Home  Home & School  The Project  Research  News  Contact	SchoolNet Global Safety Guidelines What we do The SchoolNet Global Website is a safe site. Its content is carefully monitored for unsuitable material. All children's contributions to SchoolNet Global are checked by teachers before they are published and then the SchoolNet Team also check everything before it goes live. We do not offer links to other sites that could be harmful. Personal information about participants is held strictly confidential. Teachers will find more detailed safety advice in the members area, to help them carry out their curriculum project field studies and interviews safely. and ensure that children do not publish anything that could bring them harm. SchoolNet Global Safety News SchoolNet Global track record We work closely with our Safety Partners, ChildNet International, NCH and NSPCC to ensure SchoolNet Global stays safe. "It is always a challenge for teachers to find good, safe international online resources through which pupils can connect with other children and publish their work online. SchoolNet Global gives teachers good safety advice, curriculum content and tools so they can produce their pupils work for others to see. Childnet welcomes initiatives such as SchoolNet Global to help children get the most out of the net and international collaboration." - Stephen Carrick-Davies, Director of Childnet International. What teachers and parents need to do Teachers and parents are asked to give separate advice to SchoolNet Global children and to arrange safe and productive access to people and places so that pupils can carry out their SchoolNet Global Project field studies and interviews in safety. See 5 Steps to Cyberspace You must ensure your children have approval from the people they write about before they publish anything on the website. See Approval Form Teachers and parents are asked to make children aware that anything they write about themselves or their interviewees could be seen by millions of people who use the Internet. They should be careful not to reveal anything that could be used to harm or embarrass them on anyone else. They must not give out home addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses and should consider whether to use their real names or credible pseudonyms (web names) for themselves and the people that they write about. Teachers and parents must review what children write carefully before giving approval. When you think they are ready, children can take or send the print-out of their work and the Approval Form to the interviewees or donors of copyright materials for checking and signing. Pupils will also need your approval before they can put work on the website, so please review their text and images carefully and sign when you approve. You must keep the Approval Form safe. Where appropriate, you should also consider whether to include children's photographs or whether to use self-portrait sketches or include no image at all. As a general rule, if you include a photograph, then do not use the child's full name. There is a bank of research and advice on these issues which we have summarised for you here. We ask you to consider these issues and to create your own code of conduct for your home or your school. The challenge in perspective The World Wide Web that carries this SchoolNet Global project is appropriately named; it is both global and enticing. The full spectrum of individuals that make our world interesting and occasionally dangerous are also 'out there' on the Internet too. Just because this is new technology does not mean that our old experience and common sense won't work. Indeed, just the opposite is true; rules that work in the rest of our lives also work well on the Internet. A good test is to look at what we do in other parts of our lives: for example: Schools and parents are happy to send photographs of children to the newspapers, with names, but they would never add phone numbers! We don't always believe what we read. What we say to people that are known to us is different to what we say to strangers. Top Ten Tips for Web Safety