Northumberland ICT & eLearning

The CEOP Series of Six Workshops is spread across six dates and begins this week on the 12th November. The series covers: Introduction to Online Sexual Abuse, Children and Young People Online, Live Streaming, Nude Image Sharing and The Dark Web. For full details, see our course guide.

Cyber awareness

Tuesday 11th November '26 - 3.45-4.45pm, online.

This session will be delivered by Dave Tennant, a Force Specialist Cyber Protect & Prepare Officer with Northumbria Police. Dave will take us through the risks we should all be aware of and the key actions we can take to protect our personal accounts and our school network. Ensuring your team understand the risks and how they can best mitigate these is a vital part of securing your network against cyber attacks.

Annual Online Safety Update

Tuesday 13th Jan '26, 3.35pm - 4.50pm - online.

We recommend that all members of staff attend this session annually. In it, we'll cover key areas of risk and how to mitigate these. We'll then move on to cover recent trends, risks and key actions you can take as well as highlighting some new resources to ensure your team is up to date and prepared for the year ahead.

AI Series

AI In education: an introduction

Tuesday 20th Jan '26, 3.45pm-4.45pm, online

AI is still a very divisive topic. In this introductory course we aim to demystify AI by exploring its origins and development, cautionary steps to be explored before using it in your setting and then how AI tools can be used to save you time in the many non-teaching tasks that fill your day.

AI in Canva

Tuesday 3rd February ‘26, 3.30pm-4.30pm

Following the Introduction to AI in education session, join us for this focussed look at the time saving AI tools in Canva. Watch this video for a taste of what we’ll be looking at with Adwoah - our Canva learning consultant. All SLA2 schools have Canva Edu accounts ready and waiting in School360.

AI in Google Workspace (Notebook LM and Gemini)

Tuesday 24th February ‘26 3.30pm-4.30pm

Teaching staff have the Google Workspace apps included in their School360 account, including Google Gemini and Notebook LM. In this session we’ll explore:

The importance of writing effective prompts.

The additional safeguards provided to you when using your School360 Google Edu account

Examples of how to get the most from these tools.

We've recently launched our 'Online Safety at Home' sessions for schools in SLA3.

In this session we'll be discussing what young people are getting up to online, the risks and benefits of having access to the internet, plus a range of strategies and resources that can be adopted to help support our young people to be careful, confident, discerning users of the internet.

This webinar runs on three different dates, parents can join from the comfort of their own home - or you may want to invite parents into school and stream the webinar there. Alternatively, you might prefer to run this session yourself, in which case we'll provide you with your own set of slides and you can also choose to join one of our sessions to get a feel for the materials beforehand.

Live, online sessions are scheduled for:

Wed 26/11/25 15:45 - 16:45

Tue 10/02/26 19:30 - 20:30

Tue 16/06/26 19:30 - 20:30

Please contact us to request links. You can find out more here.

The new School360 Learning Journal teacher app is now available for download in the app store.

• Replaces the EYFS360 app.
• Classes and pupils will appear in the app just as they do in the original app.
• Parents currently continue to use their existing parent app to access observations.
• Requires min iOS 15.6 on iPad and Android 6.0
• Login with your existing School360 details
• Scroll through the tutorial on the app's home page to get started.

The main reason for this update has been to move across to a more robust and adaptable software which will allow us to introduce new features over time. In this first iteration you'll see small improvements such as being able to select multiple images at once from your camera roll, and the camera roll preview being full screen, so much easier to navigate.

Going forward we plan to add new features such as announcements and sending attachments.

If your school iPads are managed by us via Lightspeed mdm, please get in touch to ask us to deploy this new app for you.

Ofsted has published guidance around how they intend to look at AI during inspection and regulation.

• Ofsted will not be looking at AI as a standalone part of inspections.
• They do not evaluate the use of AI or of particular AI tools, rather they look at the impact that the use of AI has on the outcomes and experiences of learners.
• Ofsted have clarified that they do not expect providers to use AI in a certain way, or in fact to use AI at all.

Any evaluation of the use of AI will focus on whether the provider has made sensible decisions, whether policies reflect use, whether the school have considered safeguarding and data protection and the possibility of bias and discrimination which has been found to be a defining characteristic of AI.

You can find the full guidance linked below.

If you're considering using AI in school you may be interested in attending our series of three training sessions outlined at the beginning of this newsletter.

This week is Anti-Bullying week and this year's theme is "A power for good".

1 in 5 children experience bullying online with research showing that it is on the rise. Below we've linked to the excellent guide to cyberbullying from Internet Matters, that you may wish to share with your families.

You'll also find a selection of lesson plans to help you discuss cyberbullying in the classroom.

A date for your diary: Safer Internet Day 2026 will take place on the 10th of February 2026, with celebrations and learning based around the theme ‘Smart tech, safe choices – Exploring the safe and responsible use of AI’.

Internet Matters have recently published a report called 'Informed or Overwhelmed?' which looks at how young people consume news and the impact on their wellbeing. The report points to a variety of news sources but identifies social media as a key source. Concerns include the regular consumption of distressing news stories causing anxiety and feelings of overwhelm, AI generated content, and mis and disinformation.

The full report is linked below, jump to the executive summary if you're short on time.

The build up to Christmas often means a more flexible timetable to accommodate rehearsals and events leaving awkward little pockets of time to fill. This is a brilliant opportunity to work on improving ICT skills under the guise of fun Christmas activities. From practising keyboard skills to creating a multimedia book or computer animation there's, something for every ability and age group.

Take a look at our seasonal guide linked below and browse the live lessons hosted by Adobe. These cover a range of different topics with Christmas themed lessons starting on December 3rd.

j2e is a fantastic tool for the primary school classroom providing apps that allow pupils to create animations, branching databases, drawings and written work as well as practise multiplication tables and spellings!

j2e now have an impressive array of live lessons and teacher training scheduled covering a variety of topics to help you get the most from these brilliant tools. You can also book a 15 minute consultation to chat with a member of their team should you need to ask advice or need help trouble shooting an issue.

Just head to School360 > Resources > j2e > Teacher Guides.

Last Spring we wrote to every school that has older devices (those on iOS 9, 10 and 11) still in use on their school network, to explain that these older devices would no longer be supported by Lightspeed mdm and our management service from May 2026.

Please find the original communication linked below and let us know if you have any questions. If you are already in the process of decommissioning your older iPads, please notify us so that we can ensure they have been removed from Lightspeed mdm.

If you are considering replacing these devices with newer models, talk to us about purchasing and leasing options and notify us so that we can ensure the devices are set up with the relevant safeguards in place.

Please get in touch to request support or reserve a place on any of our training sessions.

jennifer.harris@northumberland.gov.uk

jordan.graham@northumberland.gov.uk

If you're a new subscriber you can find past issues of our newsletter HERE.