Promoting E-Safety on Edmodo

Here in the UK we have a government-backed organisation called CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) that provides children with: advice, guidance and, if required, the ability to report online crime. They encourage owners of popular websites to include a link to their 'Click CEOP' button which children can easily click on to access a variety of their online e-safety resources - I obviously registered with them to be able to put it onto my school's website.

When I launched Edmodo in my school I made sure that all the children clearly understood my behaviour expectations when using the website, as well as the actions which would be taken if they were broken. I even created a mini poster reminding them how to stay safe on Edmodo and set it up on my website so that children automatically see it for ten seconds before being redirected to the main Edmodo login screen.

An idea which I had last night that other Edmodo users might be interested in to further promote e-safety amongst their students is to create a dedicated e-safety group for them to join. For my school it would simply contain three posts - one with a picture of the 'Zip it! Block it! Flag it!' slogan promoted here in the UK, one with a link on to the fabulous ThinkuKnow website (which contains e-safety games for them to play/information for them to read) and another with a a link on to the CEOP 'report' website. 

Click here to view the public page for the group.

To get students to join the group and see the links I would just send the group code to them as an alert. I wouldn't force anyone to join the group, however the incentive of being rewarded with a badge when they did would hopefully encourage them to.

Click here to download the badge.

This would be the only real admin task associated with the group but could be done quite straightforwardly each time I receive notification of new members having joined in my spotlight - all new members would be set to read-only access automatically so that all that they can actually do in the group is click on the links (and so not send messages). I did consider creating a folder in my library with the links in and just sharing it with each of the class groups but felt that creating a new group instead would make them appear in a more visually prominent place on the screen - as well as make it easier for me to see who has opted to access them so that I can reward them with a badge.

My inspirations for this plan are the EdmodoCon group (where all members are receiving a badge to reward their attendance) and the way CEOP encourages Facebook users to install their panic button application (to give more control to the user - rather than just having the link there from the start).

By creating a dedicated e-safety group it will hopefully help to make Edmodo users at my school feel more confident in their online behaviours as well as provide them with an easy way to access any advice/support should they need it.

I'd love to read what thoughts anyone else has on this idea!

Comments

[Melanie Knight]

I like the idea of the mini poster to remind students of the rules. What do you use for your school website? How do you set the poster to display for 10 seconds when they click the link?

[Elaine Shaw]

Hi Simon,

I have already created an E-Safety for You Page with lots of info and links directly attached to our Student Page on our Learning Platform and although it has prominence I am constantly trying to raise its status and it does require ongoing marketing, if you like. Our Digital Leaders group do keep the E-Safety Blog going but I really like your idea of turning it into an online club style space. Perhaps even spinning a somewhat competitive edge may help to raise the status of our E-Safety space even further and focus additional E-Safety awareness, too. I am going to give the idea some serious thought, I hope that you don’t mind.
Kind Regards