Piloting Our New 2025 Online Safety Workshop: Cyber Critical

A lot goes into a making a One Day workshop. There’s planning, development and fine-tuning, for starters! When it comes to serious topics like Online Safety, we want to make extra sure that every moment of the workshop is as meaningful as possible.

This is one reason why we pilot new workshops. It’s a chance for us to see how pupils (and teachers!) respond to content. Plus, decide if we want to add or remove any elements. Last week, we spent an amazing morning in a local primary school to trial our new Cyber Critical KS2 Online Safety workshop with Years 3 and 4.

How the session went

Watched over by class teachers and a couple of One Day staff, One Day’s Creative Manager, Clem, began by asking the pupils what they already knew about Online Safety. This was followed by a few True/False games around Online Safety facts. Did you know that just because a message or video has been deleted, doesn’t mean it’s gone forever? The games were fun, but the messages could be serious.

Then, it was time to hand over the creative reins to the children! Group freeze frames played out different Online Safety scenarios. For example, a group of children filming a fun dance for social media (except, oops, the song has swear words in). Or, a child getting frustrated while gaming and sending an unkind message. How do these scenarios affect the people involved? And how might they affect us in the future?

As well as the actions, pupils acted out the possible emotions of these people. We were so impressed at the range of facial expressions displayed. Excitement, anger, hurt, worry, joy, frustration – it was clear from their freeze frames exactly what the people were feeling. The activities also ignited memories, with children proactively sharing a couple of their own Online Safety stories during the workshop.

The nitty-gritty

Discussion points allowed the pupils to delve into the detail. Why did they think social media was restricted to children aged 13 and over? What is meant by ‘Virtual Reality’? Can your personal information be sold online? We heard some fantastic answers. This was all tied to the concept of ‘critical thinking’. We want to help children use their critical thinking skills while surfing the internet. And, when in doubt, seek help from an adult they trust.

An information-sharing session at the end (complete with ‘Stevie’ in a bald cap!) allowed the children to share what they’d learned. Amongst all the creativity, we were impressed to hear how many statistics and facts the pupils recalled. As well as enthusiastic, they were clearly totally switched on! We parted ways with a promise to share what they’d learned with their grown ups at home.

What we learned

We must say, the class were ideal guinea pigs. This pilot workshop enabled us to evaluate the pace of the workshop, see how children responded to the activities and, crucially, which elements we could add to make the Online Safety workshop even better. We already have plenty of ideas, including a focus on Artificial Intelligence and telling the difference between real/false information online.

An enormous thank you to this school for welcoming us into your hall. Pilot workshops are a crucial part of our quality control process. We are so excited to add Online Safety: Cyber Critical to our workshop roster and look forward to seeing so many of you around Safer Internet Day 2025.