Principal

Aaron Cox

Principal

World Teachers Day

 Today we celebrate World Teacher’s Day with a Halloween-themed staffroom. Kingswood is blessed to have such amazing people working as teachers and education support staff. I would publicly like to thank the staff for their dedication to providing the best learning experience for our children. They really are ‘here for the students'.

Technology and Online Safety of Primary-Aged Children

One of the greatest safety issues our children face is that posed by exposure to online social media platforms. Rest assured; no platform has the safety of your child/ren at heart. It is all about how to get users, maintain them and generate profit from their presence. I personally witness the desensitization of children to online content as the age of exposure decreases year after year. Young, impressionable, and cognitively inept children are exposed to material they once would never have seen. Now they shrug their shoulders because it does not surprise them. This is, in my opinion, horrifying and concerning. Whenever we get in a car, we never say “take off your seatbelts kids, you don’t need them”. Yet for numerous reasons including time, distractions, our own needs and wants, other competing priorities, and all aspects of our fast-paced world, unfortunately, many of us do this to our children when online. If we are not going to model excellent behaviour, what do we expect from our children? The most common comment made by parents with strict protocols about accessing the internet at home is that it is “really very hard”. Maybe it’s one of the hardest things they do, but the effort is worth it compared to the potential consequences. What steps are we taking to model good online behaviours and ensure children are safe online by understanding our home networks? All users of social media are having their brains rewired to the detriment of society. We are literally losing our cognitive ability to critically think, tribalism and not wanting to communicate face-to-face are becoming more common. The frightening part of all of this is that we would in the past say, “If you wouldn’t say that to someone face to face, don’t say it at all online”. I believe, in the not-too-distant future, that statement will not resonate with young people because the default way of communication will predominantly be from behind a screen. Even now some younger adults would prefer to text rather than make a phone call. The world is changing. 

I highly encourage ALL parents to watch 2 X 50-minute episodes of Mirror, Mirror Love/Hate Social Media documentary. Five days after watching the two episodes I am still questioning my own online behaviour. It is an excellent documentary with very adult themes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB_eh3GTsls&ab_channel=TheSilentVorteXhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvFbXO6RhT4&ab_channel=TheSilentVorteX Kingswood has consistently communicated that no Kingswood child should be on any social media platform, period! 99.99% of all issues we deal with in relation to inappropriate use of technologies happen outside of school hours and in private homes. As a school, we offer 6 open cyber safety sessions per year for parents. Our primary focus at Kingswood is on our children. We (parents and staff) need our children to step forward and let us know immediately when they have been confronted by something online. We will be revisiting this within some year levels of our school as we are noticing a drop off in terms of children reporting issues as they become more complacent about seeing inappropriate material and not wanting to have their lifeline (the internet) removed. This trend is worrying and we will address it as best we can. As for parenting, I recommend you attend one of our 6 cyber safety sessions or join a paid safety session with one of Australia’s leading authorities on cyber safety Susan McLean. She is a fabulous presenter.  Together we can do what we can to provide protection and good modelling for all our children.