I teach in the Reception class on Wednesdays. This Wednesday I am in the middle of the usual early morning chaos in my house (me, a husband, two teenagers and a 9 year old all attempting to leave at approximately the same time – need I say more?) when I receive a text from Mrs Swift, the teacher I cover for. She has remembered that this week is e-safety week at school. Please could I do a session on e-safety with the class this morning? I put down my phone and think about this. Do 4 year olds these days actually know about the internet and ‘www.com’ and emails and chat rooms and twitter and Facebook? One of my teenage sons looks at me disparagingly when I voice these questions as though I am some prehistoric creature who has just walked out of my cave and informs me that even babies know about the internet (I doubt that this is true, but decide not to argue). He has a point though. I am completely out of date when it comes to social media. I’m not on Facebook and I don’t tweet. I know I should stay connected, especially with teenagers in the house, but the idea of being in contact with absolutely everyone all the time fills me with horror. I have enough trouble keeping up with the real friends I see every day without branching out to unseen virtual ones. Back to the problem of this particular Wednesday morning: I google ‘e-safety in the Foundation Stage’ in between mouthfuls of branflakes. Thankfully there’s quite a lot of information. I spot an animated story that I can show on the SMART board. If I am doing something about on-screen safety, then I may as well be up to date and use a screen to demonstrate the point. I print off an accompanying list of ideas to talk about with the children. There follows a brief moment of shouting as me, husband, two teenagers and a 9 year old all attempt to leave the house, and I head off to work feeling relatively well prepared. I discover two things when I get to school. One is that all internet access is down: so no SMART board. The second is that I have a PGCE student (young, modern, completely up to date with the fact that even babies know about the internet) coming to observe me teaching at the exact time I will be doing the e-safety session. I allow myself a small sigh. I look at the list of ideas I printed out at home. One thing I have already understood is that this issue is really, really important. It is a new way for children to be made vulnerable and it is on the increase. I also realise that the principles of e-safety with people children can’t see, are very similar to those of ‘stranger danger’ with people children can see. In my head I have a starting point, and I am fairly certain that the children will take this on board and do the rest. I invite the children (and the PGCE student) to our circle time. We establish that they use Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters and they explain to me that they can play these games with friends and ‘make friends’. The children are very interested in the idea of people we can see and people we can’t see and who they do know and who they don’t know. They all agree that they wouldn’t make a friend with someone they hadn’t met and didn’t know anything about. They also agree there are things they don’t understand on the internet and that they should think before they click on something and always check with a grown up. We talk about the World Wide Web and how people can reach the whole world through their screens even though they are just sitting in their own houses. I ‘m not sure the children understood this idea, but they wave their arms enthusiastically to show the whole world at their fingertips. I hoped a seed had been sown. I wondered what the PGCE student had made of it. But she was already engaged in a detailed discussion about dinosaur poo with Marley and Ben.
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