Last night we held an Internet Safety and Responsible Use Evening for parents of primary children in P6 and P7 within the Musselburgh Cluster. This is part of our school Building a Learning Community Initiative. I strongly believe that children pick up bad habits of inappropriate on0-line behaviour somewhere between P5 and S1.

We had just under 100 people in the audience including some colleagues for other schools. These are the useful websites that I mentioned that parents should consider having a look at to improve their knowledge of Internet Safety and Responsible Use.

CEOP - Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency:

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is a UK police agency with a difference. It has the teeth of any other police force and works to track offenders wherever they may be. CEOP also delivers free education programmes into schools to help children of all ages stay safe online and is active in sharing best practice techniques with the wider child protection community through a number of training initiatives.

Think You Know:

Come in to find the latest information on the sites you like to visit, mobiles and new technology. Find out what’s good, what’s not and what you can do about it.

If you look after young people there’s an area for you too - with resources you can use in the classroom, at home or just to get with it.

Most importantly, there’s also a place which anyone can use to report if they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are chatting to online.

All the information here is brought to you by the team at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre. We hope you like it.

Grid Club:

Educational resources, games, quizzes and activities. Includes notes on curriculum relevance.

Cyber Café:

Discover the safest ways to use the Internet, chat rooms, e-mail and send text messages. Aimed at 8 - 10 year olds.

If anyone has any questions about the evening please get in touch with Mr Bray (Depute Head Teacher)

The new term at Musselburgh Grammar School has got off to a flying start.

For 2008 we will be continuing our clamp down on Internet Safety by working with all of the students at the school and explaining to them why they should be behaving responsibly on-line.

This morning Mr Bray spoke to the whole of S3 about Internet and mobile phone safety and responsible use. He used resources produced by the Child Exploitation On-Line Protection Agency (CEOP) as part of their Think You Know Campaign.

All of the other year groups in the school will receive the Think You Know Training between now and the Easter Holidays. Coincidently, the event coincided with a BBC Panorama Special last night titled, ‘one click from danger’ which also outlined the vulnerability of youngsters online.

We will be running a second Internet Safety Evening for Parents of our associated primary schools on the 5^th February 2008 - more details to follow soon.

Our S3 Graphic Communication Internet Safety Leaflets have impressed so many people they are now on display at the East Lothian Council head offices in John Muir House. You can find the work in the display case on the 2nd Floor. If you are in John Muir House why don’t you pop up and have a look?

Respect me is Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Service and it has recently launching a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of cyberbullying. The campaign aims to educate adults about the issues surrounding cyberbullying, and encourages them to connect with children and young people to promote the safe and responsible use of mobile technologies. Much like the philosophy of our own strategy to engage with parents over Internet Safety Issues.

respectme recently also joined forces with the Scottish Government to launch a competition for schools and youth groups across Scotland. Groups of individuals were being asked to design a cyberbullying leaflet, outlining the type of information they thought it would be useful to know.

Musselburgh Grammar School submitted nearly 50 high-quality entries for the competition. All of the entries were researched, designed and printed by our S3 Graphic Communication classes. Part of the assessment for Standard Grade Graphics is to design a leaflet for others. This means that all the students work for the competition also contributed towards their course work.

Our CDT Department were very impressed with the quality of the work produced and we have arranged for the work to go on display at John Muir House in Haddington.

Last night we organised our first Internet Safety Training for Parents and Families Event. Over 100 parents representing over 250 young people turned up for the evening. During the two hour session there was input from Ronnie Summers (Headteacher), Detective Sergeant Andy Jones (Lothian Borders Police), Joan Tranent (one of our senior social workers) and Ollie Bray (Depute Head at MGS)

The event was were supported by LTS (who provided materials for the packs), The Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency – CEOP (who allowed us to be the first school in Scotland [probably the UK] to use some of their parent training material), Young Scot East Lothian (who provided staff and nearly the space bus!), our own staff (who adopted the role of coffee break experts) and most importantly the parents.

The sites that we covered in detail were Habba Hotel, MSN Messenger, Bebo and a chat room called Teenspot. We also looked at how due to irresponsible use of a social networking site it was possible to find out where your parents lived, how much your house was worth and your annual income.

Please contact Ollie Bray at the school if you would like to find out more information or be kept on an email list for the next event.