Family Learning Week - working with parents of primary children on social media

When I was at Longniddry a couple of weeks ago I was taken aback by the differences in knowledge and attitudes to net safety between the kids in Primaries 5, 6 and 7. So today I have been meeting with parents of the children to see how we can all move forward to make use of the net, particularly social networking and social media tools, even with these youngest internet users. The things we are talking about might only be for future reference for some parents while others already ahve social networking 10 year olds in their hands.

I've put a limited range of links together on my online bookmarks, but think that parents and teachers out there might have some other ideas on how parents of younger children can work and play with their children safely online - leave your ideas in the comments, please, to help us all :-)

Comments

[David Noble]

Could we tie something in with the forthcoming Skypecast on Internet Safety? (see http://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=42217)

[Rachel]

Awhile ago i worked with some of our schools communities with workshops for parents "Keeping up with Our Kids Online". This was before MySpace, Beebo etc hit any radars. They were mainly concerned about kids downloading music & accessing adult material. One parent was so concerned of the potential scary stuff that she wouldn't hook their new computer up to the Internet! It is timely I think to renew these conversations in our community. A lot changes in such a small space of time... My workshop notes, links, other netsafety resources can be found here. A little bit old but still handy to hash up & use.