Health & Wellbeing

Health and Wellbeing

Cyber Safety

We have started the year strongly with identifying and educating around one the current Wellbeing areas that affect our students, schools and communities.

In February we welcomed cyber safety expert Susan McLean to educate our Year 7 and 8 MITS students and Leadership team on how to make good choices online, and what to do if interactions online start to make our students feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

Susan used facts, straight talking and humour to convey her messaging to students and staff that:

“…teens are often not aware that their words and or photos, which may have been intended for a small audience, sometimes find their way to a larger one, often with both unexpected and undesirable consequences.”

On strong advice from Susan, in Term 2 MITS staff will further support our student’s understanding of cyber safety, by introducing students to the new rule of never taking mobile phones into bathrooms. In Term 3 we will begin to transition students to less mobile phone usage in bedrooms, encouraging our students to use the amazing communal areas our boarding houses offer when using their mobile phones. We hope that these changes to mobile phone routines will support our students to become more conscious of the content they are viewing online; the messages and photos they are sharing with peers are appropriate; and to encourage more face-to-face conversations.

What have some of our students learned so far about cyber safety?

“By making your account private.” - “Think wisely about what you are doing and think if that will affect your future.” -  “I don't have my face as a profile picture.” - “By not friending people I don’t know and don’t share locations to anyone even friends.” - “Use another name instead of mine or don't use a picture of me.”

DEADLY AND DIGITAL

For the past year the MITS students have worked closely with a team at the Alannah and Madeline Foundation to co-design a cyber safety website which we launched earlier this term. The students contributed to the design and content of the website which is now live and ready to explore. There are also teaching resources and lesson plans aligned to the Australian Curriculum. Please visit the site at https://deadlyanddigital.au/.