On Tuesday 4th February we held an information evening for parents about how to keep their children safe online. The evening was well attended by parents of both the junior school and also those at Old Basing Infant school.

Phil Bagge, the lead Hampshire ICT inspector / advisor gave a very helpful overview of how parents can  keep their children safe online, what cyber bullying is and how to tackle it, webcams in the home and how they can be hacked into as well as numerous other topics to do with social media.

Here are two simple practical tips from the evening for anyone reading this who was unable to attend the evening:

1. Talk to your child about being safe online (see here for some suggested websites to inform you pre-chat). Then when anything untoward does happen online, statistics show that 90+% of children will talk to parents about it. If however you have never spoken with your child about being safe online then if anything untoward does happen online then 90% of children do NOT want to talk to their parents for fear of an overreaction or the parents taking the technology away from them.
2. Have some blu-tak or masking tape etc over your webcam (any webcam attached to a PC or built in ones to laptops, tablets etc) to prevent anyone who does manage to break into your home internet system being able to access your webcam.

Finally, if you missed the presentation click below to see a similar presentation by Phil Bagge from a previous occasion.