Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe 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’s event at Ashton Sixth Form College was organised by students studying on the new IT Diploma. The students had support from the Tameside Safeguarding Children Board and an IT Consultant from Services for Children and Young People at Tameside MBC.

The students invited children from Waterloo Primary School into college to learn how to keep safe when using the Internet.  Several activities were organised including setting up a virtual social networking site to show the children how it is not always possible to identify their online friends.  A teacher from the college posed as a child in the chat room of the site to highlight this point.  

For college students there were information stands to highlight the dangers of “online lives” and a competition to find out who was the safest student online.  The prize of an iPod Shuffle was won by Alex Murphy and the runner up was Michael Sedgewick.