Technology in the Classroom & Home

The mission of Christ Our King - Stella Maris Technology is to prepare and inspire generations of learners to meet the challenges of our 21st century society by fostering technological literacy, academic achievement, innovation, collaboration and creative problem-solving.

Technology Safety

 

What is the purpose of this section?

To keep parents informed about the features of our school's technology services and to keep parents up to date about the issues facing your child's safety with technology.

 

Monitoring Behavior

If you want to keep a more watchful eye on your kids' online behavior, you can use any of several effective tools but the best tool, is you. Keep technology where you can see it. We can not police a students web activity when off campus as effectively as when on. While there are content filters in place, there are workarounds that students can use to gain access to content deemed inappropriate. These methods are constantly changing and new sites pop up every minute to help students achieve this. If you believe your child may try to access inappropriate content, please, only allow technology when you can monitor their behavior.

 

We have deployed content filters for on campus and home for our school issued devices, to try and keep our students safe but, please, be aware that nothing is 100% effective. We keep as much information available to our students as possible without censoring to extremes.

 

The problem with content filtering are the methods used to filter. Keywords are common but pose problems. To add a word to "filter" could, potentially, break web browsing, in general. A string of random characters could contain a "keyword" and therefor be inaccessible to a student. Our content filter provider, supplies a category filter, which, we use. For the most part, this is effective. However, a site needs to be scanned and cataloged for content before it is added to the list. A relatively new site may contain inappropriate material but has not be added to the list, yet.

 

Whether you use a software monitoring tool or not, experts agree that having regular conversations with your children about their online usage is the most important element to keeping them safe and aware of the dangers of the Web.

 

Students are able to communicate over the internet through so many means, it would be impossible to stop them all and we don't really want to. Communication is an effective learning tool. It can be used for good and evil. We could block Facebbok, Instagram, & WeChat but those are just a few of the thousands of ways students can communicate online. Just know they will be communicating online and nothing but supervision could stop them.

 

Students in grades 5-8 are issued a Chromebook to help enhance the learning experience and prepare them for real world situations with a computer. The Chromebooks have a filter installed to help keep your child safe but nothing is 100%. Please, help keep your child safe online.

Each student will be issued a Google ID, which enables them to save their work and also makes it possible to access their work from any computer. Take a moment and review the programs used and how schoolwork can be backed up to prevent data loss. The Google Apps, such as, Docs, Sheets, Slides, & Photos, all automatically backup and can be retrieved by signing in to their account from anywhere.

 

Please, keep your child's account credentials safe. Do not share the info but you should know it. This is a great way to keep track of your child's online activities. You can login to their account at any time from any web browser at google.com

 

Each classroom, 4K-4th grade, have a set of iPads for student use. It is up to each teacher on how they will be used in the classroom.