Internet Safety

Our Internet Safety Day was a success with pupils from Second to Sixth classes very engaged with our Cyber Safety presentations from Zeeko. Thank you to all those parents who attended the presentation yesterday evening! The report on our boys`internet usage raised some interesting statistics and discussion!

As teachers, we too are concerned at the amount of time some of our pupils are devoting to online gaming. Spending hours on games on their devices can have a negative impact on their health, their relationships, their families and on their education.  Parents are encouraged to communicate and engage with their children about their online activities.

Zeeko describe parents and guardians as the digital leaders of their children and to...
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• Check what apps your child uses.
• Make sure they are set on private mode.
• Ensure the location setting is off.
• Know your child`s passwords.
• Keep security updated.
• Consider turning off wifi at night.
• Put away devices at meal times.

The pupils have all been advised to
 

1. STOP, BLOCK, TELL-if a stranger tries to contact you on the internet.
2. Talk to a Chat Budi-that`s a trusted adult about your concerns
3. The T-shirt Rule-if you wouldn`t wear it on your t-shirt, don’t say it on the internet
4.  5:1 rule-for every hour spend on the internet, spent 5 hours on other activities
5. No screens in the bedrooms
6. No internet for an hour before bedtime
7. Ideally, the internet enabled devices should be in an open plan room
8. Only engage with people online whom you know in real life.
9. Never click on anything purporting to be free-if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

 
Remember the Three P`s for social media and gaming:
P-Your Profile should not show your real name
P-have a really good password and change it regularly
P-keep your settings private

The Zeeko presenter also recommended two websites for parents:
Internetmatters.org
Appyness.ie

and of course zeeko.ie