VIEWS & OPINION Parents: scare or


prepare? Comment by MARK BENTLEY, Online Safety and Safeguarding Manager, London Grid for Learning


Many schools ask: “Should we pass on warnings to parents about specific apps, sites and games, or give them lists of ones they should prohibit?” You may have seen a few such documents, or been asked to share them, sometimes from official sources. But our answer to this question is usually…no.


It can of course be useful for professionals to know about


specific risks, but this doesn’t mean you should pass on information about grooming incidents, the promotion of self-harm or suicide and inappropriate material to parents. It’s not always helpful to name and shame particular sites apps or sites - it’s a complex issue, and there are three key problems with headline- grabbing warnings, which include: • Generating a false sense of security. If parents think the danger is limited to a certain list of apps or games, they may miss out on what else is going on!


• Giving free publicity to what can be pretty awful sites. Widely spread warnings can boost their traffic.


• Spreading panic and making parents think everything online is bad. That won’t help build digital resilience nor make the most of the amazing opportunities of today’s technology. At LGfL, we carry out research on the latest online dangers,


sometimes uncovering new ones ourselves. We work hard to share this information with schools and to give them advice and resources. What’s more, for the schools on our network, we have all kinds of protective technology and we move sites into different categories on our filtering to keep staff and pupils safe. We aren’t saying to keep parents in the dark, but bad things


happen on good apps (and vice versa). Rather than sharing lists of “dodgy” and “safe” apps, which are often based on headlines, rumours and scandals, focus on helping parents understand the latest features of games and apps, and what to be aware of when a child is gaming, live streaming, or whatever the next big thing is. For example, livestreaming used to be available on only a few


apps, but now it’s almost ubiquitous. So don’t try to learn the names of everywhere you can stream: instead, talk to your child about if they are allowed to do it and if so how, where and when. What’s allowed? What’s not? Take a look at undressed.lgfl.net for a warning message worth sharing. It can feel overwhelming for parents, so try to: • Drip-feed information throughout the school year • Remember to focus on the positives of using technology, as well as the negatives


• Help establish a dialogue between children and parents about their online lives.


So remember, next time you are tempted to share a flashy name


and shame warning with parents, stop for a second to ask yourself – is it going to scare or prepare; is it designed for panic or protection? There are some really unsavoury apps run by companies which don’t seem to care about keeping children safe, while there are others with a commitment to keeping children safe. Nonetheless, this can rapidly change; keeping up with it is virtually impossible. Talking to your child about having fun but staying safe online, plus being interested and discussing how to behave and react is altogether more realistic and productive in the long-term. Teaching behaviours is more likely keep them safe when bad things happen on good apps.


uFor more information visit LGfL DigiSafe at https://www.lgfl.net/online-safety/


January 2019


How can we get pupils to ask their own questions without adding to teacher workload or disrupting


the classroom? Comment by FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation


We know that small children ask hundreds of questions a day when they’re little. The number of those questions peak though, at around 288 a day by the time they’re four years old. By Year 5, they are down to about 3-4 questions a day, and by senior school that number gets even lower, as they become increasingly concerned about getting things wrong and looking stupid.


Given that research shows that teachers ask about 400


questions a day, could it be that children’s potential for questioning, for owning and guiding their own learning is being squashed by a teacher’s need to work through the curriculum? The current educational system rewards correct answers rather


than encouraging questions. It’s a reflection of society, where we value being expert and ‘right’, and as a culture we don’t like looking like we don’t know something. Unsurprising then, that teachers are the ones asking all the questions. Given the importance of questioning in developing resilience


and independent, critical thinking and decision-making skills however, we need to ask - why isn’t more being done to encourage it? Some teachers believe that student questions can be disruptive


or take the class off -topic and that, as a result, they won’t cover all the work that they need to get through. They want to maintain control of the class and its questions. At the Learn2Think Foundation we are developing a range of


methods for teachers to use to get pupils generating their own questions as part of the day-to-day running of lessons. The goal is to ensure that questions aren’t distracting, but rather an integral part of the learning process. A simple, easily integrated step, yet a significant leap in how teachers orchestrate learning. It is a framework to get children asking questions at the


beginning, middle and end of topics. Each topic begins with a question-storm -a take on the traditional brainstorm- in which pupils have a limited amount of time to come up with as many questions as possible. In the research phase of a topic, they get to devise their own questions as jump-off points for research. At the end they are encouraged to delve deeper, practise critical thinking skills and come up with the creative questions that reveal the fundamentals of the topic. A question is a precious thing. It provides insight into a person -


their concerns, their passions, their dilemmas. We all need to be allowed to own them, to be comfortable asking them, and to have other people value them. If we don’t practice this within our educational system, our children will be LESS curious when they leave school than when they joined. Picasso famously said: “Computers are useless. They can only


provide answers”. Let’s not allow the next generation to leave an answer-driven education system incapable of questioning for themselves. They will be unable to solve the problems that the new world throws at them, and any knowledge they do leave school with, may well be made redundant by the likes of Siri and Alexa.


www.education-today.co.uk 23


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58