April 13th, 2025Cyber safety for Hepburn Shire students
Students at Daylesford Dharma School, St Michael’s and Trentham, Hepburn, Bullarto, Newlyn, Daylesford and Yandoit primary schools are learning cyber safety – even those in prep.
Inform and Empower’s director and educator Marty McGauran said 380 were taking part in the Australia-wide initiative with a parent seminar happening at the Daylesford Primary School on May 29 at 6.30pm – with all welcome.
The program was made possible by funding from the Daylesford Foundation and the Community Bank Daylesford District. Inform and Empower has also partnered this year with the Community Bank Creswick & District for work with Creswick, Creswick North, Mt Blowhard and St Mary’s Clarkes Hill primary schools.
Marty said he came from a primary school teaching background and now specialised in supporting primary schools “in all things online safety and digital wellbeing”.
“I always had a real interest in technology and how kids use the online space from a school perspective, so I was often the teacher driving the use of technology and saw the imbalance between skilling these kids up and they had even more access than they ever had and then I was starting to see the challenges.
“Reports were coming to the principal and myself that kids were getting into issues at home without that equivalent skill set to navigate the challenges. So it’s all great throwing them on devices and there’s awesome stuff, but I really saw that difference and then the hole in the market that we were really just educating kids with a lecture every year.
“We’d get a police officer in just to lecture kids and go, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that, great, off you go’. And I knew that I could apply what I know about teaching, and how kids learn, to this particular space as well.”
Marty said the work was twofold. “It’s in the classrooms every term where we live stream a learning session with a teacher and it unpacks topics around being online, how to navigate the tricky challenges, how to make the most of the opportunities and that will be happening from prep to grade six.
“Alongside that is the parent education element. All the parents of those schools are invited to come along where we will speak to them on a very adult level, unpacking the real challenges and what is best to understand as a parent in this 2025 digital space.”
Marty said the sessions the Hepburn Shire students were tuning into were run around Australia at the same time, giving them the feeling they are part of a unique delivery method and feeling like they’re almost part of the one community learning about the online world.
“We really begin at that young age to get the conversation started, particularly with teachers, just that the online world is not something to just leave to an older millennial or a Gen Z or a boomer.
“We really encourage the fact that the teachers are in there in the classrooms and even from prep, just start to talk about the online world and some of the common language about the games they play.
“The messaging for preps is really simple around talking about trusted adults to go to when you’re online and it’s not until the upper grades where we get into the really nitty-gritty of critical thinking and dis- and misinformation in the upper years.
“It’s exactly the digital equivalent of letting kids know that when you’re online some people you’re playing with might say this is how old they are or might look like this in their online profile, but actually who could it be on the internet with you?
“Just starting those early conversations with kids so that they’re aware that the online space is not full of always safe people, just like we do in the offline world as well.”
Marty said after the parent sessions many came away with a new appreciation of the world their children were in.
“Particularly parents of younger kids, if they’ve only got six and seven-year-olds, they’re really ‘wow, okay, I know what’s ahead of me now – I sort of feel more prepared for what’s coming’. And with the parents of maybe older primary it’s ‘oh, my kids are already in this world’.
Marty said the most constant feedback was just the amount of information being fed to children and even adults.
“We have access to so much more that we’re just not designed to compute so much. So a lot of the time that overwhelming feeling that both kids and adults experience at times because it is like a fire hose of information, whether it’s entertainment or news or whatever it might be, the quantity is just unheard of and there’s a lot of argument that we’re just not developmentally evolutionary ready for so much onslaught and it’s why we’re all battling a little bit, to be honest.”
Words: Donna Kelly. Image: Supplied
