It has been an exciting summer of developments ahead of the new school year. We have a wide range of new features and content that we are delighted to be sharing with you. A few highlights are detailed below.
Enhanced interactivity
The majority of content in the new OSA Certificates has been created as interactive presentations. These are interspersed with knowledge checks to enhance understanding and which must be successfully completed before moving on through the courses.
New content
The new OSA Certificates have been developed to ensure full coverage of the recent DFE guidance on online safety education. Additions include topics such as the impact of social media influencers and the role internet grooming is having on the rise in knife crime. We have also updated all other guidance to reflect the most up to date issues, such as the rise of ‘cyberflashing’ using AirDrop.
New KS5 course
For the first time we are providing access to a Certificate aimed specially at post-16 pupils. This includes more age-appropriate case-studies than in our courses for younger pupils (e.g. in examining the Warwick University ‘rape chat scandal’) and aims to prepare pupils for managing their online safety once they leave school.
Staff CPD course overhauled
Our already popular CPD course has been re-written for 2019-2020. In addition to substantial updates to the information on keeping children safe, the course draws on news stories and Teaching Regulation Agency case studies from the past 12 months to reflect on how staff need to be careful in their own use of digital technology. UPDATE: This course is now formally CPD-certified. More details here.
Parental course streamlined
Drawing on our recent series of ‘online safety in 90 seconds’ videos for parents, our course for parents and carers has been redesigned to be very quick to complete but highly informative. Parents who complete the course will develop a good understanding of the risks posed to their children and the actions they can take to reduce these risks.
Improved documentation
Documentation to support your delivery of the OSA Certificate of Online Safety has been refined and improved. Attractive presentations and detailed user guides are now available from the documentation page on our website.
Modernised theme
The OSA courses are now being delivered using a more modern and attractive theme along with a more user-friendly interface. Anybody opting to access the courses through mobile devices such as smartphones will find the pages adapt automatically and effectively to make completing OSA Certificates easy on any size screen.
We hope that you will all enjoy the changes made for our 2019-2020 online safety courses. If you have any suggestions for additions or changes to our courses or systems please let us know.
Please use the form below if you are interested in running the OSA Certificate of Online Safety at your school and would like trial access.
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