Teachers to get internet safety training
11-05-2007
by Emmet Ryan

Athlone is playing host to a group of ICT tutors on Friday who are preparing for an internet safety course they will be delivering to teachers.

The first of two groups of 25 tutors will meet in the Athlone Education Centre on Friday where they will create Bebo profiles, chat via instant messenger and watch videos on YouTube. These activities aren't designed to help the participants procrastinate but are in fact part of their training to provide a course on internet safety suitable for all teachers at primary and post-primary levels. Once the tutors are trained they will deliver internet safety training courses to teachers in 20 regional education centres.

The course, entitled the Integrating Internet Safety into Teaching & Learning course, was set up by the National Centre for Technology in Education's (NCTE) Teaching Skill Initiative and Webwise in response to the upsurge in use of the internet in schools for learning, the increased reliance on the internet for homework, and the fallout schools find themselves having to deal with from children's recreational use of the internet.

The course will provide teachers all over the country with the opportunity to learn skills and practice activities to assist children and young people to stay safe when they are using online technologies in school and in the wider community.

The course will be available for the first time this summer and the NCTE plans to run the course regularly thereafter. In addition to the scheduled sessions, courses can also be organised as whole school events, taking place either in local education centre or in individual schools.

Friday's training session in Athlone and the provision of the course to teachers comes on the back of the government announcing a major investment in the ICT in Schools programme as part of the National Development Plan in January. The NDP investment comes after a long period where Ireland has fared poorly in global rankings of ICT usage in education. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) ranks Ireland alongside Mexico for its ratio of computers to students.

Earlier this year ENN reported that the NCTE was cooperating with Microsoft to help improve the standards of IT access for students by providing cut price software under the Software4Students programme.