YEAR five pupils from Westacre Middle School spent a day at Sky TV recently making their own news report about the importance of online safety.

The children travelled down to London to use the £8 million academy studios, in order to produce a report about social networking, and how to stay safe on the internet.

Isabel Mann said: “I learnt how we can all help to protect ourselves from cyber bullying, and enjoyed being a director for the day.”

Daria Romanczuk added: “I learnt lots of different computing skills, and loved using touch screens to edit the final film.”

They took part in the project as part of the school’s online safety drive, which has already seen them receive a visit from local police and crime commissioner Bill Longmore, who came into the school to hear about e-safety web pages they have been creating, the activities they took part in during Safer Internet Day and how they are teaching other pupils and adults about online safety.

Paul Barber who is a subject leader for computing at Westacre Middle School, organised the visit. He said: "The day was a perfect opportunity for the children and us as a school. The pupils put a great deal of effort into their applications, which they submitted using our new cloud-based learning platform, to be in the group then showed amazing teamwork, creativity and problem solving skills to produce such a powerful TV report on the theme of social networking. In addition, they got to use state-of-the-art technology and improve their ever-growing Computing Skills.

“As a school, we strive to ensure the safety of our pupils online, and this has been another tool in helping us to do so, with all of our pupils seeing the video and hearing such important messages. It has been great to see such fantastic learners, who have been helping our whole school community in such a vital area."