DIDSBURY -- Students at several Chinook's Edge School Division schools recently learned about online safety.
Dustin Hogan from Safer Schools Together from White Rock, B.C., has been touring the area talking to kids, parents and staff about how to protect yourself online better and what to watch out for.
"We're living in this connected age where everyone is on technology 24 hours a day," said Hogan. "As our students are growing up, what they're doing online is either going to help them get a job or get into post-secondary or, unfortunately, stop them from having those opportunities."
Hogan talked to the students about the importance of building a positive digital footprint.
"Making sure what they post is positive and putting them in the direction they want to go," he said. "Teaching them now as early as we can is certainly the best approach. We talk about cyberbullying, we talk about privacy settings, some of the main apps the students are using.
"Some of them are unaware of just how much personal information they're actually putting out there."
Hogan said the students are often shocked to learn how much information is readily and publicly available online.
On April 5 Hogan met with about 40 students from grades 9 and 10 in Olds from local area schools for a peer to peer program on safer schools.
"I worked with them on a mini condensed version of what I do," he said. "They're going to go into the community and present that to the younger students. That's pretty incredible. The younger students will see the people they look up to, that they'll see in the hallways of high school delivering this very impactful message."
