Welcome back to Of Primary Importance!

In this episode, we are joined by Caroline Allams, Natterhub’s Co-founder and Chief Product Officer. Caroline is an educator with over 12 years’ experience in the UK, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Hong Kong.  Natterhub is a gated immersive online safety and digital citizenship learning platform, providing primary schools with a tool to develop crucial digital soft skills and that teaches young children to understand more about their digital landscape.   

In this episode we discussed keeping primary pupils safe online.

Here are some of the questions I asked:

• What made you interested in co-founding a company for pupil online safety?
• What do you think is working really well in schools currently?
• What kind of support/resources etc. do you think are needed to improve the teaching of online safety in schools?
• Since 2020, we all know pupils have been online a lot more, how has this impacted on their safety and how can risks be mitigated?
• What are your 5 top tips for teaching online safety?
• What do you think are some common misconceptions about the online world and how can these be addressed?
• Part of Natterhub is providing a safe social media like space for primary pupils- some may be surprised by this as social media isn't 'supposed' to be used under a certain age, but I know from teaching primary it is. Can you talk about this a bit more please.
• Do you think there are any specific aspects of online safety that should be taught in primary but aren't or are not given enough precedence?
• Unfortunately, we know that children online can be at risk of abuse, what are some signs that parents/teachers may spot that indicate this could be happening?
• What are your tips for parents in supporting their child to be safe online and how can their child's school support with this?
• Your platform supports both digital literacy and digital empathy can you please talk about why these are important skills for pupils to develop.
• How can listeners get in touch with you and are there any other resources/support that you recommend?

You can follow Caroline on Twitter at @carolineallams 

You can also check out Natterhub’s YouTube and website.  

You can follow me (Kat Cauchi) on Twitter at @ReallyschoolK

Check out #OPIP and #OfPrimaryImportance for more content