Navigating the Cyber World Safely
23 Oct 2015
Retired Principal, Mrs Jenny Yeo, shares tips on how parents and educators can guide children in the cyber world.
Parents and educators need to keep pace with the advances in technology as learning becomes possible anywhere, anytime. It is our role to guide and set boundaries for our children in the cyber world, just as we do in the real world.
Lisa Guernsey, Director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, shares, the three C’s of good media use for children: the Content, the Context, and the Child:
- Be choosy about the Content that your children are looking at.
- Be aware of the Context and ensure that it is balanced with activities like outdoor play.
- Be alert to the needs of the Child; Some need more limitations, while others need more face time with their parents to talk through what they see on screen.
Parent and teacher supervision are essential in ensuring appropriate content and behaviour for our young ones. For children, discernment and responsibility may not come naturally. Sometimes their trusting nature causes them to believe in inaccurate sources of information. Hence, our children need to understand the cyber world, its joys and possible pains. They need to understand and demonstrate appropriate online behaviour.. There is also a need for them to learn that there are other risks online and they need to protect themselves.
The cyber well-being of our children is very much our responsibility as parents and grandparents. Like fire, ICT is a good servant and a bad master. We need fire to cook but if left unsupervised, it can burn our house down. So while we help our children leverage ICT to enhance their learning, we need to guide and supervise them in their use. Let us help our children navigate and ride the rapid technological waves safely.
