​Managing Screen Time

In an age where technology is an integral part of our lives, it's essential to strike a balance between embracing its advantages and ensuring our children's safety online. I am passionate about the educational advantages of using technology, and with our learners spending time on devices at home as well it becomes crucial for parents to take the time to learn about and to enable parental controls. This proactive step can help protects your child from potential risks and can help to keep them on the correct "digital wellbeing" path.
 
I encourage you to make time to set up your child’s device with parental controls (Apple Screen Time or Microsoft Family Safety). Once setup, this allows you to be confident in what your child can access on their device, and when they can access it. For more information, please visit the links below, and head to our College website for instructional videos.
 

Microsoft Family Sharing

https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/family-safety

Apple Family Sharing and Screen time:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph223f61318/17.0/ios/17.0

Stretton Instructional videos:

https://strettonsc.eq.edu.au/curriculum/bring-your-own-device/instructional-videos
 
With Screen time setup correctly (and when you are confident in how it works!) you could:
Decide when in the evening your child's device will stop functioning
You can approve extra time if necessary or desired
Allow communication between approved contacts only (this stops unwanted group messaging or random messaging) or even specify a time in the evening when you want messaging to stop.
Set up limit for how long students can play certain games
Setup your child's iPad so that they could can read in bed at night whilst not being able to access anything else on the device.
This is just a few example of some of the things you can do with parental controls, it's worth it for the peace of mind. This is the reward for your investment of time.
 

SchoolTV

Another valuable resource we have made available to our parents is SchoolTV. You can find this on our website here: https://strettonsc.eq.schooltv.me/
 
SchoolTV is a wellbeing resource to help support you in the challenges of modern-day parenting relating to youth mental health and wellbeing. Parenting is a learning journey and SchoolTV supports families by providing credible information from trusted sources with practical strategies to help alleviate some of the challenges being faced by young people today.
Watch video interviews with leading wellbeing specialists and browse a library of resources. Each topic is accompanied by factsheets, podcasts, books, articles, apps and other videos.
This award-winning resource helps families build relationships, foster connections, enable understanding and break down barriers to navigate a pathway towards better mental health and wellbeing for young people. It will assist you in starting those conversations on topics that can sometimes be awkward or difficult to tackle.
Parents and caregivers are the greatest influence on a young person's life and SchoolTV focuses on empowering confident parenting.
 
You can read the School TV article on managing screen time here:
https://strettonsc.eq.schooltv.me/newsletter/managing-screen-time