Young and eSafe

These lessons are supported by the Young and eSafe student home, a space for students to explore and develop online safety skills.

Key outcomes

Students will learn about positive online behaviours, including the value of respect, responsibility, empathy, resilience and critical thinking.

You can choose one or all of the topics covered, in any order. For each topic, a lesson plan based on the relevant video is provided, as well as a lesson plan using other resources. You can use either of these or both.

You can also send your students the link to the student homepage and let them explore on their own.

Student home

Lesson plans are organised into five topics:

• respect
• responsibility
• empathy
• resilience
• critical thinking

Develop students' understanding of the value of cultural difference and respectful online communication, and increase their capacity to respond to online situations in a positive way.

Lesson 1 (15 to 20 mins)

Activity: Students view a PowerPoint slide of a Facebook post from Australia Day and use a worksheet to write comments on this post.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x slide deck, 1 x student worksheet

Lesson 2 (15 to 20 mins, including video)

Activity: Students view 2-minute (online) video called ‘I respect differences’, then complete a worksheet rating online behaviours as either respectful/disrespectful. Teacher response sheet included.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x student worksheet, 1 x teacher answer sheet

Media: Respect video (1:03): A boy looks at a photo on Facebook with the caption ‘Indy Mindy thought I was actually taking a photo’, and references in the comments to her appearance and ethnicity.

Help students understand their responsibility in online situations, including supporting others and speaking out about offensive or harmful online content or behaviours.

Lesson 1 (15 to 20mins)

Activity: Teacher-led discussion based on personal story from the Young and eSafe website.

Media: Web content: Young and eSafe — Responsibility

(Optional) web content: Counselling and support services

Lesson 2 (15 to 30 mins, including video)

Activity: Students view 1-minute (online) video called ‘I am responsible’ followed by teacher-led discussion, with suggested questions and answers.

Media: Responsibility video (0:56): A fight starts between two teenagers in a skate park. While the fight is occurring, another teen is live streaming the fight to social media. One of the teens witnessing the fight intervenes and breaks up the fight. The video depicts two types of bystanders, the hurtful or unhelpful bystander and the upstander.

Develop students' empathy skills through practice in actively supporting others online. 

Lesson 1 (25 mins including video)

Activity: Students view 5-minute (online) video called ‘I feel for others’ followed by teacher-led discussion. Students then use a worksheet to comment on a social media post.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x student worksheet

Media: Empathy video (1:16): Tom is listening to music while watching a TV news story about a landslide disaster in another country. The story shows a boy in the disaster area who happens to be wearing a T-shirt featuring the same band as Tom is listening to. This creates a connection for Tom, who then shares the news story online with a message of support.

Lesson 2 (15 to 20 mins)

Activity: Scripted teacher-led mindfulness activity, followed by discussion.

Develop students' understanding of resilience through identifying their strengths, skills and coping strategies that can help them bounce back from stressful situations.

Lesson 1 (20 to 25 mins)

Activity: Teacher-led discussion. Students use two worksheets to rate their level of resilience and identify how they can be more resilient in the future.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 2 x student worksheets

Lesson 2 (20 to 25 mins including video)

Activity: Students view 2-minute (online) video called ‘I get back up’ followed by teacher-led discussion. Students then use a worksheet to reflect on their own experiences and coping strategies.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x student worksheet

Media: Resilience video (1:59): Stacey is being cyberbullied by a group of girls and retreats to a toilet cubicle. She is upset but reads a message on the door saying ‘They don’t write your story… you do,’ which gives her the confidence to face up to the leader of the group, ignore the bullying and go her own way.

Critical thinking is the ability to examine information to make an informed judgement on an issue. It is particularly important online, where information can be easily changed, manipulated or taken out of context.

Lesson 1: 15 to 20 mins

Activity: Students use a worksheet to evaluate the trustworthiness and reliability of three online articles.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x student worksheet

Media:
Article: Violent Video Games Help Relieve Stress, Depression, Says TAMIU Professor

Article: Playing with your brain: Negative impact of some action video games

Lesson 2: 30 mins including video (optional activity 30 to 60 mins)

Activity: Students view a 1-minute (online) video ‘I question things’ and use two photographs to explore how digital imagery can be misleading or manipulated.

Optional activity analyses further online content dealing with image manipulation.

Materials: 1 x lesson plan, 1 x slide deck

Media: Critical Thinking video (1:11): A teenage boy and girl are inspired to replicate a stunt they have seen online, where a man jumps off a bridge and is unharmed. Once they see the real height of the bridge they’ve chosen and think about the real consequences, they reconsider and call off the attempt.