Cyber Safety

As an eSmart school St Mary’s aims to maintain a supportive and connected community to reduce online and offline bullying, and increase wellbeing.  

As technology continues to play an increasingly significant role in our lives, it is essential for us to equip our children with the knowledge and skills to ensure the safe use of devices.

Last fortnight we looked at establishing clear usage rules and the importance of educating your child about online safety.

This fortnight we are looking at the following:

Encourage Healthy Use Habits: Promote healthy habits around device usage, such as: encouraging breaks for physical activity, creative play and social interaction. Establish device-free zones (e.g. no devices during meals, no devices in the bedroom).

Engage in co-viewing and co-playing: Supervise your child’s device activities by watching or playing with them. Actively participating allows you to: understand the content they engage with, monitor for inappropriate content and guide them on appropriate viewing choices. It can also facilitate discussions around online safety and responsible internet use.

Remember adult monitoring of social media and content viewed online is imperative especially in early adolescence. Research suggests unsupervised social media use is more likely to expose children to potentially harmful content and features of social media. If children are being safe online there shouldn’t be anything to hide. 

If you would like some assistance with setting usage rules at home the school is able to offer the app Jamf Parent. This allows parents to manage your children's school-issued iPad at home. You can restrict and allow apps and device functionality on your children's device.

If you would like more information about this please feel free to watch this video and contact Sam Richardson on srichardson@smechuca.catholic.edu.au for further information.