Online battles: combatting false information and reducing online risks

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 ICT and PSHE.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• These days, we are all online, but it is difficult to have a full understanding of the risks this entails. This teaching resource explains the work of Professor Shujun Li and his colleagues, Sarah Turner, Dr Rahime Belen-Saglam and Dr Virginia N. L. Franqueira at the Institute of Cyber Security for Society (iCSS), University of Kent in the UK, who are working on enhancing people’s awareness of the risks of online false information and sharing personal data online.
• This resource also contains an interviews with the iCSS team. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research, and tasks them to think about the personal data they share online.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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