5 children from Year 6 were selected to take part in the iBelong Cyber event at the Word to take part in some workshops around e-Safety.

In our first session, we worked with Alan from the DSIT (Department of Science, Innovation and Technology) looking at trust when online. We discussed different people (like doctors or teachers) and why we trust them, and how we trust information from different sources. Looking at AI and machine based learning, we learned about data sets through the game ‘Quick Draw‘ and how computers learn from lots of pieces of similar data. He also learned about key signs to look for with regards to phishing (scamming emails, texts, calls and websites wanting to steal details/information) situations.

Our next session was about ‘Digital Footprints from a Gaming View’ – the marks we leave online – from Digital Safety. We looked at ‘gamertags’, as this is the first thing people see when we engage online. We learned that it is important that these are anonymous and hide our personal information. We then took part in a ‘password cracker’ activity – trying to guess someone’s password. Next we tried to create a new stronger password for the character.

After lunch, we had our final session about ‘Staying safe on Roblox’. We looked into cybersecurity, and how we keep ourselves safe online. Again (similar to the last session) we looked at the importance of secure passwords and what we should be sharing online. Discussing scenarios, we looked at what to do when people contact you unsolicited or offering ‘too good to be true’ situations – highlighting the reject and report buttons.

We ended the day looking at impersonation and identity theft, thinking about how we’d feel if someone had been impersonating us online. Using Mentimeter, we took part in polls to assess our understanding of the themes of today.

Overall, the children were given a refresh of how they can make themselves more safe when setting up accounts or navigating the online world.