Two items caught my eye this week:<\/p>\n
They were particularly interesting because Tuesday next week is ‘safe internet’ day and we will be running activities with our junior classes about some of the dangers associated with the use of ICT.\u00a0 Teaching youngsters to use technology\u00a0safely\u00a0is very much a child rights issue:<\/p>\n
It also brings into sharp focus a rights conflict – the right to privacy vs the need for adults to guide and support children.<\/p>\n
‘Sexting’ was\u00a0discussed at the recent Parent Council meeting.\u00a0\u00a0I was very clear that we as parents\/teachers needed to stop viewing the\u00a0behaviours as being ‘harmless banter’ and ‘kids just being kids’ and begin to refer to it\u00a0in the same way as we might refer to\u00a0it in terms of sexual harassment.\u00a0 I am in little doubt that much of what we deal with under the heading of ‘sexting’ is similar to what we have seen on the news with Harvey Weinstein\u00a0etc:<\/p>\n
The impact on the ‘victims’ can be devastating and it is important that those who are ‘witnesses’ or ‘friends’ stand up to protect each other – and yes ‘sexting’\u00a0is something we view as being a child protection issue as will the police and wider society.<\/p>\n
The item on Sky was interesting as it was not something I had thought about but once I heard the story it was fairly obvious.\u00a0 I am sure most parents will remember when they were youngsters.\u00a0 If they lay in their beds and demanded something they may have been told to get up and sort it themselves.\u00a0 They may have been asked to put a “please” or “thank you” to any demand and they may have had to wait to get something.\u00a0 But in\u00a0the modern world if we have a ‘smart device’ we can sit back and demand what we want.\u00a0 We get what we want immediately and without a please or thank you.\u00a0\u00a0So it comes as no surprise that a university study found that the ‘smart device’ was making people lazier, less polite and more demanding.\u00a0 The researcher was clear in advising parents of the dangers of these devices – suggesting that youngsters should not use them and should be encouraged to develop good manners, to be active and polite and to recognise that they cannot keep making demands and expecting an immediate response.<\/p>\n
The motto on the school badge for Harlaw Academy is “learning and courtesy”.\u00a0 I hope as a school community we will keep helping young people to learn, particularly about the safe use of technology, and keep promoting courtesy\u00a0towards other people both in the real and the virtual world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two items caught my eye this week: An item by Gillian Martin (MSP) drawing attention to the issue of youngsters sending inappropriate images on social media. A feature on Sky News about youngsters becoming lazier, more demanding and more rude as a result of ‘Siri’ and ‘Alexa’ type applications They were particularly interesting because Tuesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}