This term is an exciting one for learning technologies here at BIS. For the first time we are able to provide the infrastructure necessary to support every student within the secondary school bringing a laptop into school for use during the school day. With the great advantages this provides comes the responsibility to support our students to become safe and responsible users.
For students in years 10-13 this is not new, they have spent at least the last year adjusting to 1-to-1 access throughout the school day. Additionally, our new year 7’s who have arrived from the TX or AP1 campuses have enjoyed 1-to-1 access within their classrooms for at least a year now and have engaged with the key elements of enhanced learning and digital citizenship in this context. We look forward to further developing these skills and working with our year 8 and 9 students to ensure we support all our students and meet this responsibility.
Supporting Safe and Responsible Use in School: Learning Technologies Statement
It has always been a key element of our learning technologies program to work to develop safe and responsible users of technology. We have used our mission statement and aide memoire as a means to communicate and understand what appropriate use of technology is within our context, in an age appropriate way. This year we have strengthened this with the introduction of our learning technologies statement. You can find it on the parent page of the digital citizenship site or linked at the QR code below.
The statement outlines an overview of our philosophy, the school’s commitments, student guidelines, principal agreements and points of note. It is designed to clarify what our aide memoire and mission statement mean in the context of learning technologies and draws upon the experiences of a number of other schools as well as academic research.
We will be working with our students across the school through the course of the year to ensure they understand the implications of the contents of this agreement. I would very much encourage you to read this document. As a parent you may find some off the features useful in prompting any discussions you have with your children regarding their technology use.
Supporting Safe and responsible use at home: Parental Controls and Family Media Agreements
A critical element of ensuring a healthy and balanced lifestyle is the management of screen time and appropriate access to online distractions. There is growing evidence that too much ‘screen time’ is detrimental to students well being (see the article below for one such example). During the course of last year we began to compile a variety of resources aimed at parents to support you in discussions with your children about the use of technology. In particular, what parental controls you may wish to have over your child’s laptops limiting access to inappropriate websites and social media or instant messaging. You can find guides on the parental controls present within Windows operating systems as well as parent guides to social media and templates for family media agreements on our digital citizenship site.
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