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Schools, sign up for eSafety Challenge program

The Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner, has released ClassAct 50 Challenge. The challenge provides a mix of quick, daily tasks designed to help children take control of their online safety, prompt thinking around respectful relationships and to know where to go to find support if things go wrong.

Teenage girl cyber bullying victimThe current digital climate means that students are expected to sign digital use contracts and agree to acceptable use policies.  The ClassAct 50 Task Challenge has been designed to support school classes, cohorts and communities to consider and act on the issues the digital world can present. 

The start of the school year is an important time to revisit essential digital citizenship skills with your students and to encourage a culture of respect and positive interaction in their online and offline worlds. Sign up today to receive a hard copy ClassAct 50 Challenge poster, delivered to you free, by the start of Term 1 2017

Aimed at ages 10 to 14, ClassAct 50 provides a mix of quick, daily tasks designed to help children take control of their online safety, prompt thinking around respectful relationships, and to know where to go to find support if things go wrong. The tasks encourage self-reflection, group discussion and to operating with ‘class’ online.  It is a list of digital-life thought-food that is simple, and fun to run.

Essentially, it is a list of digital-life related talking and reflection prompts, with quick, simple activities that are enjoyable to run and appealing to students. 

Individual schools may decide to commit to completing one task every day for a whole term, or decide to do one a week for a whole year.  The important part is to make digital intelligence part of your regular conversation with kids to help increase digital safety, reduce negative behaviours like cyberbullying and to make time online as positive and enjoyable as possible.

Suzy Barry

Suzy Barry is a freelance education writer and the former editor of School News, Australia.

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2 Comments

  1. You may want to rethink the pictures in this article as they suggest an aggressive male. Cyber bullying does not restrict itself to individual stereotypes. Please give todays boys a chance.

  2. Hi John,
    Thank you so much for your comment. In fact, I completely agree with you, that not all cyber bullying is perpetrated by males, in fact, girls are overwhelmingly more likely to be involved.
    Cyber bullying victims experience isolation and often feel disenfranchised from society.
    It’s also true that in young males, feelings of hurt can be experienced as anger in those around them.
    To me, this boy looked troubled, hurting, dark and sad, but not aggressive. I imagined him as a victim actually.
    I have used so many images of girl victims in the past, I was actually trying to balance things a little.
    You’re absolutely correct; cyber bulling is a girls’ AND boys’ issue. Thanks so much for your comment.

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