More Information

Promoting e-safety is a high priority for schools, parents and anyone working with young people. To kick the year off we have a really exciting competition for students to enter and win fantastic prizes for themselves and their school. Our competition is launched to coincide with Safer Internet Day which takes place each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. This year safer internet day is Tuesday 9^th February and it would be great if you could launch our competition to your school on that day.

We want you to create a way to promote e-safety awareness using the theme “Think before you post”.

There are 2 main divisions for entries either Creative Arts or Digital Media. Creative arts can be in any media you choose e.g. poetry, art, drama, music. Digital media would involve the use of ICT e.g. photography, multimedia presentations, web pages, audio or video. This competition is open to primary and secondary schools. There are 3 age categories—Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3. Prizes will be awarded in each age range on an individual basis, school basis and there will also be an overall winner.

Closing date for entries is 4pm on Friday 26^th February. The winners will be announced on18^th March. Entries can be submitted in any format by post, council courier or e-mail.

As part of the competition all entries will be hosted on-line. All entrants must have permission for their work to be displayed in this way. A signature from a parent/guardian must be obtained on the entry form.

We really look forward to receiving your entries.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries.

Attachments:

E_safety_competition_entry_form_2010.doc	[Entry Form]	72 Kb
E_safety_competition_flier_2010.doc	[Flyer]	178 Kb

Free Online Reporting Briefings

Colleagues

I would like to draw your attention to the Free Online Reporting

Briefings taking place on 26th February (London) and 4th March

(Manchester) 2010, for for Primary and Special Schools. I have attached

a flyer giving an outline of the events, along with booking instructions

which you are free to circulate to schools if you feel it would be of

benefit to them.

Attachments:

briefing.pdf

[Free online reporting briefings flyer]

93 Kb

MS Internet Explorer security issue requires urgent upgrade to IE8 or use of an alternative browser

Northern Grid and Microsoft recommend that browsers running Microsoft IE6 or 7 are updated to IE8 as a matter of urgency. Security experts have seen malicious attacks exploiting the weakness with these versions of the browser. Google and Adobe have both experienced recent attacks and consider IE6 to be a security weak link.

Microsoft recommend that the IE8 browser have the highest security settings however this unfortunately will block user access to a number of sites. Schools should consider the adoption of an alternative browser. Microsoft has recently supplied an emergency patch but the MS Internet Explorer browser is still at risk.

To update to IE8 or install an alternative browser simply requires accessing the sites listed below and downloading and running the application. Schools should also ensure that the operating system has all support packs installed (XP SP3) and all security updates. Antivirus should also be installed and fully updated with scheduled scanning set.

Download and install IE8

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

Download and install Firefox 3.5

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

For further and more detailed information please refer to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8463516.stm