The virtues of technology are certainly unquestionable in a time like this when online communication is vital. The continuation of your daughter’s education in live streamed remote learning lessons, the MS Teams connection with her classmates, House members and peers, and of course the social media chats with friends, have all become a life-line for connection in a time of physical distancing.

The increased use of the online platforms, internet sites and social media, does however necessitate increased monitoring and vigilance. The School has, for example, introduced specific Learn@Home rules and expectations to ensure student privacy and safety. All students are required as a condition of joining a lesson on MS Teams, to blur their background image or insert a virtual ‘background effect’ from the Teams menu. This, as well as the rule regarding wearing appropriate clothing in the form of school uniform or school sports uniform, complies with the School’s Child Safety protocols. Students who do not observe these expectations will be asked to do so before rejoining a lesson.

Senior School parents are also strongly discouraged from sitting in on lessons due to possible breaches of student confidentiality who are on screen or contributing to the lesson at the time. It is understood that, with the permission of the teacher, parent presence may be required for younger year levels.

During Covid 19, the Office of the eSafety Commission has seen a 50% increase in cyber bullying between young people. The Australian Cyber Security Centre has warned that data breaches are likely to increase during this time.

Young people using new Apps, and spending more time on social media can increase the likelihood of unwanted attention, online conflict and exposure to inappropriate content. The Learn@Home Hub Parent page on the Portal offers a range of advice and suggestions, including warnings regarding some Apps and ways to check privacy settings on your daughter’s devices.

A group video chat called House Party has re-emerged and it is worth noting that recent articles and cyber safety experts have posed the question of potential child safety risks and cybercrime associated with this and other Apps, so vigilance is encouraged. Like TikTok, some of the key concerns regarding House Party centre around the ease of contact by strangers, exposure to inappropriate content through search functions, the potential for self-esteem and bullying concerns and the risks to privacy and location.

The Safe on Social Media group caution parents on the following points regarding House Party:

1. The age recommendation is 13 years but there is no age verification at all.
2. It is free to use so your child’s image, recordings, and any other information used to interact with the App can be data harvested for the purposes of sales and marketing.
3. During the signup process, the App asks you to enable location. Like most Apps it will track your child’s movements 24/7, down to within 5 metres in most cases.
4. The App offers up ‘friend suggestions’, presenting friends of friends that you may want to connect to. It also allows people to send friend requests and, for this reason, has been referred to as a “paedophile party”. We encourage you to remind your child not to connect with people that they don’t know and to check who they are connected to regularly.
5. Teenagers who are not invited to a group chat (maximum eight people) may feel excluded.
6. It also has the potential for ‘gate crashers’ to join or ‘sneak in’ if the ‘room is not locked’.

It is essential to ensure that setup of the Apps be as private as possible. House Party has a Private Mode that can be turned on from Settings.

Please visit the Learn@Home Hub Parent Page for information on how to change the settings on the App to Private or for links to other resources.