Parental Controls on devices & school holidays:

There are often many disputes in households over the time that children spend on their devices that is not related to school work. In case you were not aware, parents do have the ability to control and monitor their children’s screen time via Apple Parental Controls - Screen Time. With the holidays approaching, this may be a good time to check what settings you currently have or what settings you may like to introduce if you have not already done so.  

Attached below is a Chat Sheet on how you can set up parental controls on screen time for your child’s phone or iPad. These come from Kirra Pendergast's Cheat Sheets.

SoS_Cheat_Sheet_iOS_Settings.pdf

Turning off Location Services: 

Another fantastic Cheat Sheet that Kirra introduced to us on her visit in March was Location Services. This was posted last term but there have been several requests for it again. Attached is a link to how you can change your location services. 

Whether you know it or not, your mobile device tracks your location.

This can be handy for features like Weather, Traffic, Find My i-phone and maps but most of the apps you use for entertainment purposes track you as well. The information gathered by these varies from sales and marketing purposes, to declaring your exact posting location on social media. If you (or your child) is not comfortable with this, it is easy to opt out, and just turn on location services when you need to.

Location history - this serves to show exactly where you have been throughout the day. “Frequent locations” and “significant locations” pinpoint your patterns of movement. This information is easily available on Apple devices or as part of google's location data on an android device. You and your child need to weigh up whether or not the apps services you use are valuable enough that the information you are giving is an acceptable trade. If they are you can leave the features turned on. 

SoS_Cheat_Sheet_Location_Services.pdf

Mrs Katie Thompson

Assistant Principal