Safer Internet Day a great success at Hillcrest Shifnal School

Hillcrest Shifnal School’s secondary and post 16 students took part in a range of activities, workshops and talks to promote the safe use of the internet for Safer Internet Day last week on 6th February.

Globally, Safer Internet Day is celebrated in over a hundred countries and this year was linked with the slogan “Create, Connect and Share Respect: A better internet starts with you”. It sees people help promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

A range of activities took place including an e-safety talk and film, improvised scenarios with staff for the students to learn about internet safety, e-safety quizzes, a short art piece performance in the drama studio and talks around the presentations. An interactive theatre in education piece called ‘Bully 4 U’ was performed by Loudmouth Theatre Company which led to further discussions on cyber bullying.

Loudmouth Theatre Company sent a letter to the school which commended the students who took part in the sessions: “They fully engaged throughout the drama and showed a great level of interaction in the workshop…your young people showed real passion for the subject and also empathy for victims of bullying.”

The students created some fantastic anti-bullying posters as part of the workshop and some students wrote some powerful poems to get over those messages learnt from the day.

Kay Vernon, Learning and Development Officer at the school and Paul Ruby Wilson, Safeguarding, Safety and Welfare Manager, also offered some condensed CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) thinkuknow training to parents as part of safer internet day and had some fantastic feedback:

• “I learnt more ways to communicate with my son than I thought I would”
• “The training helped me to learn better ways to speak to my sons and look at the internet positively.”
• “This needs to be done more often as the internet changes – Brilliant.”

Well done to all that took part!

To see further information on Safer Internet Day, please see here: www.saferinternet.org.uk