Phil De Young welcomes Year 7 students at their Induction Service at St Paul’s Cathedral
From the Headmaster Recently, we had the pleasure of hearing Susan McLean speak to our Year 7 students about cyber safety. A former policewoman, Susan is one of Australia’s foremost experts in this area and has presented at hundreds of schools. Her book Sexts, Texts and Selfies is one that we highly recommend to parents and students alike. In her introduction to the book, Susan sets the scene and establishes a challenge for us all:
‘Our children are digital natives, born into a world where they are constantly surrounded by it. They cannot imagine life before mobile phones, iPads or the internet. Smart devices and social media sites have become part of our children’s lives and they strongly influence how our children create, share and exchange information with others. Despite all the great things about cyberspace, the online world does create problems for children.’ So, what are the ‘great things’ and what are the ‘problems’? And importantly, what can we do to solve the problems?
4 | THE TRINIT Y GRAMMARIAN
In a recent Year 2 class at Trinity, boys were engaged in a ‘Mystery Skype’, trying to guess the secret location (an international school in Thailand) of the other Year 2 students they were speaking to via the wonders of technology. Roles had been carefully planned, and everyone asked a question to try to find out what life was like for their new acquaintances. The engagement and excitement generated from this collaborative communication task was electric. Similarly, in the Senior School, technology has enabled some impressive collaboration. Students have practised languages by correspondence, connected with experts in both tertiary education and in industry, and competed against other students worldwide. This connectivity has helped us to generate truly globalised classrooms. Yet it could be argued that increased connectivity has led to the biggest negative impact of technology on society. The pressures of social media are very real; teenagers suffer genuine stress when they lose ‘followers’ and the impact on their self-image is all too often negative. Fear of missing out (FOMO) and the nature of social media platforms (consider how ‘streaks’ work in Snapchat) can drive children to diagnosable device addiction. Furthermore, without the nonverbal clues present in face to face communication, teenagers can often misunderstand each other online, which leads to increased conflicts.
