It’s almost impossible to keep your kids away from the Internet in the modern age, and in truth, why should we? It’s an essential part of their lives, and a great opportunity for them to learn, develop, and possibly even encourage a future career.
A large part of the Internet for kids involves chatting online, surfing the web, and playing online games. And with that comes some degree of risk.
But what about online or virtual learning? How safe is that for children?
How safe is virtual learning for kids?
You might wonder what happens once your kids aren’t in a classroom environment with the protection a tutor can offer them… but are instead in a virtual learning environment.
What can you do to keep your children safe online and away from harm?
Well, it all depends on the platform of course.
For example, FunTech’s virtual classes are set up to ensure the safety of your child. We’re passionate about how tech can help kids learn and set them up for life.
Unlike many other online learning platforms, we’re actually Ofsted registered. This is due to our background in offering real-life classroom learning, which at the moment is being exclusively run online due to the restrictions around the pandemic.
Your child is safe in our online learning classrooms because it’s in real-time, with real tutors. And our tutors are able to see your child’s screen to ensure they are not just learning, but also keeping safe.
We also take steps to teach your child how to be safe online, whether virtual learning, gaming, or browsing.
FunTech’s Internet Safety Module
We’ve been running tech classes for children since 1996, and in that time have seen a huge change in the way technology is used. In the early days of FunTech, the Internet wasn’t even part of what we taught children.
Times have changed.
The Internet is currently the platform through which kids learn with FunTech. We teach them how to develop their own websites, create Internet-based games and much more.
But there’s one aspect that we believe is so important that we’ve had to add to every single course we offer: and that’s online safety.
As a result, from this year onwards, every single FunTech virtual learning will have our online safety module added. It is designed to teach children about staying safe online and we believe this sets us apart from other tech summer camps in the UK.
It will be delivered to your child in bite-sized chunks, including aspects such as:
- How to keep safe online.
- How to report suspicious online activity and contact.
- The dangers of strangers, chat rooms, and the sharing of personal information.
- Why age ratings on games are important and not to be ignored.
The overall message we will constantly get children to keep reminding themselves, it’s this:
“If it’s not right in the offline world, then it’s not right online.”
Safe online learning with FunTech
But back to the initial question about how safe online learning is for kids.
The truth is it depends.
We know that kids are safe with FunTech, but you don’t have the same assurances with all forms of virtual learning, particularly when it’s not being delivered by a trusted partner.
If you are going to sign your child up to a virtual learning course, do your research. Find out how the lessons are delivered. In particular, ask the online learning has a chat functionality with other students, and how accessible your child will be to other students.
How that area is managed is important.
As we said, with FunTech, our lessons are delivered in real-time, meaning our tutors are present throughout in order to keep an eye on all participants.
If you would like to know more, please browse our online learning modules.
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