The aim of this project was to create a meaningful context for the teaching of e-safety in the Computing Curriculum. The Year 8 students were set a challenge by the Northumbria Police Force Specialist Cyber Investigation Team to create a child-friendly version of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 that could be shared with other schools in the area and also be potentially shared with other schools across the country.

The project brief and success criteria/assessment as well as the overall timings, were developed collaboratively by the Head of Science and Computing, a Force Specialist Cyber Prevent Officer from Northumbria Police, the Digital Inclusion Project Co-ordinator from Northumberland County Council (NCC) and a researcher in Project Based Learning from Newcastle University.

The project challenge was launched during an assembly and then the students worked on their research and presentations during their computing lessons. The groups were made up of 3-5 students (friendship groups) with roles outlined at the start that the students assigned themselves based on where they felt their strengths lay. The presentations were created using either Adobe Spark or PowerPoint with the students encouraged to use a multimodal approach. Visits took place by all of the project development team throughout the seven week project to check up on the students’ work and provide a sense of momentum. The final presentations were initially peer-assessed by the school digital leaders. They chose one presentation per class to put forward to the final judging.

Owing to the Covid 19 school closures the final stage of the project was unable to take place, however the following would have occurred:

• Final 6 projects judged by the panel (Northumbria Police Force Specialist Cyber Investigation Team, NCC, Newcastle University)
• Prize awarded by Northumbria Police Force Specialist Cyber Investigation Team to winning team
• Visit to School of Computing, Newcastle University for a workshop.