Views & Opinion Teaching e-safety and providing a


counter-narrative to extremists Comment by Brian Durrant, Chief Executive of the London Grid for Learning


Due to the prolific social media campaigns


from extremist groups and the far-right, it has never been more crucial that children can act responsibly when going online. Schools must play their part in educating children in e-safety and providing a counter- narrative to the propaganda of extremist organisations.


Helping staff An open conversation about the danger of radicalisation between school leadership teams and teachers is important. Leaders should find out what support teachers feel they need and strategically look at where e-safety could fit well into the curriculum. E-safety lessons should not be left to individual staff members in an ad-hoc way, but be consistent from teacher to teacher. It can be difficult to provide a counter-narrative


to ISIS for example and many teachers may feel uncomfortable or ill-informed. However, it is not necessary to become an expert in the intricacies of a particular faith – teachers can ask pupils general questions about, say, human rights, treatment of women or the use of violence in order to encourage the questioning of extremist practices.


Whole-school, cross-curricular approach All pupils need to be well-educated on this issue, so a whole-school, cross-curricular approach is essential. The most effective way to get children acting responsibly on the internet is teaching them to question their sources and not to trust everything they see. This thinking can be encouraged in all subjects


and at all ages. Ask questions like “is this fact, fiction or opinion?” and “what is the intention of the author of this article/video/picture?” Everything online has been written with intent, especially propaganda from extremist organisations. To demonstrate this, English lessons can teach writing to persuade, drama can invite pupils to work out the motivations of others and history can demonstrate that there is always an alternative perspective. In addition, showing children ‘spoof’ websites


such as the online hoax of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/), which looks legitimate but is entirely fictitious, is a good way of showing children how the internet to be treated with a certain degree of suspicion!


Get parents involved Another important tactic for countering radicalisation is to bring parents on board. Usually


in school children cannot access harmful materials online due to robust filtering and monitoring processes but at home the floodgates are often open. Parents need to be the first line of defence against children accessing inappropriate content online, but often need support to do so. Schools can provide esafety advice for parents


on their website, through newsletters or by distributing esafety leaflets. These communications should also cover danger signs to look out for: parents should be wary of a child suddenly using technology excessively, being secretive about what they are doing online, behaving or dressing differently, adopting new attitudes or friends, or receiving gifts or money from unknown sources.


If you suspect a child is being radicalised online? If you believe a child is in imminent danger or you strongly suspect illegal or criminal activity, go straight to the police. Otherwise - follow your Child Protection procedures. Make sure you talk to the child and their parents too - only by addressing the issue will we be able to solve it. Free resources and more information on e-


safety and countering radicalisation can be found at www.esafety.lgfl.net


Where education and commerce collide Comment by Dan Sandhu, Chairman and CEO of Digital Assess


One of the key challenges that education faces


today is the void between what is being taught in the classroom or lecture hall, and in turn assessed and certified, and the skills that are required to succeed in the modern workplace. We live in a world where there has never been so many opportunities in a vast range of vocations while at the same time there remains a large skills gap. The old adage that knowledge is power is


under challenge. The ability to use that knowledge and to adapt to the environment is clearly much more attractive to both learners and employers. Being awarded a university degree or other higher education qualification is no longer a secure path alone into a career. Learners are now turning to other means (MOOCs, vocational courses, apprenticeships) to gain both knowledge as well as to gather the skills that will better reflect employer needs. Employers be it the UK or globally need teams that have the right level of intellect and academic credentials, but more importantly they are struggling to find people with the right qualitative skills. So, at a time when our schools have the impact


of austerity being thrust upon them, it is vocational and professional education that can drive economic growth and lead us on a path away from austerity to growth investing.


This whole sector has been identified by industry commentators as the key growth sector in education.


Enter Ed Tech 2.0 The significant increase in penetration of internet access and mobile devices means that learners can access information, share ideas, collaborate and capture evidence of learning wherever they are. What they need are the tools to capture all of this - not just at the end, but during the learning process. We need tools that allow learners to demonstrate the application of their knowledge and we need to assess the understanding by making it part of the learning process itself. Over in the US, there has been a dramatic


growth in federal funding to drive vocational and employability-related education. This transition to competency based educational frameworks is great, but they will fail when there is a lack of underlying infrastructure to capture evidence of learning, to demonstrate to the authorities, as well as the learner that those skills can be demonstrated. Back here in the UK we have a well-established


and increasingly valued vocational sector as well, and yet we still promote a rigorous academic,


18 www.education-today.co.uk


knowledge-based agenda in our schools. We have moved away from a more practical and creative education in favour of reliable testing of knowledge.


But what if we could reliably test other skills too - skills modern businesses are crying out for? Perhaps what has been missing to date, is a way to capture vocational and professional skills and to then be able to reliably assess at scale, but advances in education technology have provided us with a huge opportunity to take a bold step forwards. As pioneered here in the UK, we now have the tools for peer to peer engagement, tools for wider collaborative learning and we can now capture a media-rich body of evidence for every student in real-time as learning happens. And what is more, we now have the technology to assess this newly captured evidence of learning, both reliably and at scale. Knowledge alone is not sufficient. We need to


capture and present evidence of a new style of learning. We need to provide a much deeper insight of the learners’ skills. Ed Tech has given us the key, but we need to go ahead and unlock the door.


July 2015


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