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St. Nessans Community School Internet Safety Day St. Nessans Community School Internet Safety Day

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St. Nessans Community School Internet Safety Day

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Pictured Above: Students of St. Nessans Community College with Gary Lowe (Whizzkids Discover IT Company).

Safer Internet Day 2015 was celebrated on Tuesday 10th February 2015. This international annual event takes place every February to promote safe and responsible use of the internet and mobile phone technologies, especially amongst children and young people. St. Nessans Community College held a number of events to promote ‘safer internet use for all’. The theme for the 2015 event is “Let’s create a better internet together”.

St. Nessans Community School Internet Safety Day

Gary Lowe (Whizzkids Discover IT Company) & Shannen Falvey (5th year).

Following an initiative led by the PDST and Webwise Ireland , Shannen Falvey (5th year), was elected to be the school’s Internet Safety Ambassador and then set about creating a campaign group using student peer representatives from all years. This group then met on a weekly basis to generate ideas for how best to tackle cyber-safety in the school. All junior classes were given computer classes on how to stay safe & be savvy when using Social Media and a short video tutorial on how to change their Facebook profile settings to private was shown and placed up on the school’s Facebook page.  The 1st year classes then created fantastic posters highlighting both the positive and negative impact of social media.


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Two first year students from St. Nessans Community School created an excellent 5 minute video on the dangers of giving out too much personal information online, which was showcased on the day to the entire year group. This group were also treated to a wonderful wealth of knowledge from local businessman, Gary Lowe, Whizzkids Discover IT Company. Gary highlighted how the kids need to stay SMART when using today social media sites such as Facebook and Snapchat.

S – Stay Safe – don’t give out too much personal information

M – Never Meet up with someone you’ve met online on your own

A – Accepting Emails with attachments, etc. – always be cautious.

R – Reliable – is the information/ website you’re reading reliable?

T – Tell Someone – if you ever in doubt, upset by anything you see, tell someone, ideally an adult.

The students were then given anti-cyber-bullying wristbands and badges to promote the Internet Safety Day message that ‘You’re not alone’ when it comes to internet safety!

Another group of students, Cora Glasheen and Nicola Carmody had also created a very informative leaflet that was distributed on the day, providing student tips on how to stay safe online and how to unfriend or block someone if you don’t like their messages. According to the recent surveys across the country, “some 26 per cent of 9-16 year olds said that cyberbullying made them “very upset”, while the same amount of young people said they were “fairly upset” by online bullying. A further 20 per cent said they were “upset” by what they had been subjected to online”. It’s great to see the students of St. Nessans students raising awareness amongst their peers of ways to avoid being a victim to this type of bullying.

Ms. O’Driscoll stated ‘Well done to all involved in this year’s campaign and we hope to continue and build on this year’s results to improve and ‘create a better internet together’.

For more information about internet safety, click here.
For more information about St.Nessans Community School, check out their website here.

Read more about the schools in limerick here.

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.