The IT Nerd

If you rely on teachers to teach your kids about online safety, you might want to rethink that according to research provided by security company AVG.

The research, in which almost 1,800 teachers globally were interviewed, indicated a need to provide teachers with more support and training for educating children on the subject of online safety. Two thirds (64 per cent) of respondents agreed that schools should provide better training on using the Internet as an educational tool, and 77 per cent stated Internet safety should be a dedicated part of the education syllabus.

This highlights the concerning gap between the knowledge and capabilities of teachers and the expectations of parents. Though more than nine out of ten (92 per cent) teachers of a wide range of subjects confirmed they use Internet content in class and 69 per cent discuss online safety on an occasional or frequent basis, only one in four have actually had formal training to teach online safety skills (28 per cent)

This says that teachers need to be better prepared to deal with online safety. In the age of cyberbullying and other online threats, this training in my mind is not optional. Now that also means that parents have to step up and fill the gap. AVG can help with that as they have an interactive book called Magda & Mo which can help to provide you with useful tools to help develop your child’s understanding of how to make the right choices online, and give you as a parent practical guidance on this important topic.

AVG used an online survey to interview 1760 teachers of a variety of subjects with children between the aged of 3-18 to identify levels of training on security awareness in the following places:

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• Czech Republic
• France
• Germany
• New Zealand
• United Kingdom
• United States

See where your country ranks and how concerned you should be.

This entry was posted on July 8, 2014 at 6:50 am and is filed under Commentary with tags AVG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.