14.06.2011

Teachers worried about students' attitude towards information security

The Safer Internet Day project asked teachers how the Safer Internet Day was spent in schools, whether the material provided by the project was functional for the school's purposes and what kind of challenges teachers face when teaching information security. A total of 381 comprehensive school principals, teachers and other school personnel representatives responded to the questionnaire.

Parents needed in information security education

According to the answers, the most challenging task is to get the students take information security issues seriously. Students often publish photos or personal information of themselves or their friends without giving it another thought. Students may also understate the severity of online bullying.

Getting parents to commit to information security education and keeping up with the fast-changing online world were found challenging as well. The rules taught at school should be followed at home too, and parents are needed to supervise this. The Safer Internet Day project urges schools and parents to cooperate in educating students on information security matters. The first step into the right direction can be for example the interview exercise found in the onlinesafetyschool.fi -website.

Safer Internet Day and onlinesafetyschool.fi -website considered important

Based on the questionnaire, 91 per cent of the teachers are familiar with the Safer Internet Day and six out of ten schools have 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.onlinesafetyschool.fi, is also well-known and popular. 73 per cent of the 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.