Is you child using your online devices safely?
Children are no longer using desktops in communal areas of the house. They are using mobiles and tablets that allow millions of apps to be downloaded. Recently, research has shown that 5-15-year olds are spending more time using these devices than watching television.
So, how can we make sure that children are using these devices safely and indeed in a beneficial way?
Content
It is important to keep track of the content your child is accessing.
There are various educational games that your child can play and it’s something that you may want to encourage, I mean learning whilst not at school? Bonus! Download the best apps to benefit their learning.
If they’re using YouTube make sure they’re exploring informative programmes as well as pranks, celebrities and animals. There’s loads of fantastic content that is fun as well as educational.
Video games can be highly addictive and what not, but a quick search on google can let you know if the game is safe or not. If they’re downloaded from the apple app store under the children’s category you can be assured that the Apple team have already reviewed them and classed them as appropriate.
Visual learning
Approximately 60-80% of children are visual learners and apps are an effective way to help their understanding. Visual learners learn better through images, colours, graphs and diagrams. Spot if your child is a visual learner:
-Enjoys painting and drawing
-Wild imagination
-Visual information mostly recalled
-Enjoys reading books
-Good map skills
There is a great deal of apps that help visual learners and the reinforcement of using these outsides of the lesson could be crucial in filling the gaps they may have missed. An enormous effort goes into creating apps and they are constantly innovating to make them more interactive and engaging, so use the resources!
Confidence
The variety of levels in games motivates them to do better and get to the next level. Whilst they can feel more comfortable at home these improved skills can then be taken into class to eliminate the fear of failure in lessons. Emile is perfect for this it includes geometry, angles, adding and subtracting. Rewards can be efficient for children to keep on top of tasks and game apps allow this to happen.
Learning skills can be used in real life applications such as telling the time on the clock. Games focus on maintaining attention, coordinate tasks, organisation and testing the working memory with recall and attainment.
Time
Managing their time is also important. Give your child a set time after school to eliminate them spending long hours on it. It can disturb their sleeping pattern and put them off doing their homework. Using these screens for a vast amount of time can also be harmful to their eyesight in the future, so try and make a compromise between yourself and your child.
