Northumberland ICT & eLearning

Annual Online Safety Update

Wednesday 4th June '25, 3.35pm - 4.50pm - online.

We recommend that all members of staff attend this session annually. In it, we'll cover key areas of risk and how to mitigate these. We'll then move on to cover recent trends, risks and key actions you can take as well as highlighting some new resources to ensure your team is up to date and prepared for the year ahead.

The CEOP Series of Six Workshops

The two final CEOP sessions takes place this term: The Dark Web and Challenging Victim Blaming Attitudes. If you are yet to start the CEOP sessions we'd advise waiting for the 25-26 course guide publication and that you sign up for the full set of six sessions next year.

See guide for an overview of this series.

Cyber awareness

Wednesday 14th May '25 - 3.45-4.55pm, online.

This session will be delivered by Dave Tennant, a Force Specialist Cyber Protect & Prepare Officer with Northumbria Police. Dave will take us through the risks we should all be aware of and the key actions we can take to protect our personal accounts and our school network. Ensuring your team understand the risks and how they can best mitigate these is a vital part of securing your network against cyber attacks.

AI In education: an introduction

Tuesday 18th March, 3.45pm-4.45pm, online

AI is still a very divisive topic. In this introductory course we aim to demystify AI by exploring its origins and development, cautionary steps to be explored before using it in your setting and then how AI tools can be used to save you time in the many non-teaching tasks that fill your day.

Canva

Following our two 'Canva Essentials' sessions that introduced us to the Canva interface we scheduled a series of new sessions, each taking a deep dive into a key element of Canva. Each session is 3.30 - 4.30pm online.

Unleash creativity in the classroom with Canva Video Suite - 25th March ‘25

Let’s learn more about Canva for Education’s video editor! You will learn how to record yourself and your screen right within Canva, edit those videos, and publish what you've created.

Ways to capture student l​earning - 29th April ‘25

In this hands-on workshop, participants will be guided through ways Canva can be used by students to demonstrate their learning and understanding.

Spark inspiration and save time with Magic - 3rd June ‘25

In this interactive session, you will discover how your very own AI-powered teaching assistant can save you valuable time, generate engaging classroom activities, craft comprehensive lesson plans, cater to diverse learning needs, and streamline communication.

Sequence, Selection and Repetition in Scratch, KS2

Tuesday 12th June '25, 3.45pm - 5.00pm - online.

If you’re teaching KS2 computing and would like to know more about the key concepts of sequence, repetition and selection in programming, this is the course for you.

This is a hands on Barefoot Computing session. We’ll lead you through one concept at a time, after each concept is introduced you will have access to pre-prepared Scratch files and given time to try out an exemplar activity before we move on to the next.

Computational Thinking in Early Years

Thursday 12th June '25, 3.45pm - 5.00pm - online.

This session will provide the perfect introduction to computational thinking in the Early Years and support you to get started, providing reassurance, resources to use and next steps.

Please email jennifer.harris@northumberland.gov.uk or jordan.graham@northumberland.gov.uk

to reserve any places.

We're excited to tell you about our new blog: The Digital Classroom. The aim of which is to showcase the fantastic things we see going on in classrooms across Northumberland as teachers use technology to enhance lessons across the curriculum. Posts, in the main, will be written by you and your colleagues to give a real teacher's perspective on a variety of topics.

We hope this will be a a great way to share ideas and best practise around the use of technology in the classroom.

Our first post has been written by Lesley Thorne who teaches the computing curriculum from year one to year four at St Robert's Catholic First School. St Robert's were one of the first schools in Northumberland to adopt Apple Classroom, a fantastic app that allows the teacher to monitor and guide pupils working on devices around the classroom.

Click the image below to read Lesley's post about the impact this has made in her classroom.

We're very excited to see many of you at the FIRST LEGO League Challenge event next week, following which thoughts will be turning to the Explore event, aimed at younger pupils for which there are a very small number of places still available.

What is FIRST LEGO League Explore?

FIRST LEGO League Explore is an exciting international Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) programme for 6-9 year olds. Teams work through 12 fully-resourced sessions to research a real-world STEM theme and construct and program a motorised LEGO model that demonstrates their learning and their project.

Is this year's Submerged theme, teams will learn about our oceans, how we explore them, the human impact we are having on this precious resource and how we can look after them in the future.

If you're yet to sign up and would like to know more, please drop jordan.graham@northumberland.gov.uk an email asap.

In School360 admin, administrators can manage registers, users, classes and houses, reset passwords and update reward codes amongst many other features.

The admin page has been updated recently. Please save a copy of the guidance linked below for your reference.

School Governors with School360 accounts will also note that their home page, containing links to their email account and drive, has a fresh new look, although functionality will remain much the same from a user perspective.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

All School360 users have Adobe Express accounts and have recently enjoyed the introduction of several new features. Most recently is the introduction of the drawing tool which we think is particularly good when used on an iPad. Pupils can draw from scratch or make use of a huge range of templates and colouring sheets.

Pupils can use their finger to do this but if you are thinking about investing in a stylus, we're very much enjoying the Skriva pencil. Great battery life, easy connectivity and a great price point compared to the Apple Pencil. See images below for a quick look at some of the drawing activities available in Adobe Express.

You'll recall that there are some brilliant tutorials available HERE for the desktop version of Adobe. Look out for a series that model the drawing process on iPad, coming very soon.

We want as many people as possible to be able to access our websites. eSchools websites have some important accessibility features as standard. These include the ability to zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen, navigate most of the website using just a keyboard and use the text translate tool amongst other things.

eSchools have put together some tips around ensuring your content is as accessible as possible, for example, consider the text format when writing content. Plain text is the optimal format - this is because it can be used in many different formats to suit individuals with different disabilities. Therefore, it is important to provide a plain text alternative format for all content that is informative.

You can find their full list of tips linked below which can be adopted whoever your website provider.

A reminder of the steps to take should you experience an online safety incident in school.

Below you will find a copy of the online safety flowchart which walks you through the steps to take in the event of an incident. You'll also find a new document that details the information we need in order to investigate.

There is a huge amount of traffic on your school network, much of this is running in the background with user activity added in to the mix. In order to be able to filter through all of the background noise we need specific information.

With this we can isolate activity on a specific device within a certain time frame and provide you with the information you need to move forward.

You'll also find a link to the Northumberland Online Safety Website which has a wealth of information about filtering, monitoring and reporting. If this link does not work for you - please contact us to ask for access.

We're big fans of Be Internet Legends by Parentzone and Google.

As we move into March, BIL is focussing on digital wellbeing – and how being online makes children feel.

Being Internet Kind doesn’t just have to be about empathy towards others. You can also use the pillar to help your pupils recognise and talk about their own emotions – and to also consider simple self-care techniques, such as rest and spending time with friends.

Activity 1.1 from the Kind Pillar Pack is called ‘Noticing Feelings’ – and it teaches children about the emotions they and others are experiencing.

One wellbeing extension activity idea for this lesson is for your pupils to get creative in considering common feeling words.

Using the worksheet to frame different emojis, you could set a creative challenge to design a brand new emoji that reflects the many emotionsthey may experience online – from the positive to the not-so-positive. Maybe even set a quiz to guess which pupil designed which emoji?

The new campaign from the NSPCC is called: Behind the Screen. It raises awareness of the sexually coerced extortion of boys and young men. Sexually coerced extortion is being blackmailed for nudes online, also called ‘sextortion’.

The NSPCC want all young people to feel able to seek support for whatever they are going through and know that they can contact Childline for advice and support. With this campaign we specifically want boys and young men to know that it’s okay to reach out and that Childline is a place for them.

They have produced a supporting guide for anyone working or volunteering with young people. It covers what sexually coerced extortion is, how to spot it and how to support young people.

There is a lot of wonderful content available online for children, however we know there is also a lot of content that would be inappropriate or even harmful to younger viewers.

Internet Matters have collated some excellent advice to help parents put boundaries in place in terms of what their children can see online. This includes settings that can be put in place, notes around screentime and ways to help your child think critically about the content they're consuming.

Please get in touch to request support or reserve a place on any of our training sessions.

jennifer.harris@northumberland.gov.uk

jordan.graham@northumberland.gov.uk

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