CONGRATULATIONS NAC YOUTH SERVICES
07/06/2010

North Ayrshire Council’s Youth Services project involved the education of local School children on how to use the internet safely. Four Apprentices took part namely, Ashley Todd, Stephanie McCrae, Bernard Mullin and Danielle Took.

The Team of Apprentices decided to undertake a project in conjunction with CEOP (Child Exploitation Online Protection) to deliver ‘Safer Internet Day’ talks to help educate young people on the dangers of the internet.

Once the project was agreed, the Team had to work out how and where it would be best to highlight to Children the need for safety on the internet. They chose to deliver the talks to Children whilst they were at School and to focus on Schools in the Auchenharvie and Greenwood Learning Community.

As a result, the Apprentices arranged meetings with the particular Schools to discuss how and when the talks/workshops should take place. It was agreed that the workshops be delivered to all S2 Pupils at Auchenharvie Academy, and all Primary 7 Pupils at Glencairn, Ardeer, Mayfield and Caledonia Primary Schools.

The workshops themselves included a CEOP presentation on using the internet safely, a questionnaire to be filled out by the Pupils and goody bags for the P7 Pupils.

The presentation asked the Pupils questions such as, what they were worried about when going on-line, who they let access their personal information, and was designed to get them thinking about how to detect dangers on the internet such as cyber-bullying.

As a result of these workshops, the Team was able to change some of the Pupils’ views on the internet with some of them stating that after the session they would go home and make their personal sites much more private, and refrain from giving out personal information.

The Teachers at the Schools were also very impressed by the presentations, describing them as ‘excellent’, and ‘very worthwhile session’.

When the judging panel visited Ardeer Primary as part of the judging process, Pupils were clearly enthusiastic about the workshops stating that they felt the younger people doing the presentations was better for them as they understood twitter, bebo, facebook etc and the language used and that the workshops themselves were fun and the goody bags were also well received.

Author: L Craig
Source: ABIC

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