Wiltshire school children's creative take on staying safe online

Alongside their role in investigating and tacking online crime the Wiltshire Police Digital Investigations & Intelligence Unit (DIIU) play a key role in educating young people on how they can stay safe online.

As part of the DIIU's school summer newsletter a competition ran inviting school children from across the county to get creative and design a cyber poster with messages of how to stay safe online.

Stepping up to the challenge young people created a variety of designs, both hand drawn and digitally designed which were judged by a panel made up from the DIIU. The panel faced a tough job but focusing on the stay safe online message came to an agreement on winners from the primary and secondary school age categories.

Detective Inspector Gemma Vinton said "We were very impressed with the number of entries we received and the quality of the submissions - all participants had put so much work in and truly entered into the spirit of online safety to be able to produce such informative and creative designs.

"Since the start of the pandemic and most of us adapting to work, education and socialising moving online, it's been more important than ever to be mindful of keeping ourselves and our information safe whilst online.

"We're delighted schools across our county liked the DIIU newsletter and hope they enjoyed taking part in the competition, we're looking forward to arranging the prizes of one of our specially trained digi-dogs and their handler to come to their schools to tell their class more about what they do."

We're pleased to be able to announce, the winners of the competition are:

Primary school aged category: Nieve, aged 8, from Calne

Secondary school aged category: Alfie, aged 14, from Salisbury

Detective Sergeant Sean Tregunna helped judge the entries and added "It was a difficult choice as all the entries were of a really high standard and clearly highlighted the key messages of how to stay safe online. However, Nieve and Alfie's entries were particularly colourful and informative - we could see them working as a real poster!"

The judging panel wishes to pass on our congratulations to the winners but also say thank you to all the entrants for taking part - keep up the good work and keep staying safe online.