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Welcome back to our webcast on getting off to a great start at school. I think it’s fair to say that when it comes to technology
most parents feel they’re playing a game of catch-up with their kids. This generation of children has grown up with the internet
and all it offers at their fingertips. It is a big issue and one that we receive endless questions about from parents, so we’re going
to do our best to provide some practical tips and advice to make the year ahead cyber-safe and happy time for all.
Let me start with Greg. We have a question from a parent that’s commonly asked. They say, ‘My kids know more about the internet,
Facebook and technology than I do. How can I keep them safe, where do I start?’ Over to you, Greg.
Thanks, and it certainly is a concern of parents and with the changing technology it’s very difficult to keep up with.
I think in the education space we use three strategies and I think it’s applicable to parents as well. We need to educate them,
how to be online, how to be safe online. We also use in schools a filtering system and that’s something parents can also use,
parent controls and some of the filtering. The third thing is supervision, recognising you can’t be looking over your child’s shoulder all the time,
but you need to know what they are doing in some sort of shape.One of the things - we have a digital citizenship program that actually
helps the students work through that and it’s also available to parents so it looks at being responsible online, what’s the ethical responsible behaviour,
how do you look after your password securities and your privacy settings online, how to deal with cyberbullying, so that’s there as well.
I suppose for me, and probably to try to put it simply for parents, it’s a little bit like the swimming pool analogy. We put a fence around the swimming pool
to keep the non-swimmers out and we do that with our filtering system. While we’re teaching our children to swim, we’re educating them in the pool,
but even when they start swimming we still supervise them during that period of time, so I think it’s those three things when you’re trying to look at
how do you keep them safe. It’s something that’s going to be there, it’s going to continually change, it’s going to be part of their life.
We can’t keep fighting against it. I think we’ve got to embrace it, don’t we.
We need to embrace it and just be able to learn from them, but also be able to change them in the right way to be responsible and right users
of that technology for the future.
Beverley, as a mum of a teenager about to start the HSC, how would you answer this question?
Nervously.
My daughter is on Facebook and MSN all the time when she’s supposed to be studying. She says she can do both, but I can’t watch over her
shoulder all the time. What do I do?
It’s a knife edge, this one, because if you say, ‘That’s it, you’re not going to do it’ they’ll do it anyway; or if you say ‘Go for your life, it doesn’t matter’
they’ll be up all night doing it. So I think really it’s about negotiating again and helping to come up with some sort of program that works best for you.
I can say what we’re trying to do with our son. I’ll let you know this time next year if it’s worked.
Come on, what are you doing with your son?
He has a separate study area where he has a laptop which isn’t plugged in and he can do all his word processing stuff. Now the tricky thing is
sometimes you need to go online and get all the information, and that’s fine. Then we’ve also asked him, ‘When are your friends most likely to be on
MSN and Facebook and OK, that’s the time when you can go and do that.’ Not all homes have the luxury of having another space
or another computer, so I get that. It’s difficult, but it’s being open and saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to focus on your studies
but you can still do this as well.’ It’s trying to negotiate.
Do you think the technology needs to go off at night time, though? Otherwise, as you say, they can be up all night on their phones.
I can tell you several times I’ve crept down and pulled all the plugs out, everything, just the whole lot’s come out.
Really. And that’s worked?
Mm.
Or you think it has?
For that night. But then we have to go and renegotiate. It’s ongoing.
Sue, your school has classes from Kindergarten all the way through to Year 12. From a learning perspective, I know I’ve got a Year 3 student
who already knows how to put together a PowerPoint presentation. How do parents keep up and what role do you think
we have to play in making sure kids don’t just copy or plagiarise information without checking facts?
I don’t think parents have to keep up; in fact, I think it’s a really good opportunity for parents to learn from their children. One of the best ways
to learn is to teach, so if you can say to your child, ‘Show me what you’re doing and how you’re doing it’ you might pick something up which is
nice, but you’re also reinforcing that learning for the child. I don’t think parents have to keep up.
In terms of plagiarism and so on, it’s really important that parents know what their children are doing, that they’re aware
of how they’re using the internet, the sites they’re accessing and how they’re using those sites.
Again that’s a way of working out what your child is doing if you’re saying, ‘Can you show me?’,- isn’t it? That’s quite a good tactic. ‘I’m interested,
can you show me what Facebook is all about or what you’re doing?’
Yes. That’s right. And giving some support and some advice around the sites they’re using, so that you can ensure that there is reliability in those site
and that the work that they’re producing is actually going to be valid and their own work and not the work of somebody else.
Martine, we have a question from a concerned dad. He says, ‘My son is almost obsessed with being connected to his friends 24/7. He even wants to
sleep with his phone under his pillow. What should I do? Should I be worried?'
Teenagers are obsessional communicators, and we can all remember spending hours on the phone as teenagers. Facebook is another way
of communicating and other technologies. Same, though, as our parents chucked us off the phone eventually – I think there needs to be some
level of control, as Beverley was talking about, if for no other reason than to ensure that they’re getting enough sleep.
I definitely am seeing in my practice children where this need to be connected is a major source of anxiety and the threat of not being connected
can cause major strife within houses. To me, anything that can cause that much anxiety and angst, too much of it can’t be a good thing.
Are you seeing almost an addiction?
Yes, if they came in and said that they were drinking or using other drugs, the presentation wouldn’t be that much different.
This anxiety at the prospect of being deprived of it.
Beverley, another really common question is: ‘My daughter is being bullied on Facebook and I just want to ban her from the internet so that it can all
cool down.’ Some experts say that’s not the right response. What do you think?
This is a really tricky one because you don’t want your daughter to be involved in the bullying, but I don’t think banning her is going to solve it either,
because it will exclude her because that’s where all the other good social stuff goes on as well. Good social communications happen, too.
I think it’s perhaps going back to what Greg was saying about the safe use of the internet and helping her work her way through that,
knowing when to block, knowing when not to respond to people so saying, you know, ‘Let me know what’s going on and I’ll help you with it.’
If it doesn’t all calm down fairly quickly,and it’s pretty awful bullying, and it’s coming from school, then I would let the school know, but I wouldn’t
over-react to start with but try all of that first and be open with her.
Greg, following on from Beverley’s comments, we’ve had a few parents write in about their kids being bullied online after school hours
by people they couldn’t identify. Is there any point in that situation telling the school?
I think there’s two important points about telling the school of that sort of behaviour. One is simply if there’s change of behaviour with their own child
at school it could be as a result of that, so it would be important to communicate that so the school is very much aware if there’s that change of
behaviour or whatever and support could be provided to that individual child. The second part of that, though, is even if they can’t identify the
other people involved in that around the cyber-bullying or the interaction, by providing that information to the school it may be
another small piece of other information that the school may also hold so then in a sense there could be something that the school
could be able to be involved in in helping with the parents to intervene and get a better solution to that.
Sue, just to sum up, there are some basic rules, or are there some basic rules that parents should follow when we’re talking about technology?
I think Beverley’s certainly suggested that we have controls around the use of technology. Monitoring how our kids are using the technology.
Being aware of how they’re using it, what they’re using it for, the times when they’re using it. But I also believe really strongly in family time
and I think that one of the most important things you can do is make dinner time technology-free so sitting down with your family having a meal,
talking about your day, that’s where we talk about how was school today and what did you do before recess and what did you do after -
asking those specific sorts of questions, so technology-free family time is really essential. Having that time not only – maybe before dinner
That applies to adults, doesn’t it, too? Adults have to turn their phones off, too.
Yes. So certainly prioritising family time over the use of technology.
Great advice. We have a lot more helpful advice and information on the School A to Z website. I’d really encourage all parents to take a look
at the technology section where you’ll find more videos and articles on cyber-bullying, sexting, mobile phones and using the internet
safely and responsibly.