Principal's Report

Cyber Safety Presentation 

Last night’s presentation was very informative and thought provoking. The presenters were very engaging and shared information that was useful for parents with children of all ages. They showed us how easily the use of the internet can turn innocent content into very explicit content. 

Sadly, this very explicit content can be viewed by very young children through children’s programs and apps such as Roblox and YouTube. They also showed us the changes people can make to your images, using AI. 

Steve and Bec have sent me information that they asked me to share with our school community. I would strongly recommend parents make use of the resources. 

They also recommended an ap called Beacon Beacon | Cyber Safety App (telethonkids.org.au), which provides people of all ages with lots of practical advice for using the internet. 

To support you further, we've compiled some helpful resources that you can use at home to have a conversation about digital safety and wellbeing:

• eSafety Parents Toolkit: https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents
• Family Tech Agreements (in addition to Beacon):
  • Ages 2-8: 
    • Common Sense Media Resource
    • eSafety Resource
  • Ages 9-12:  Common Sense Resource
• Common Sense Media Parent Guides: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/
• Interactive Online Safety Games: Interland (Google)

These tools are designed to help you navigate the challenges of parenting in the digital age, providing practical advice and strategies that align with what we discussed during the session.

If you have any further questions or would like additional resources, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're here to support you in any way we can.

Kind regards,

Steve Villani & Bec Martin

www.evolve-edu.com.au

Feedback from some of the people who attended the session:

• Thank you. I thought I was highly aware, but I learnt a lot to improve our digital wellbeing as a family. 
• Great presentation with engaging speakers. Very educational 
• Thanks. Session was so informative. Look forward to checking all of the resources
• Thank you, super helpful even for a digital native who works in tech

Items On The School Roof

We often have items that end up on the school roof. While it is mainly balls there are times when it has been a shoe or jumper. In previous times one of the staff have used a ladder and climbed on the roof to retrieve the item. 

The Education Department has updated its policy to help prevent falling from heights. In future no staff member will be able to climb on the roof to retrieve any items. If the item can be retrieved by using a long pole we will attempt to get it down. If not , unfortunately it will have to stay on the roof until the company come to clean the gutters. 

Parents please remind your children that if they bring a ball to school and it is kicked up on to the roof we will not be getting it down.

The most important thing we need to do is maintain a safe work environment for the staff.

Book Week 

This week is Book Week, which is promoted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. The week is aimed at focusing on children’s literature and celebrating Australian authors. Today we celebrated the day in conjunction with our whole school event day. 

We had: 

• Sher Rill Ng who is an illustrator/author speak to the children about her experiences
• Richard Galbraith who is a cartoonist teach the children how to draw cartoons. 
• Joanna Bright taught the children to draw a book character and then used an iPad program called Sketch Metemolab to animate their character. 

The children enjoyed the day dressed in their favourite book charter costumes. 

District Athletic Sports 

On Monday we had 52 very keen athletes head off to the Coburg Athletics Track to compete in the District Athletic sports. It was a very successful day for the children with Preston Primary finishing first overall.  20 of our students have made it through to the Divisional level which is on Thursday September 12th at the Meadow Glen Athletics track.

Preps 2025

We have recently sent out first round offers to the families for whom we are the closest school and the families who already have a child enrolled at Preston to confirm that their prep child will be attending in 2025. 

If you have a child who will be starting school in 2025 and you have not enrolled them, please do so as soon as possible.

Regards 

Janet Paterson

Principal