Education and New Media Italian INSAFE partner, Save the Children Italy, has now made available in English two essential publications for internet safety teachers and educators. The first is a handbook and the second a set of activities for use with school pupils.

The handbook attempts to offer teachers didactic tools with which they can embark, with their students – whether children or adolescents – on a journey towards an awareness of their online rights when it comes to using the latest technologies. It focuses particularly on Internet and mobile phone use, and follows in the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).The scheme is aimed mainly at secondary school students, namely children aged 10 to 14, as this represents the age group believed to be most susceptible to the aspects of New Media use-related risk prevention. All the same, teachers can feel free to adapt the course and activities outlined below to suit students of other ages.

Maria Elisa Marzotti of Save the Children Italy explains:

"The handbook explains the importance of education related to new media, how children can have concrete experience of their rights thanks to new media and how to enhance online safety through an educational process which makes them aware of their emotions, rights and responsibilities related to their online behaviour.

Through the set of activties teachers can play with their pupils in order to realise the educational process proposed in the handbook. The activities provide teachers with all practical and methodological information they need."