With the holidays fast approaching, and most of your children owning an ipad, I thought it might be a good time to let you know about an app that I recently became aware of, thanks Chris!

Its called Our Pact. It allows parents to manage their child’s screen time at any time and from anywhere!

In conversation with a parent who uses it I discovered that you can set a bed time, disable access when your cherub is supposed to be doing something else (like taking a shower or tidying their room.) You can block apps that you don’t approve of, and even create recurring schedules. As your children come to an age where they might also own a phone, you can block access to wifi and cellular connections too. All from your own device!

Find out more information about it here.

On the weekend I came across a free app for ipad called SeeSaw. I am really keen to try it out with some students as it looks like:

a) It will work at school

b) You do not have to have your own iPad to upload to it

c) It will give a lot of options regarding what you can upload

d) Students without their own device will be able to use it too

I would love a few parents to check it out and give me their permission to trial it with their children so that I can compare Notability and SeeSaw. Apparently there is a way to make each page password protected, but it may take me a while to work this out. So essentially I’m asking parents to volunteer to give me and your child permission to upload work samples which may include videos and photos to test it out. You will need to read the terms and conditions to be fully aware of what it is that you are volunteering for. I am keen to get permission from parents of children with their device or without it.

There is no limit to how many can participate in my trial.

Please let me know if you would like to be involved by email, or a note stating that you give permission for your child’s image, voice recordings and work to be uploaded to SeeSaw.

In Melbourne recently at a wonderful IB conference on Digital Citizenship, I met a teacher who inspired his students to interact with their class blog through a 5 star comment system.

You can read his blog post here

Today our class decided that we would set ourselves a similar challenge, but ours would be a 6 star challenge!

We think that a great comment would have:

• a greeting
• correct spelling and punctuation
• descriptive sentences
• a positive comment
• a signature or sign off

For a bonus star you should try to put a question to encourage further discussion.

Students who consistently achieve a 5-6 star rating will have earnt a licence to be a guest blogger on our blog.

Tomorrow, (Thursday,) is Rainbow casual day. Students are asked to choose their favourite colour, come dressed in that colour, and bring a colourful gift to donate to the raffle hampers for Carols night, next Tuesday.

Next Wednesday the 4-5 classes will be going to Frank Smith for a celebration BBQ. There is no cost and students will not need to bring lunch that day. We are looking for 1 more volunteer to help cook. Please see me if you are available to help.

The following Friday the 3-7 classes are going to the pool for a fun day. You should have received the 2 notes related to this by now.  The cost is $8.50.

Last week the CFS visited our school. We talked about making plans early and preparing for catastrophic days. The following link has loads of information for communities.

CFS

Today we covered a lot of the Child Protection Curriculum. I have added a page to this blog with a link to the Kids Help Line website. This site has lots of information for adults and kids, as well as games and activities.

Kids Help Line

Last week I read a book by Michael Carr-Gregg called ‘The Princess B****face Syndrome-surviving adolescent girls’. As most of you know, I have 2 teenage daughters. I highly recommend this book to any of you with girls. I wish I had read it 6 years ago!!! It was really easy to read, written with lots of humour, and very applicable 🙂 He has also written many other books related to adolescence, and even 1 on surviving year 12 – I should have read that one too!!!!

Here is a link to his website:

Michael Carr-Gregg

Did you know that Google launched its new family safety resources last week?
It’s well worth a look, especially with so many of our children using the internet for research, socialising and more. Check it out at the link below.

Google Family Safety

Also, don’t forget that Cyber Safety sessions are being run at the school tomorrow night (Wednesday) in our resource centre.

Today is Safer Internet Day, follow the link to find lots of useful information for parents and children/teens.

Internet Safety