Internet safety is an incredibly important issue, especially in today’s society with technology developing everyday.
According to Beauchamp (2012), most primary schools have some sort of policy in place regarding internet safety, but they are more likely to refer to official policies rather than the pupils everyday lives. Schools are finding it difficult to keep up with apps/social media that children are using despite the age restrictions that are already in place for these apps. It is therefore vital that teachers provide support for e-safety. “The key idea is that e-safety is not about restricting children, but about educating them” (Beauchamp, 2012, p58). Beauchamp (2012) goes further and highlights that when regarding e-safety, the most successful schools establish that pupils know what to do when things to go wrong. Helping children develop an understanding of the dangers of the internet can allow teachers to support internet use at home rather than interfering in their personal lives.
Supporting internet safety is also crucial as The Scottish Government (2015) found that there is evidence to believe that using digital equipment, tools and resources can where effectively used, raise the speed and depth of learning in science and maths for both primary and secondary learners. Also, that digital technology would appear to be an appropriate means to improve basic literacy and numeracy skills, especially in primary settings. As this can help raise attainment levels it means having events such as Safer Internet Day and providing a full range of resources about internet safety is essential support for teachers in explaining to pupils the dangers of the internet.
This week in Digital Technologies, we were asked to create an iMovie or trailer based on internet safety as an assessment task. We worked in groups to produce these. My group chose to do a trailer based on Little Red Riding Hood, in which we changed the plot line so that Gran was coming to visit Red and they had arranged this meeting through the internet. We each played a key role during this session, whether it was acting, filming or setting the scene. We alternated between using both video and pictures to create the movie and we also used text to highlight key points of internet safety and websites that may be of use to whoever was watching. According to Porter (2004), digital storytelling is sharing your story in variety of mediums of digital imagery, text, voice, music, video and animation. I have attached our finished video in which it can be seen that we used many of these mediums to illustrate our story.
http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=252577
I have also attached pictures that were taken during the process of making our trailer.
iMovie is an app that I would use in my own classroom whether it would be for a similar reason, talking about internet safety, or for many other topics. By using this kind of digital technology and getting the children to either act or create scenes for their movie, I would be able to cover a range of experiences and outcomes over different curriculum areas, for example, literacy, technology and expressive arts. This would allow pupils to maybe move our of their comfort zone and use their imagination.
References
Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.
Porter, B. (2004) Digi Tales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories. Bernajean Porter Publication.
The Scottish Government (2015) Literature Review on the Impact of Digital Technology on Learning and Teaching. [Online] http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/24843/1/00489224.pdf [Accessed: 13.2.18]
