As we move out of lockdown into some form of a normality McKinsey have come up with five key steps, coined as five Rs to move beyond Coronavirus. These go some way to planning and preparing issues and challenges and ensuring that fears are assuaged: Resolve focuses on the immediate health threat that COVID-19 poses…
According to the Institute of Digital Media and Child Development (a dedicated web site to Children and Screens) in their article on Covid.19 and Learning at Home make some very clear suggestions as to how to best cope with the new form of Schooling. The first of which is to ”try to give your kids…
Lessons learned from the period of quarantine and move to online learning have tended to be personal, or at most collated and reviewed at a local (school level). The OECD, through their global network, have collated and produced this report together with the Harvard Graduate School of Education which takes data from surveys in 59…
Social media (in particular whatsapp) can be a source of cyber bullying. To this end we have created a safe and secure Family Chat so that a child can learn about how to use online chatting applications, until they are ready to be exposed to other forms of communication. In all of this a parent…
As countries break – for what is a very well deserved and atypical holiday – there is a period of reflection as to what has happened. Similarly, now is the time to take stock and recognise the positives and analyse the things that did not go so well and plan how to avoid some of…
A BMC Psychiatry Research Paper in 2019, stated that “Over the past decade there has been an increase in use of smartphones among children and young people which has occurred at the same time as a rise in common mental disorders in the same age group”. To help address addiction to technology a parent can…
Given that teachers were pushed into the uncomfortable situation of having to learn how to deliver online classes, in most cases with no prior experience, now is a good time to reflect and plan for whatever the future will hold for education. Bett published this article giving 12 recommendations as to how best to deliver…
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) in the UK published a guide in 2019 concluding that while screen time may or may not of itself be harmful, that online safety (bullying, exploitation) and access to inappropriate content is harmful. If the child is of an age responsible to surf on the Internet,…
Every parent dreads the situation where a child is in danger, and yet might never know when it happens. With the Blabloo and Geniora smartphones a parent can be a little more relaxed as the phone has a built-in SOS button that when pressed alerts the parent in real-time to an emergency situation and continues…
With over 800 million users Tik Tok is becoming a force to be reckoned with. Essentially it is an app for making and sharing short videos, aimed at young teenagers. Most youngsters know it well and most parents probably won´t, but are becoming increasingly exposed to it, normally through their children. This Chinese video-sharing social…