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  

The City of Ballarat was recently left to contact residents in recent days, after being notified of a cyber security incident involving its after-hours service provider, OracleCMS.

 OracleCMS is a third-party supplier which the council uses as its after-hours phone call service provider.  

When the community calls the City of Ballarat’s service line outside of business hours, the call is diverted to OracleCMS who take the call on the council’s behalf and then pass the message over to the council.    

The City of Ballarat’s own systems and databases have not been accessed. This data breach relates to the external OracleCMS system only.  

A total 52 impacted local residents were being notified about the breach. The affected data was limited to ‘low risk identity attributes’ that was collected between April 2015 and December 2017 and largely consisted of first names and last names of individuals along with their addresses and phone numbers.

City of Ballarat, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Matt Wilson said the protection of our local resident’s confidentiality and privacy is of critical importance.

“The City of Ballarat apologises unreservedly to everyone affected by this incident,” Mr Wilson said in recent days, following the breach.

“We are in the process of contacting every resident impacted and are offering no-cost access to the services of national identity and cyber support service IDCARE.”

The City of Ballarat takes the privacy of its customers very seriously and is committed to ensuring all contracted service providers have the strongest cyber security measures in place.

OracleCMS have since undertaken several steps to enhance their cyber security and help prevent recurrence, supported by cyber security experts.

They have also been working with government authorities to investigate the incident which had impacted a number of organisations and local councils across Australia.

Words & Image: Supplied.