What does our Linewize data tell us about our students' digital use?

We block Tiktok on our school internet to encourage our students to be engaged in their learning on a day to day basis. Last year we had an article highlighting what Tik tok is through our family cybersafety hub. Tiktok makes up 46% of what is blocked by our system while Snapchat is 11% so our students are actively trying to engage with its content.

Youtube usage comprises 52% of our allowed internet usage and last year, we blocked it during schooltime to help students stay on task in class and foster their love of learning with relevant school material. As part of Linewize, we can use Classwize to unblock this for students when needed for learning. Due to our current situation with some students at home and some at school, it is not feasible to block Youtube. Once our school returns to 'normal', we will likely block it again as our data indicates that few videos being watched in school time are school-related. 

We encourage you to have conversations with your child regarding what happens for them in their digital world. What are they looking at and why? Youtube has a lot of excellent material and Tiktok may do as well. It is not that all digital media is 'bad' but it can be distracting from the tasks at hand and our core business is education.

We like to work in a partnership with families to encourage all students to live our school values. Respect for a teacher who has prepared lessons and honesty about what we are doing on our computer that the teacher may not be able to see are ways that students can show a desire to live our school values and continue striving to be their best version.