Yesterday afternoon,  I went to Westlake Girls High School to listen to the highly specialized  Brett Lee  of Internet Education & Safety Services. Some of you may have taken the opportunity to attend last night’s meeting for parents, advertised on School Links.  I have summarised some of the main points from his talk.

Our responsibility, as the adults in our children’s lives, is help and guide them to make good choices online. It is not about stopping their use of the internet. It’s about teaching them the nature of that world. The idea is not to freak them out but to give them good knowledge and clear guidelines. The Internet is a great world. We need to be as strict here as for other areas of life. How do we teach our children about road safety? What basic rules do we teach the children? The children need to know that the internet is about communicating with real people. We teach our children, for instance, that if they meet someone they don’t know on the street who asks them their name, where  they live etc, that we don’t give out our personal information to someone we don’t know. The same applies online. Last year the Police Education Officer spoke to our parents about Internet Safety. One very important rule is that children do not go off to their bedrooms to use their computers or other mobile devices and that any internet use happens in the family areas. Parents would not allow their child to run across a busy road. Why would we allow them to explore the world of the internet without our advice and guidance?As for everything else in their lives it is the basic messages repeated over and over again. How we behave or are expected to behave in “real life” is exactly the same for on line behaviour. As adults we need to understand, and ensure our children understand, that the Internet is not a private place. It is the most public place that any of us will ever be. Therefore we need to behave in public in the best way possible, following the rules of our family, of our school and of our country.Everything we do, write or say needs to be as it would if Mum and Dad were watching. Mrs Bon has a favourite saying that we need to learn to behave well and make right choices even though no one is watching. We need to teach our children to manage their online environment, just as we teach them to manage in  the family,  school, street, mall, sports field, chess club etc environments. Remember, as the adults in your child’s life, that you have the life skills and experience with which to guide your children. You may not have the technological knowledge. That doesn’t matter. You know how you expect your children to behave. The children need to know that they have control over the choices they make on line. They can enter information or not. They can press a key that says enter or delete. They know to ask you if they are feeling unsafe or unsure. The children also need to know that you are in charge.

Phil O’Connell-Cooper

Principal