Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how to encourage parents of our K-5 school’s families to help develop appropriate and safe out-of-school online habits at an early age. After some research and collaboration involving students, teachers, our counselor, and my dear friend Carol Todd, I created a letter we are emailing home to our school community. I decided to go with clear recommendations for parents. While they reflect my personal opinions in some areas, I’m confident the advice supports the values and goals of our school. I’m sharing here in hopes that other educators and parents might find some of it useful.
Here are clickable links for parent resources. I’ve included a few that are not listed in the parent letter.
School District 43 (Coquitlam):
https://www.sd43.bc.ca/Resources/DigitalCitizenship/Pages/ParentResources.aspx
Media Smarts:
http://mediasmarts.ca/parents
Common Sense Media:
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/parent-concerns
UK Safer Internet:
https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/advice-centre/parents-and-carers
Kids In The Know:
https://www.kidsintheknow.ca/app/en/parents-educational_tools
Cyberwise.org:
http://www.cyberwise.org
Sue Scheff blog (Parent Advocate):
http://suescheff.com
Kids Help Phone:
http://www.kidshelpphone.ca/Kids/Home.aspx
Telus Wise (In Control):
https://wise.telus.com/incontrol/
Need Help Now:
https://needhelpnow.ca/app/en/
Cybertip.ca:
https://www.cybertip.ca/app/en/
Photo credit: KIDSAFE | paul.klintworth | Flickr (
Education & Technology 