11.05.2010

Teachers call for more information on online safety

The Safer Internet Day project approached teachers in March-April and asked how Safer Internet Day was spent in schools, whether the material provided by the project was functional for the school's purposes and what development ideas teachers had for the project. A total of 815 comprehensive school principals, teachers and other school personnel representatives responded to the questionnaire.

Based on the questionnaire, teachers particularly hoped to have more information and teaching material on online bullying and on the safe and smart ways of using social media. Also, teachers welcomed new and fresh assignments and competitions for students. The teachers also hoped for more frequent communications from the Safer Internet Day project.

Once again - a busy Safer Internet Day

Based on the questionnaire, more than 90 per cent of the teachers are familiar with the Safer Internet Day and every other school has arranged theme-related activities. Nearly all respondents (97 per cent) said that the Safer Internet Day was useful.

A website designed for the purpose of teaching about the safe use of the internet, www.tietoturvakoulu.fi, is also well-known and popular: more than two out of three respondents had visited our website and 86 per cent of the respondents said it was useful or very useful as educational material. The respondents maintained that matters related to online bullying, protection of privacy, copyrights and information security in general were important for their students.

Roughly every sixth respondent is familiar with the Godparent Bank service. The majority of respondents familiar with the service regarded it as useful. Special praise was given to the godparents' up-to-date expertise and that students showed more interest towards the topic at a visiting lecture than at an ordinary lesson. The popularity of the Godparent Bank is clearly on the rise: the number of requests for visit has more than doubled from last year. The number of listed Godparents is also greater.

Versatile communications channels in use

In order to respond to the teachers' need for information, the Safer Internet Day project has launched two new communication channels during the school year: a newsletter (in Finnish) for teachers and other education professionals and a facebook page available at www.facebook.com/tietoturvapaiva. In addition, information letters to all comprehensive school principals will continue to be sent.