Safeguarding E-safety

Online Safety: www.internetmatters.org Internet Matters is an independent, not-for-profit organisation to help parents keep their children safe online. It is a great additional link for you to add to your website’s safeguarding or parents’ pages. This includes step-by-step guide to getting parental controls setup: www.internetmatters.org/controls/interactive-guide/ 

Understanding the Playground - Fortnite

Since its release 2017, the battle-royale simulator – Fortnite, has become ubiquitous in classrooms and playgrounds throughout the world. The game, which features cartoonish renderings of characters, bright colours and non-visceral consequence free violence, has had a mass appeal to children. Each Christmas another draft of young pupils are induced into its overcrowded multi-player lobbies, to the point that there is not a school pupil in the country who hasn’t owned it, begged their parents for it or played it round a friend’s house. As a result more children than ever are exposed to multi-player chatting with strangers, and financial exploitation via the game’s spend-to-gain-advantage operating style. Allowing children to use real world money to gain perks and costumes. From criminal blackmailing, to the coercion of nude exchanges by online ‘friends’ posing as children, the danger this game presents from a safeguarding perspective is clear. As an added complication, the verbiage surrounding the game used by pupils is near-incomprehensible, frustrating adepts to secure their safety. Fortunately to allow for greater comprehension of reports to staff involving the game, Internetmatters.org has published a guide to understanding the game and its terms. You can find the link below: