Gooseberry Planet – Keeping Safe Online.

Our lives are filled with a diverse range of digital technologies and so it is important that we help our students to develop and deepen their understanding of the digital world. As teachers and parents, we have to help children understand how they can keep safe, explain what can happen online and how to deal with it.

At Ocean Academy, we are pleased to announce that the children have been subscribed to Gooseberry Planet (www.gooseberryplanet.com) which is an online safety awareness website. Gooseberry Planet’s mission is to provide schools with a comprehensive E-safety toolkit that educates and engages the whole learning community.

The software platform, has been designed to educate children, teachers and parents about the dangers online through game-based learning so that they can apply critical thinking to what they see, come in contact with and what they read out online. Children play an interactive game which simulates real life online scenarios and addresses serious issues in a fun and engaging way. A rigorous monitoring and assessment tool supports the platform. As parents/carers you now have access to the platform and the system will email you every time your child plays and completes a scenario. This encourages you to be part of their child’s learning journey. The children are able to use the website both at home and at school. Please refer to the letter and parent manual that will be sent out within the next few days to show you how you can register your own free account.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the website.

Gooseberry Planet, the online digital safety platform that we use here at Ocean Academy is offering a FREE digital safety webinar for parents on Wednesday 30th May, 2018 at 8pm.

The event will be hosted by Stella James, the CEO and founder of Gooseberry Planet. She has two children herself (aged 11 and 16 years old) and she would like to share her experiences as a parent of keeping her own children safe online and she will share her knowledge and offer practical advice about digital safety for the whole family.

If you would like to read more about the event and book onto it, please click on the attached blog link click here (http://gooseberryplanet.com/parent-online-safety-workshp/). You will be asked to download the GotoWebinar app on your phone or computer so that you are able to attend the online event in May. Once you have registered, you will be able to access and review the webinar after the event in case you wish to consolidate any of the points raised.

This webinar is available to parents from other schools so please feel free to share the link.