Since it’s inception in 2004, Safer Internet Day has gone from strength to strength and reportedly, in 2018, 45% of UK 8-17 year olds were involved in the annual event. The 2019 Safer Internet Day takes place on Tuesday 5th February, and this year’s global theme is ‘Together for a better internet’. The day provides an opportunity to put a spotlight on the positive uses of digital technology and investigate the role everybody plays to create an online community that is increasingly safer and responsible.
2018 was not just a success for Safer Internet Day. It was also the year in which Apple released their highly anticipated ‘Everyone Can Create’ curriculum. Four superb iBooks were made freely available on Apple Books on 1st October. Each one provides expert guidance for children to develop and communicate their ideas through drawing, music, photography and video on iPad.
So, for Safer Internet Day 2019, why not take the opportunity to unleash the creativity of your pupils and use the Everyone Can Create books to help them understand the significance of safe and responsible use of technology.
At Burton Joyce Primary School in Nottingham, Apple Distinguished Educator, Marc Faulder, has done exactly that and put together the following plans that link the Everyone Can Create guides to their existing ‘Digital Skills’ long term plan which is part of the school’s Computing curriculum:
Many of the strands in the Burton Joyce curriculum, such as ‘Image’, ‘Film’, and ‘Sound’ correlate exactly with the projects and activities from Everyone Can Create and therefore can be mapped to digital skills for each year group in Primary school.
Indeed, this enabled Marc to be able to select appropriate projects and activities for pupils to work on for Safer Internet Day this year; here are some examples:
Year 6:
- Objective: Create ‘e-Safety’ Tutorial Videos.
- Everyone Can Create: Video Guide; Chapter 4; Tutorials
Apps:
Pupils in Year 6 will follow the tutorial for filming a ‘teaching show’. They will be familiar with the ‘how-to’ style of video from their own viewing habits on YouTube, therefore this style of filming is very relevant to them. They will film tutorials that explain how pupils can talk about any issues they may be facing online; highlighting a variety ways pupils can report e-Safety problems both in and out of school.
Year 5:
- Objective: Performance Poetry, Raps and Podcasts
- Everyone Can Create: Music Guide; Chapter 5; Writing and Recording Lyrics
Apps:
- Notes/Pages to type
- GarageBand to record/create
This project comes from the Music guide from Everyone Can Create. Pupils will follow this chapter to write lyrics for a rap, performance poetry or spoken word podcast. They can share their advice for creating a better internet for all or draw on their own experiences, giving first hand accounts of existing problems and why we need to work together to make the internet a better place.
Year 3 and 4:
- Objective: Health and Well-Being Collage
- Everyone Can Create: Photography Guide; Chapter 5; Project: Create a personalised collage (page 41)
(Children need to refer to Chapter 2 to take their silhouette or portrait photo)
Apps:
- Keynote
- Camera
This project teaches pupils concepts from the new Burton Joyce e-Safety long term plan. Based on the recommendations in Education For A Connected World (February, 2018), we now teach our pupils a healthy lifestyle for device use. This strand explores well-being, sleeping routines and emotions when using technology for different purposes and at different times of day. Pupils will create a personal photo collage of device use throughout a typical day in their life. Their photo collage will reflect their usage but also their emotions when engaged in this activity. This project aims to give our Year 3 and 4 pupils a chance to reflect on habits that may be forming already and how to adapt these choices to make their technology use better.
Year 1 and 2:
- Objective: e-Safety Emotions
- Drawing Guide: Chapter 1; Word Art – Activity 1; Sketch and express with an emoji
Apps:
Using the Everyone Can Create guides with younger students can be a challenging process. Instead of selecting a project from the Drawing guide, we took an activity and broke it down in to smaller steps. Children listen to a range of e-Safety themed stories such as Troll, Little Red Riding Hood and the Woolly Sheep and Daisy Chain. They map out these stories and discuss the emotions the characters feel when using technology throughout the story. They will reflect on how they feel when using devices and bring their own experiences in to the story mapping. Next, children will be taught how to draw shapes and patterns on a digital paint program first. Then they will begin designing emojis which represent their feelings when using technology and how others feel when problems arise. Finally, teachers will review the advice on what to do when something goes wrong online, referring to the plots from the stories read.
Final Note:
When integrating Everyone Can Create projects with your existing curriculum, it is important to know the skills and interests of your staff. These projects were not just allocated to staff, they were carefully planned for, based on the teachers professional development. Year 1 and 2 teachers have already used the Drawing guide to create digital drawings of poppies for the school’s Remembrance Day exhibition. They are now familiar with the apps needed in this activities. The teacher in Year 5 is also the school’s music specialist. Planning to use the Music guide in Year 5 supports the teacher’s strengths and interests, making the technology use relevant to her curriculum plans too. The teacher in Year 6 achieved Apple Teacher when this professional development tool launched in 2017 and she has already planned from the Animatics’ chapter in the Everyone Can Create Video guide. This project is the next step for her pupils learning.
For more of Marc’s resources and ideas, check out his blog; Enabling Environments
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