Head Boy and Girl (and their deputies) attend the Internet Safety Conference

On Thursday 29th January, four children were chosed to attend the Barney and Echo Internet Safety Roadshow at Crewe Alexandra Football Club.

On arrival, the children were given the chance to speak to people showing various products that were available to schools.  These included Brainpop, Just2Easy and Chatfoss.

The day begin with a talk from PC Liz Stanton who talked about what the age rating on games mean and the meaning of other safety symbols.  She then went into further details about the best way to play age-appropriate games safely online so that the children could remain safe.  She then gave the children some details on Youtube kids (which blocks out any inapropriate content), on how Childline are there if children see things online that make them feel uncomfortable.  In addition, she showed the children the Share Aware site and the NSPCC site (set up by mumsnet).  Consequently, PC Liz Stanton went on to talk about the effects of gaming.  

That it can:

be addictive,

lead to people copying behaviours of the game,

cause stress,

cause anger and confusion,

show people inappropriate content,

cause hand and wrist cramps,

give you sore eyes and neck,

stop people talking face to face,

cause loneliness.

Later on in the day, a fomer police officer told the children that most passwords can be hacked into within three days and the best way to prevent this is to choose four totally unrelated words and to write them as one word.  It will take 550 years to hack into.  He then went on to tell the children about food printers, pills that can be taken that will mean that passwords will not be necessary and lots of other future technology.

The children will then be sharing this information in a special assembly on Safer Internet Day.