Privacy

When supporting your child’s education at home, keep their privacy in mind, and help them establish and maintain good privacy practices.

Privacy is about protecting your child’s identity. This may be their name, age, email, home address or password. It can also be more sensitive information, such as their health, wellbeing or family circumstances.

Read the Schools’ Privacy Policy to understand how schools handle information, and apply similar principles at home.

Here are some practical tips to help you and your child maintain good privacy practices:

· Ensure your child’s passwords to any systems they access are secure. Do not have them written down near the computer or device or save them in a document that can be accessed by others.

· If your child is using a shared computer or device at home (e.g. a household computer or tablet), ensure that they log out of all school systems at the end of each session or day.

· Your child may sometimes need to share sensitive information with their teacher or other school staff—for example, about their health or wellbeing. Make sure they can do so without being disturbed, and any sensitive documents they create, or share are stored somewhere secure, such as a password-protected folder.

· Your child’s teacher will advise what collaboration platforms or applications your child may be asked to use to support learning from home. This will include advice on how to set them up to ensure your child’s safety and privacy. It is very important that you follow your school’s guidance. This will help ensure that the strongest privacy protections are in place at home.

· If your school is using video conferencing, ensure your child understands how the software works. If possible, your child should participate in videoconferencing in an open place within your home, rather than alone in a private space such as in their bedroom.

· Be cautious about downloading educational software except what the school has recommended:

o If software requires your child’s personal information to be entered, make sure you read the company’s privacy policy first to find out how that information is stored, and who it is shared with. If you’re unsure, you can ring the school (PH: 9842 3373) to check.

o Be wary of companies and products that:

o don’t have a privacy policy

o ask for more detailed personal information than seems necessary in order to use their product

o share user information with third parties for marketing purposes

o store your child’s information in countries whose privacy legislation is substantially different to Australia’s.

Safety

When using the provided equipment, including dongles, devices and laptops, please ensure that these are used for educational purposes only, to help ensure your child’s safety and security.

Protecting your child and supporting them to stay safe online is a priority for parents and carers. The National eSafety Commissioner has developed a range of resources to support parents and carers to ensure their child’s safety and privacy online, including:

·

parent webinars,

· tips on how to report cyberbullying and

· online safety kit for parents and carers.

Copyright

Here are some practical tips to help you and your child maintain good copyright practices:

Use existing free sources of content

· The Department provides access to a wide range of learning materials available from the FUSE website.

· There are many free online streaming content services where students can access content without having to download or make a copy of it. Examples include ABC iView, ABC Education and YouTube Kids.

· The Department of Education and Training has purchased a licence which provides all Victorian Government teachers and students with access to ClickView, a platform that hosts thousands of educational video resources and learning activities. Your child’s teacher will provide your child a ClickView login to enable them to watch material hosted on ClickView at no cost.

Link to content, rather than download it, where possible

· If your children need to access or share internet content, advise them to use links rather than a downloaded copy where possible.

· If you don’t have internet access at home or limited access, please let your child’s teacher and they can organise providing you with copies of materials.

Access school subscriptions from home

· The Department provides access to a range of software from the FUSE website that schools can use to support teaching and learning, including Webex, ClickView, Stile Education (for students in years 7-10), G Suite for Education, Microsoft O365 and Minecraft: Education Edition. Your child’s teacher will advise you on what software your child will use to support their learning from home.

· Students often already have access to school-provided subscriptions that are useful for supporting learning from home, for example Reading Eggs, Mathseeds and HOTmaths. Check what is already available from your school before signing up to anything new.

Security

· Make sure you have anti-virus software installed on your computers or devices at home and this software is up to date.

· Download and install any updates for other software on your computers or devices at home. These updates often include ‘patches’ that fix security vulnerabilities and other bugs.

· Unsolicited technical support is a key method for scammers to gain access to your computer and your confidential information. Do not install any software at the request of someone posing as a representative of a company where you have not actively requested support, whether you are contacted by phone or by e-mail.

· When online, ensure that any links you or your child click on are genuine. ‘Phishing’ is when someone sends you a link that looks ok but is actually sending you somewhere dangerous or inappropriate. These links may look like they come from your school, a software provider, the bank, the government or from apps your child uses. More tips can be found on the ScamWatch website or from the eSafety Commissioner website.

It’s important you keep a balanced approach to home learning. Time spent using digital devices for learning should be broken up with physical exercise and offline learning tasks often.

It’s also important that during this time of remote learning we maintain safe and responsible use of information and communication technologies. This includes:

· The appropriate use of digital platforms, privacy and information protection

· Respectful online communication.

Just as you set aside time for physical exercise, it is important to make time each day to check in on your child’s mental health and wellbeing.

As your child adjusts to their new routine and not being able to see their friends in person, it is important to be understanding of their feelings of frustration, anxiousness and even anger – every child will react differently.

To support your child, use these mental health and wellbeing check ins to:

· Provide an opportunity to talk about how they feel and listen to what they say

· Identify one or two things they could do to address what they are concerned or angry about

· Ask how they are going, whether they are finding it easy or hard to learn remotely, and if there is anything they’d like your help with.

There is a risk that your child may be bullied online. If you think this is happening to them, support is available on how to talk to your child and your school at: bully stoppers.

If you have any other concerns about the health and wellbeing of your child, contact your school directly, which will have access to resources that can help.