Friday, June 24, 2011

Balancing Act

I recently blogged about the importance of educating parents as well as students when it comes to the use of internet technology in this day and age. Yesterday I was reading a newspaper article with a similar topic.

The article indicates that the increasing proportion of teenagers using technologies such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is now filtering down in a similar way to include primary school students. It goes on to mention that schools are in a difficult situation because they don't condone the underage use of these sites but also shoulder some responsibilities in the education of their students for the appropriate use of them. One of the most concerning statements in the article for me was that some children are hesitant to report incidents of cyber-bullying to their parents because they are scared of having the technology taken off them.

Unhealthy amounts of screen time, violent programs/games and cyber-bullying are all important issues that need to be managed and these should all be closely monitored within the classroom - I know they are in my school. This technology is here, there's no getting around it. Removing them from children will not solve any problems. Parents and teachers need to have a strong relationship, one built on trust, that allows them all learn together about appropriate ways to use these tools.

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