 We have today with us Greg Gebart from Australian Communications and Media Authority and Greg is going to give us some insights into cyber safety in education. Hi Greg. Good morning. How are you? Thank you. Let's start with how important is cyber safety in terms of education? It's really a key part now because most of the children are so immersed in technology we find very young children as young as three and four, very good at using computers and the more and more they use technology the more exposure they have to some of the risks so we think that one of the key parts is in schools as we can provide a quality curriculum that teaches children how to keep safe. Talking about schools then how can schools on their part ensure that you know they provide a safe, cyber safe environment to their kids? Well in the school it's a case of monitoring what the children do but we know that a lot of the risks and issues are happening outside the school so what we can do is teach children how to be responsible. Certainly the programs that they use, the websites they go to and also the behaviours that they have on the internet are really key parts that we can put into the school curriculum. Is it also important to have proper appropriate training for teachers? Yes, I think the thing that we found is that children use technology so often and they're so good at technology that we've actually got a bit of a gap between teachers knowledge and young people and so it's very important that they upskill firstly learn how to use the technology themselves but also learn the way that children use the technology. Right, it's also said that education goes hand in hand with teachers and parents, you know, everybody playing an equal part. What part do you think parents play in ensuring children's cyber safety? Yes, I think parents have got a critical role in this because a lot of the technology use is now happening outside of school hours as well as inside and the key part for parents is to understand what children are doing on there and also to help supervise and educate them as well. We know that with many parents, again, the gap between their knowledge and what children do is quite wide so we do need parents to be involved. I understand that you have worked with a lot of children, you have worked with a lot of teachers and parents. What is your understanding that are today's kids how digitally savvy they are, how cyber safe they are and what kind of awareness do you think they need? I think they're very digital aware as far as the technology, probably not so aware of some of the risk factors and there's certainly things that we see on the internet where children's identity can be stolen, where someone can get their password and get access to those areas. So trying to make sure that children understand the risks. They're certainly very skilled in this area but whether they understand the risk and the clear message for us is if we give children good advice they'll make good decisions online. I'm sure you've heard that a lot of children in our area, in our country are on Facebook and other social networking sites. Do you have any comment to say about like kids being on social networking sites and you know cyber safety? I think the main thing that we would suggest for anyone that's on Facebook but especially children is that they use the privacy setting so to ensure that it's friends only in those areas and particularly if you do make new friends on Facebook they should be people that you've met in real life. One of the major concerns that children face is cyber bullying. Why do you think children do not report cyber bullying? Well one of the things that happens with cyber bullying it's often done anonymously and that's why many children think they can get away from it. So they will have a fake email account or send a text message with the number hidden and for the children who are the victims in these particular areas they have a few concerns and one is they think that because it's anonymous it can't be traced. The other one that seems to come out more and more with us is that children think that their parents will take the technology off them if they report it so educating parents to support children if they've been a victim of cyber bullying and certainly often children think there'll be some ramification if they report and we have to change that culture with children and it's okay to talk about cyber bullying and report it. I understand that some of the children, young children who are very digitally savvy are also concerned about their identity theft. What are your comments on that? Particularly very young children who share their password with their friends we have often had other children come in and take over their accounts at different times. The identity theft is I think going to be a problem in the future particularly with young children they tend to go on the internet and fill in every box to register for different programs and the amount of personal information they're putting online could be at risk in the future. Lastly I would like to ask you how can a child ensure that he's cyber safe, cyber smart? I think one of the main things for children is to understand the different sites they go to and to make sure they go to well recognised and trusted sites those are generally the more safer sites on the internet having discussions with their parents about what they do online Being aware of anything that seems outside the norm on the internet particularly an email that might ask them to be a friend or pass information on just realising that there are a lot of concerns out there for us as parents is the fact that children are putting personal details on so generally for us it's about not putting personal information online and being aware of where you go on the internet. Thank you Greg. My pleasure.