It seems incredible to think that it is Week 7 of Term 4. It has been a VERY full on year with only just over 3 weeks left of the school year. Over the last few months, our children have had a lot of screen time. It is important that we are keenly aware of our children’s digital world and what they are participating in. The digital world is definitely here to stay and has enormous benefits.  This was certainly obvious this year in Lockdown where we were able to continue learning at an extraordinary level.  I am currently reviewing our PAT Assessments and we have generally reached or even exceeded expected norms in Maths and Reading. However, like anything that is good, technology is good dependent on how it is being used. We all need to be keenly aware of what our children are doing online and have regular conversations with them about responsible, safe and ethical use. Having regular conversations allows you to easily intervene when issues arise, but more importantly it shows that you are interested in and care about what matters to your children.

Some basic safety tips:

• Make sure age filters are turned on for the device
• Make sure correct ages for children are entered into games. Their age triggers in game restrictions automatically in most cases, entering a fake age does not protect them from online predators
• Make sure you have all their passwords and codes. They are children it is not an invasion of their privacy, it is how we protect them. Look at their devices often and talk regularly about what they are doing.
• Follow laws regarding social media, no one under the age of 13 is allowed to have social media accounts.

Please take time to have a look at the following websites the first two links are to the ‘Raising Children Network’, a federal government funding organisation with quality research partners. The third link is to a website called Parents, this is a private for profit company and as such has advertising on the site, we do not endorse this site or the advertising, the particular article is informative.

God Bless

Kim Hogan

Assistant Principal