As Stage 4 settle into their new routines and build their relationships with new friends, many students have asked “Where’s my iPad?”. In this post, I want to talk about our commitment to parents and how we will be using our electronic devices in the months ahead.
One of the most significant changes to ‘childhood’ in the last few years has been an increasing array of devices and mediums which kids access for entertainment, education and maintaining social relationships. One of the strongest discussions to come out of this revolves around the question “How much screen time is too much?” and then, “what happens next?” The short answer is that this is all so new, there’s hardly any research to offer any clear answers. On the other hand, there is plenty of opinion and media debate.
What we do know is that for Stage 4, around two hours a day is considered ‘about right’ for ‘most’ children. We also know that many children spend much longer than this on their devices and that when asked about their use, they often find it impossible to say how long and underestimate it for many reasons. We will be using iPads for about an hour a day. We have recommended to parents that another hour at home, (ask them to show you what we’re working on), including personal use is also okay. The main reason Stage 4 have iPads at home is to charge them, not play Clash until the small hours of the morning.
We are one of the FIRST colleges to be taking this initiative. Where many colleges are boasting of 1:1 and trendy robots, we are actively thinking about the impact of screen time on students cognition, social and physical health. We want our students to learn how to use the internet effectively, not exhaustively – and we are actively teaching them about media in the first term, along with how to use technology to ‘zen’ out for a while and relax – as well as communicate and have fun.
I am conducting some research which I hope you’ll add to. It’s a short survey about the negotiations that go on in your home around online play. If you are interested, it would be great to have your input. You can click here to join in online.
We look forward to handing out our iPads in week 4 and seeing our students expand on the research and preliminary work we’ve been doing in class and in the training program to ensure our students have healthy media diet inside and outside of college. I happen to think all colleges should be more up-front about the media-time they provide children … but we’re all about leading, so hopefully some will read this post and get on the healthy-screen-time train … toot toot!
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