Empowering Schools in the Digital Age: A Deep Dive into Cyber Safety with Yasmin London of Ysafe by Linewise

Looking to fortify your school's online safety protocols? Look no further, as we have Yasmin London, the dynamic Director of YSAFE by LineWise, enlightening us with practical tools and tips for the complex world of cyber safety. With a powerful fusion of her personal experiences and professional expertise, Yasmin shares her passion for principal wellbeing, support, empowerment, advocating, and leading. She provides a tour-de-force presentation on how YSAFE has made a substantial impact on over a million students, 400,000 parents, 150,000 staff, and 700 schools across Australia.

In this captivating episode, we also delve into the indispensable role of technology in today's educational environment. Yasmin stresses on the significance of harnessing the power of technology to connect with young people, and the pivotal role of a whole-school approach to online safety education. She shares the commendable work of YSAFE in empowering school leaders in this sphere, focusing on their innovative initiatives and partnerships, including the Digital Experts Academy and an upcoming online safety management course for principals. Notably, we also take a peek into the NSW Primary Principles Association's Professional Learning Suite and their virtual principal presentations. So, grab your headphones, tune in and equip yourself with essential knowledge on cyber safety to empower your students in this digital age.

Ysafe Webinar Matters Webinar Series can be booked at:

https://cvent.me/7bOrYL

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

Transcript

Drew Janetzki: 0:01

Welcome everyone to the Professional Learning Podcast, the podcast where we connect with leaders and facilitators on professional learning offerings. I'm Drew Geneski, Professional Learning Officer for the NSW Primary Principles Association.

Yasmin London: 0:14

My name is Yasmin London. I'm the Director of Digital Wellbeing at an organisation called LineWise, and YSAFE by LineWise is our education organisation within.

Drew Janetzki: 0:27

Great to be with you everyone. Today's special guest is Yasmin London, who is the Director of YSAFE by LineWise, which is Australia's largest digital safeguarding education organisation. Yasmin is front and centre in the mission to protect and empower young people's online safety journey And in this podcast she unpacks some tools and tips to help everyone in that really complex space of being safe online. At the end of our podcast, stay tuned and we'll give you some dates and further information about upcoming webinar series for principals as well as for parents. So please stay tuned for that and now enjoy Yasmin London. Now welcome Yasmin. Our NSW Primary Principles Association membership is wrapped around the values of principal wellbeing, principals or school leaders and principals leading school operations. These values are wrapped around support, empowerment, advocating and leading. Yasmin, can you tell our members how your work aligns with these key values and how YSAFE can support us?

Yasmin London: 1:39

Yeah, amazing. Thanks so much for having me, drew, and thanks everybody for listening in today. I'm very passionate about schools. School leaders are at the front line in the online safety stakes, so when it comes to well-being and operations, what YSAFE by Linewise really tries to do is provide all the resources to make that a little easier for our school leaders, so lots of presentations, resources and tools and equipment that can help them do that.

Drew Janetzki: 2:08

Yeah, fabulous. So can you tell, i guess, what motivated you to align yourself with promoting and educating the population about cyber safety?

Yasmin London: 2:17

Yeah, i've got a couple of interesting stories around this. So I spent 13 years in the NSW police force and I worked predominantly with schools and young people for a really big part of my service And I had a couple of incidents occur as a police officer where I guess they had a lot to do with social media. One in particular had me involved in a suicide negotiation with a young person, which was really really difficult to do, and I think that had a penny drop moment about the importance of online safety.

Drew Janetzki: 2:49

Absolutely yeah.

Yasmin London: 2:50

In their lives. So I guess, as the police officer, part of my job was to go around to schools and to turn up and tell the kids what they shouldn't be doing online, and one observation that I made was that it wasn't really having impact. I was turning up with the slide that said the telecommunications criminal code act on them and told them you know you're going to get arrested if you do this, which was not really true, but that was sort of the standpoint that we had to had to share, and so I kind of went on this mission to try and find a way to have impact, to meet kids where they're at, to talk to parents about the actual issues that they're experiencing and help schools address those problems.

Drew Janetzki: 3:32

Yeah, yeah, wow. Well, from a bit of a sad perspective, but also look at the positive impact that it is having. Look, can you provide us an overview of the services and resources of the website ysafecomau offers to the New South Wales public school principals and as New South Wales public schools are seeking to enhance their cyber safety measures?

Yasmin London: 3:58

Ysafe does a lot of different things. So we're part, firstly, of a larger organisation called LineWise, which is the world's leading digital wellbeing solutions provider, and Ysafe is essentially the education and engagement arm, and so what we do typically is we go into schools, we do really fun pro tech strength based education sessions with students, with staff and, really importantly, with parents, and we provide resources to schools to really try to help them take that conversation on, you know, long after we've left. So we provide elements like our online safety hub, for example, to schools that shares you know about 400 up and game reviews with principals, lesson plans, best practice frameworks, policy recommendations all that really important stuff. But you know, our day to day is really engaging with young people and with school leaders about how we can have conversations about online safety that have impact.

Drew Janetzki: 5:00

Well, you certainly have. I'm looking through the website and terms and you can help me in terms of making sure I've got these numbers correct. Yasmin, on the ysafecomau website, it's a Ysafe award winning team of cyber safety experts that have provided online safety education to I believe it's over a million students, 300, no, 400,000 parents now 150,000 staff and over 700 schools across Australia. I guess the question is what sort of impact have you seen so far with Ysafe?

Yasmin London: 5:37

Pretty significant. You know, we'll give ourselves numbers.

Drew Janetzki: 5:40

Numbers are amazing.

Yasmin London: 5:41

A little bit of a pat on the back, i will say you know, look, we've been around since 2013 and we have teams in most states in Australia And you know we're really proud of those numbers. But I think what I'm most proud of is the schools that we work with. We work with over and over again. So, in terms of impact, what we're seeing at the moment is students who we spoke to in kindergarten now graduating year six, going into high school, and we've been there year on year on year and watching those young people, you know, grow and become these sort of really resilient digital citizens. That's the impact that matters to us.

Drew Janetzki: 6:19

That is certainly the Y, isn't it? That's fantastic. So, on those you briefly touched it before of the Y in terms of Y, you got into this space. Can you share any success stories or notable examples of how Ysafe has helped our students, schools, teachers or even our school leaders improve their cyber safety practices and protect us against cyber threats?

Yasmin London: 6:45

Yeah, look, I think in terms of examples, you know, a day to day example that we see as success is when we have young people willing to come up and talk to us about the things that they're experiencing, so that that help seeking is sometimes the biggest barrier.

Yasmin London: 7:01

You know, whether you're a parent, whether you're a principal or a teacher, getting kids to talk about what's going on then gives us the opportunity to solve the problems before they become too big. So, on a day to day basis, you know we have that happen in almost all of our sessions. When it comes to young people, when it comes to schools, i think what principals tell us is that they love that someone has their back. They're very, very busy places, schools, and, you know, online safety is obviously our niche, it's what we focus on, but you know I've got a mother that was a teacher.

Yasmin London: 7:36

You know I deal with with schools all the time And I'm acutely aware that there are many competing priorities, and so the feedback that we get from principals and from schools is that they love partnering with us because they know that someone has their back with the resources, with the advice, with the you know conversation strategies that they might need to use for parents who are going through difficulties. So I guess you know it might not sound, you know, massive and exciting, but those day to day examples are what we see as successful.

Drew Janetzki: 8:07

Yeah, that's really important, absolutely, Absolutely. Could you tell us in terms of what do you see as the latest trends in cyber safety across Australia And really across the globe?

Yasmin London: 8:20

How long is the piece of string?

Drew Janetzki: 8:21

Yeah, it is a fairly open question.

Yasmin London: 8:24

Look, I think there's many things In primary schools in particular. It's not a new issue, but it is an ongoing, and probably the biggest issue is cyber bullying, toxic online behaviors and, particularly with this age group, is this idea of cyber ostracism, so kids being left out of certain situations, and then you know schools dealing with those problems and also the parents that expect schools to deal with these.

Drew Janetzki: 8:50

So could you tell us an example of what does that look like and sound like or feel like from a school perspective or from a student perspective? What is that term? What does it mean?

Yasmin London: 8:59

Cyber ostracism basically means someone is repeatedly left out of a group. So often when we think of cyber bullying, we think of this sort of mean and nasty words or behaviors, things that we might say to someone. But this is a sort of more passive way of targeting someone. So it might be, for example, we see this a lot in stage three. you know a five or six child that's left out of a chat group, you know intentionally, and so in their group at school they'll talk about what happened on WhatsApp last night or on Messenger and that child's not allowed in, and so then we have these peer-to-peer issues. that starts spilling out onto social media platforms And you know, a lot of the time we have parents that then become involved because their child is distressed and they want schools to, you know, approach it quite punitively and really get involved in a way that sort of targets children for doing what you know unfortunately happens day in and day out across Australia.

Yasmin London: 9:58

So it's helping schools understand a restorative approach to something like that might be a better way to go. But it's tricky, you know. there's a lot of feelings involved and no one situation is the same as the next.

Drew Janetzki: 10:11

No, but it is a tricky space and I can hear colleagues having that experience as well and how to deal with those scenarios, which is really tricky.

Yasmin London: 10:22

Yeah, it can be really, really hard. Principles and schools are at the centre of it a lot of the time And, whether they like it or not, ultimately you know, parents do believe it's their responsibility to solve, even if it did happen over the weekend, which is tricky.

Drew Janetzki: 10:38

It is absolutely So. as the cyber security landscape evolves, what steps has WISE safe to, or what steps do they take to keep stay up to date with emerging threats or provide relevant and timely guidance for our or for your users?

Yasmin London: 10:57

Yeah, well, it's our job to be at the forefront of all of this so that we can help our school partners, so we have a team of researchers. One of the interesting things about WISE safe as well, which you mentioned earlier is our kind of eclectic mix of professional disciplines. So we are ex teachers, ict educators, police officers, psychologists So everybody comes with their cold face experience, but also their professional experience that we're able to bring to the advice that we share with schools and the sessions that we deliver. So we all keep our knowledge up to date in our areas of expertise. And we also work really closely with other professionals in the online safety industry, so the eSafety Commissioner, we work as well with a lot of what schools would see as our competitors, because we really believe that collaboration is the way forward and that diversity in voices is important too.

Drew Janetzki: 11:55

Yeah, I wanted to touch on that in terms of that. You've mentioned this previously in seminars It's not a competition in that space. You welcome WISE, safe welcomes government institutions in terms of we're all working together to solve this massive issue of cyber security.

Yasmin London: 12:14

It's so important. I think there's a misunderstanding that other online safety experts or organisations are in competition with us and vice versa. Our philosophies need to align and I think there's different online safety experts with different philosophies, but certainly with a couple that we work with. We don't think for a minute that WISE safe is the be all and end all solution to absolutely everybody's problems. We're big believers in diversity and, particularly when it comes to messaging for young people and certain communities, we want to make sure that the right voice and the right set of voices is sharing good, consistent and helpful information for those schools, so we really welcome that.

Drew Janetzki: 12:56

Yeah, absolutely So. In your experience, what, or in YSAFE's experience, what are some of the most common cyber threats that students and parents, school teachers and leaders now face And what's what does ysafecom that are you assist in migrating those risks?

Yasmin London: 13:13

Well, i think one of the biggest risks or topics at the moment is is the topic of generative AI, deep fakes, technology and, of course, misinformation that is circulating as a result.

Yasmin London: 13:28

Do we all have the answers for what the future is going to look like and what everybody should do?

Yasmin London: 13:32

I wish I had a crystal ball, but what I will say is that a lot of these risks and the ways that we address them come down to our attitude and whether we have a pro technology ethos or whether we allow technology and our fear of it to control us.

Yasmin London: 13:49

And what we actually see is when we have that pro tech ethos, when we embrace it, we embrace the learning we seek, we are curious, we learn more and we learn about the bad but also the good ways that it can be applied.

Yasmin London: 14:02

And the really important thing to consider with that, from a messaging point of view, when we're talking to young people, is that when we embrace technology and you know the exciting future it brings, that shows kids that we're on the same page as they are, and I talked earlier about help seeking behaviour. The day that a young person believes a teacher or a principal understands, you know the environment that they live in and how important technology is and that they aren't anti technology. Even if it comes to something like TikTok, for example, that child is going to be far more likely to talk to that teacher or principal about what's going on in the now. And so, no matter what it is, we need to embrace our understanding of it and, you know, try to remember, even if it is a little bit scary, that there is a lot of good that comes with the risk as well.

Drew Janetzki: 14:49

There is a lot of good Like technology is used as a tool to help and support and connect. I mean, what a time to be alive. It's amazing, isn't it, to think about that. Yeah.

Yasmin London: 15:00

I think I was reading something recently about about. You know the fear around AI and a lot of experts in this space saying that AI is not going to take people's jobs. The person that is proficient in AI is the one that's going to take your job. So you know it is going to come down to the person and how much of a growth mindset we have to apply learning to. You know the new world order, so it is.

Drew Janetzki: 15:25

Yeah, yeah, really, really interesting in terms of what you're talking about with, with mindsets as well. How does Yasmin, how does YSafe, educate and raise awareness about cyber safety Or is the technical word online safety to our different target audience, such as students, parents, teachers or school leaders, or does it? does it, does the product cover all of those facets of education or those key people that are in education?

Yasmin London: 15:57

We definitely cover everybody. We're big believers in a whole of school approach. It's no one person's responsibility to educate our next generation, so certainly we talk to everyone. We also, you know, we do a lot of educational webinars and, i guess, events where we can invite people that we work with principals or school leaders to come and learn little tidbits of information. So we do, for example, a term-based quick chat which is 15 minutes and under. You know we run it at quarter past three or three, forty five, i should say not quarter past three. We allow for the pickup to complete. It's just good, helpful, practical advice to help school leaders manage specific issues.

Yasmin London: 16:42

We also partner with organisations that allow us to scale the sort of the resources that we have. So at the moment, for example, we're partnering with Macquarie Bank on a initiative for regional schools. We have a product called the Digital Experts Academy, which is essentially an in-class gamified learning program that focuses on social-emotional skill development and applies that to the online world for students, and so One of the things that we've seen is a problem is the resourcing for and the budgets I guess available for products like this, and so Macquarie has now agreed to sponsor 250 regional and remote schools to get the Digital Experts Academy for free. So really cool little initiatives like that that we're able to get involved in as well.

Drew Janetzki: 17:29

That's fantastic. We'll be able to put that in our notes as well in our podcast. That's fantastic to be able to do And you said it's free.

Yasmin London: 17:36

It is free for those schools. So 250, the first 250 is signed up, we'll get it for free and it's for years three to six.

Drew Janetzki: 17:46

That's fantastic. Well, thank you, we'll definitely put that into our notes as well. Looking ahead, yasmin, what are some of the future initiatives and developments that YSAFE is planning to undertake to further strengthen cyber or online safety practices and protects our students, parents and teachers and school leaders?

Yasmin London: 18:06

Well, circling back to the reason we had this discussion drew is the empowerment of principles and the competing demands and time limitations that they have. So an initiative that we are developing now in conjunction with the New South Wales Primary Principles Association is a principal's course in online safety management. So we'll cover understanding the online world, the behaviours that we're seeing, the intricacies that we need to address and have good conversations with kids about the online world, but also, importantly you know, incident management, managing staff wellbeing. if they are, you know, having to deal with quite traumatic incidents, how are they looking after their wellbeing? There's also going to be communication and education strategies. So we'll talk to the best practice frameworks around how to do that in schools and really try to make sure that we equip and resource principles to deal with the online safety incidents that they experience.

Drew Janetzki: 19:07

Now that sounds great and really practical in terms of what it is like from a principal perspective, managing those things that do pop up over the weekend, in the holidays or when it's the most inappropriate time. But it's giving them a skill set, some resources on how to deal with that, and I know you'll be able to do some. You're planning to do some webinars through the association as well, to touch base, and with the planning to move into 2024 with a professional learning suite or offering through YSAFE, which is really encouraging for our members, to guide us through safely through that space that some of us are familiar with and really invested in and some need some assistance. And that's what professional learning is all about.

Yasmin London: 19:54

Absolutely. We need to think about how we can make this easier on our principles, how we can work smarter rather than harder, and there's certainly ways that we can do that through this course.

Drew Janetzki: 20:05

That sounds fantastic. Well, Yasmin, thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate your time.

Yasmin London: 20:10

It's been my absolute pleasure. Drew, Thanks so much for having me and thanks everybody for listening in.

Drew Janetzki: 21:19

Tuesday 28th of November, 6.30pm to 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. So all of the links in our notes, as well as on the NSW Primary Principles Association website

Drew Janetzki: 21:45

Professional learning for educational leaders is an initiative to support and inform NSW PPA members of the NSW PPA Professional Learning Suite offerings. Our professional learning suite is aligned to our values of principal wellbeing, principals as lead learners, as well as supporting principals to lead school operations. Our values are wrapped around support, empowerment, advocating and leading. The NSW Primary Principles Association is committed to supporting and empowering principals to effectively lead and manage school communities from a diverse range of contexts. The association responds to and supports school leaders as they address different challenges in rural, remote as well as metropolitan schools. Further information about our professional learning can be found at our website NSWpbaorgau forward slash professional learning.