Today, we were given the task of creating an internet safety video using the editing software iMovie. This was an assessment task where our end product was evaluated by our lecturer. iMovie allows you to combine clips and pictures, to which you can then add audio, filters and adjust the different elements in the clips. It was recommended that we work in groups with a minimum of three, therefore, I worked with two other people as this task required a lot of work and people to do different tasks such as filming another person.

Movie making in education has been shown as effective and a very useful tool in the classroom. As explained, “The use of video to enable pupils to reflect on both their work and their learning has been used in research and is labelled video stimulated reflective dialogue (VSRD), or variations of this.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p. 135). Therefore, once the children have watched some internet safety videos, they would be able to take what they learned from the videos and reflect upon it to make their own videos about internet safety which will help them with their learning and show the importance about being safe online. This can help the children develop their knowledge about internet safety and how it applies to them.

Internet safety is a very important topic in schools that should be reiterated constantly as it is relevant in today’s society, as explained by the Scottish Government (2017) “The internet is central to the lives of the majority of children and young people. We want children and young people to be protected, safe and supported in the online world and for them to be able to enjoy the internet, show resilience and take advantage of the opportunities it has to offer”. This applies to me as a developing student teacher as it is my responsibility to ensure that the children in my class and throughout the school are safe online; and they know not to trust others online especially if you do not know them personally and understand that actions have consequences. The children need to know that they can trust teachers if they do have a problem with online safety and that their teachers are not trying to restrict their fun but instead help them as stated by Beauchamp (2012, P.58) “…the key idea [is] that e-safety is not about restrictingchildren, but about educatingthem.” It is important that children are aware of this.

Thankfully, one benefit of bad previous internet safety, is that it has led to many schools nowadays introducing policies that help children be safe online. As explained by Beauchamp (2012, p. 58) “Most primary schools will have in place a policy regarding e-safety, but they are likely to reflect official policies and perhaps not the reality of pupils’ lives…”. Additionally, Safer Internet Day was introduced in 2004 and it is now embraced by 140 countries worldwide. Introduction of these policies and events have allowed children to be able to identify where people have gone wrong, when children are able to identify these areas it results in successful e-safety (Beauchamp, 2012, p. 60).

ICT is a useful tool within education and helps incorporate digital literacy into the classroom. “ICT can offer a range of unique features to teachers and learners which are not available using other means.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p. 3). Digital literacy is having the skills in order to engage in a knowledgeable, technology driven, society (Weiss, 2017). Nowadays, a majority of schools utilise computers, interactive whiteboards, laptops, tablets and even smartphones. This technology is used by the teachers and the children. This can also help pupils with communication, expression, collaboration and advocacy (Weiss, 2017).

Effective learning and teaching of digital technology can have many benefits on the core curricular areas; Health & Wellbeing, Literacy and Numeracy. Health & wellbeing; use a variety of approaches including active, cooperative and peer learning along with effective use of technology. Literacy; develop and extend literacy skills when they have opportunities to communicate and collaborate, engage with and create a wide range of texts in different media, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by ICT as well as examples of texts: blogs, web pages, emails, and games. Numeracy; use technology in appropriate and effective ways, development of problem-solving capabilities and active learning. Additionally, there are some curriculum for excellence experiences and outcomes which relate well with my iMovie on internet safety. We decided that our iMovie about internet safety would be most effective at fourth level as we felt that it would be most relevant to their age group and their activity on social media. These experiences and outcomes are shown below:

I am learning to assess and manage risk, to protect myself and others, and to reduce the potential for harm when possible.

HWB 0-16a / HWB 1-16a / HWB 2-16a / HWB 3-16a / HWB 4-16a

As I listen or watch, I can:

clearly state the purpose and main concerns of a text and make inferences from key statements
compare and contrast different types of text
gather, link and use information from different sources and use this for different purposes.

LIT 4-04a

I can show my understanding of what I listen to or watch by giving detailed, evaluative comments, with evidence, about the content and form of short and extended texts.

LIT 4-07a

To help me develop an informed view, I can identify some of the techniques used to influence or persuade and can assess the value of my sources.

LIT 4-08a

Having investigated the practical impact of inaccuracy and error, I can use my knowledge of tolerance when choosing the required degree of accuracy to make real-life calculations.

MNU 4-01a

We started with a fairly detailed plan on how we wanted our iMovie to go and what we wanted to be included in it to ensure we used our time efficiently. Our story was based around the well-known story of an older man pretending to be a young boy and using it to talk to a young girl and using it as an excuse to be able to talk to her. Even though this is a fairly general story that has been used for years in internet safety videos, it is still relevant and happens regularly even with different policies being introduced. We are first introduced to a young 11-year-old girl, Sophie, who had her Snapchat user name on her Instagram bio and therefore can be seen by people whether they follow each other or not. Which leads to ‘Harry’ adding her on Snapchat, to which Sophie has her initial doubts and so messaged her friend to ask if she should add him. Sophie ends up adding him as she never heard back from her friend. Sophie and Harry talk about how they go to the same school and live around the same area and they exchange ages. It then cuts to a clip of Harry using a feature on Snapchat called ‘Snapmaps’ which allows your friends to see where you are. Harry then asks for a selfie picture of Sophie to see what she looks like, to which she is hesitant about but sends one anyways, she then asks for one back. We then see Harry go onto Google and find a picture of a young boy and edit it slightly to send to Sophie and pretend that it is a picture of himself. Harry then asks if they could meet up at a river near the school and constantly insists that it must only be the two of them and that she can not tell anyone. By this point, Sophie’s friend has replied. Her friend is smart and tells Sophie not to meet up with him and to tell her mum. Sophie then tells Harry that she is going to tell her mum as she does not feel safe and screenshots the messages so that she has them to show her mum and the police. Harry begins shouting at Sophie and telling her to stop doing what she is doing and that she should not tell her mum. However, Sophie has made the smart decision and we see her then blocking Harry as a friend. Gladly Sophie never met up with ‘Harry’ but the children should be aware of the consequences of meeting up with him. This should be an area for discussion from the teacher. We decided that we were going to make our iMovie interactive, therefore, we included questions throughout. For example, ‘what are the red flags?’ which would allow the children to identify the bad points to look out for, ‘Should Sophie meet Harry, or should she listen to her friend and tell an adult?’ and the children will identify the correct thing to do.

Additionally, we had a few slides dedicated to ‘what to do if this happens…’, 1. Tell a responsible adult, 2. Block and report them and do not put your personal details online. Do not accept people you do not know. At the end of our iMovie there is a slide which states ‘Visit ‘thinkuknow’ website for further information.

Initially, we uploaded all our videos onto iMovie and then edited them from there and adjusting them to our liking. Personally, I find that working with iMovie is fairly straight forward and easy to use, however, this is due to experience of working with it whilst I studied media at school. Therefore, this allowed us to be able to edit our piece together fairly quickly but to a good standard.

Overall, we were happy with our iMovie, however, we have some improvements that could be made. Our first improvement is the length of our iMovie, once fully edited it was between five minutes thirty seconds and six minutes, which I felt was fairly lengthy, although we ensured that we had everything included in it that we wanted. On the other hand, I researched other internet safety videos, most of which are between two and ten minutes long. Our second improvement is that we should have used a different way of messaging. We decided that we were going to use snapchat as a means of communication and do a screen recording of the conversation as the messages developed. However, snapchat has a feature that tells you if the person you are talking to is screenshotting or screen recording the messages. Therefore, we could no longer screen record the messages as we initially planned to do (I also feel that this would have increased the production value and made the messages easier to read). To fix this, we could have used another app, but by this point we had already set up the accounts to new names and would take too long to adapt this, so we decided that we would use an iPad and film the phone receiving the messages.

I would say the main problem we had using iMovie was the limited amount of music provided on the app and if there was a song or a sound effect we wanted, we would have had to buy it.

In conclusion, I feel that we have carried out this task successfully and have created an effective internet safety movie which can be a useful tool to be shown in schools to help prevent anything like this happening to the pupils and ensure that they are aware of situations like these and how they should be dealt with.