledge and awareness of TAHSB
  • increase their confidence in identifying and categorising the TAHSB they are dealing with in school
  • take action to help the learners they are supporting with TAHSB

Enquire about TAHSB training

Communicate – Email

Communicating online carries greater risk than just consuming or creating content because it involves other people and their ability to influence or affect our behaviour.

This page looks at email, which is typically the information required to create other accounts or activate devices, is still the most common form of communication in the workplace and is targeted relentlessly by criminals for financial gain.

The risks:

  • phishing emails
  • sharing private information (social engineering)
  • sharing or receiving content that is inappropriate, offensive or harmful
  • reading unreliable, or false, information
  • being groomed or exploited
  • being bullied

Becoming cyber resilient is the first step to being safer online. Talk to your learners about the devices and accounts that they use to access online information:

Being more cyber resilient reduces the risk of internet safety issues arising. We all want the internet to be a more welcoming space for children and young people and that is why we promote this positive message of safe, smart and kind.

With your learners:

  • Are they aware of the risk of grooming – what it looks like, how it happens and how to report it?
  • Ensure that learners are aware of the risks of direct messaging (DMs) – could they be offensive, harmful or bullying to someone else?
  • Even though it may created and shared privately, it probably won’t stay private after you share it so, what does your content say about you?

Email resources:

Critical Thinking – Childnet

Trust Me – Childnet

Media Smart Body Image 9-11 yrs / Key Stage 2 / PSHE

Digiduck Stories – Childnet

Information:

When people’s posts are getting you down – Own It –

I want to know more about Cyberbullying – Childnet
Just a joke? – Childnet

I want to know more about Sexting – Childnet

Bullying or Harassment (reportharmfulcontent.com)

Staying-Safe-Online-advice-for-parents-and-carers.pdf (cyberscotland.com)

Communicate – Direct Messaging (DM) Apps

Communicating online carries greater risk than just consuming or creating content because it involves other people and their ability to influence or affect our behaviour.

This page looks exclusively at direct messaging (DM) apps, such as Snapchat and Whatsapp, not social media or gaming which also have messaging features. Dating apps, such as Grindr and Tinder may also be considered as Messaging apps but we do not currently have age appropriate content on those platforms.

The risks:

  • sharing private information
  • sharing or receiving content that is inappropriate, offensive or harmful
  • reading unreliable, or false, information
  • being groomed or exploited
  • being bullied
  • receiving inappropriate images or messages 
  • phishing scams

Becoming cyber resilient is the first step to being safer online. Talk to your learners about the devices and accounts that they use to access online information:

  • Make sure that platforms are protected by stronger passwords and 2FA is enabled to stop others from accessing the account without permission
  • Ensure they are aware of privacy settings, such as who can see or share your messages, media or location (Snapchat Snapmaps are enabled by default and allow other users to see your exact location)
  • Check that they are aware of the risks of grooming, cyberbullying and scams
  • Show them how to report concerns on the platform
  • Forward phishing messages to NCSC on 7726

Being more cyber resilient reduces the risk of internet safety issues arising. We all want the internet to be a more welcoming space for children and young people and that is why we promote this positive message of safe, smart and kind.

With your learners:

  • Are they aware of the risk of grooming – what it looks like, how it happens and how to report it?
  • Ensure that learners are aware of the risks of direct messaging (DMs) – could they be offensive, harmful or bullying to someone else?
  • Even though it may created and shared privately, it probably won’t stay private after you share it so, what does your content say about you?

Messaging (social media) resources:

Critical Thinking – Childnet

Trust Me – Childnet

Media Smart Body Image 9-11 yrs / Key Stage 2 / PSHE

Digiduck Stories – Childnet

 

Information on behaviours:

When people’s posts are getting you down – Own It –

I want to know more about Cyberbullying – Childnet
Just a joke? – Childnet

I want to know more about Sexting – Childnet

Bullying or Harassment (reportharmfulcontent.com)

Staying-Safe-Online-advice-for-parents-and-carers.pdf (cyberscotland.com)

Information on apps:

Social networking and messaging apps guide | Internet Matters

Snapchat Checklist – Download or Buy Snapchats Checklist | SWGfL

WhatsApp | Safer Internet Centre

Kik | Safer Internet Centre