My eldest has been at the receiving end of unreasonable on-line comments but neither has been the victim of cyber bullying as far as I am aware. As a headteacher I have had to deal with cyber bullying involving pupils/students of both schools. This has almost always happened out of school hours but it is impossible to draw a line when we do not get involved.
Both my sons spend many hours on-line and often have to be told to turn off gadgets and sleep however I cannot be sure that they do not then go back on-line and I have currently not resorted to time limited router activity. I do have Family filters in place for our home internet service and the school has filters in place for access via the campus. I cannot be guaranteed what the security is with service providers they use elsewhere.
In both schools we can see the fatigue evident in pupils and students who are staying up to late and then are less able to function in school properly.
A recent Brodetsky 'Pupil Voice' activity highlighted that our pupils are regularly going on-line when their parents are either asleep or downstairs and believe their children are asleep. The pupils recognise that this makes them tired at school, less able to concentrate and more likely to be told off.
For this reason we are now exploring ways to raise parental awareness of the potential activity their children are involved in, what the risks are (both educationally and socially) and what steps they can take together to improve the quantity and quality of this online access.
To get the ball rolling both schools and The Zone are hosting two workshops offered by the NSPCC and sponsored by O2. The attached fliers give some of the details and we are hoping that all our families access these.
Both are on 11th February. The first is at 4pm and the second starts at 5.30pm. Details are in the 'Events' section of both apps and will be posted on the websites.
No comments:
Post a Comment