In my adult life I am endlessly busy, with a ‘to do’ list which never seems to go away, but as I observe our younger generations today, I sometimes wonder…what did I used to do in my spare time when I was at school? Sure, there was some sport training, music or debating practice, but what did I do after school? I had a part time job when I was 14, but we weren’t allowed to watch TV, so what else did we do? Ride my bike, play outside, play a board game, read a book, help out around the house…the list was endless, and I was certainly never bored! I think this was the case for most of us, even my older two children who are now in their 20s. But it is true that over the past five or so years, technology has slowly begun to creep into the ‘down’ time of both adults and our children. I watch my kids pick up their devices when they have a moment of ‘free’ time and use it to fill up that time. Managing technology in the lives of our children is an endlessly tough job but at the end of the day, it essentially comes down to expectations and boundaries that we set both as families and as a College.

When St Andrew’s opened the Learning Hub a few years ago, it was designed to be a collective space. Our aim was to create an environment where students and staff could work and collaborate together, where we would encourage reading, group discussion, homework and other activities both before and after the school day as well as during breaks. So how is it currently being used? The feedback from many of our students is how much they appreciate the space, a place where they can do all of the above, knowing staff are around if needed and it builds on some of our core values around encouraging learning and building connections.

However, one detraction from this wonderful environment has been the increased use of the Hub for groups of students on their devices in some form of online gaming. A fascinating aside was that during our cyber virus attack a few weeks ago, the Hub was incredibly quiet in the afternoon and it took a few days for me to realise…no free wi-Fi!   However, in the past couple of weeks with IT systems returning to normal, so has the level of commitment to on-line games and videos.

I don’t believe that the purpose of our College is to provide students a fabulous space to engage in online gaming or video bingeing. However, I’m sure every parent will agree with me, the ongoing challenge is that these devices are great tools for learning, but they are also great tools for distraction. As a College we are happy to support students who want to continue their learning before or after school with their device, to relax with a book, play a board game, do a jigsaw or undertake some tutoring. One of the lines I’ve often been fed about online activity is that it’s ‘relaxing’ or it’s valuable ‘down time’. I’ll be honest, I’m not really all that supportive of this approach here at the College, and so as of last Monday, we have shared with our students that individual or groups of students sitting around gaming or consuming a range of online YouTube clips will be asked to either turn off their devices, or go home.

One of the challenges in this situation is we know parents appreciate that upper primary and secondary students have access to the Hub before and after school. As a College we are seeking your support to ensure that if your children are staying on campus out of school hours, they use the time for homework, for co-curricular activities, reading, for chatting with friends and perhaps a raft of other ideas that you can talk with your children about. If your children don’t access the Hub, you might want to consider the same conversation for when your children come home, especially if they are home before you.    

It’s so very easy to default to a screen, and this quickly becomes a habit, but what if we got creative about what else our children could do during these breaks and we started sharing our ideas with each other? As I said from the outset, devices can be wonderfully useful for learning and that’s fine. At St Andrew’s we will be strongly encouraging a change of behaviour in our students whereby they use the time spent as down time in the Hub as a chance to do something different.

Looing forward to your support in this area and hearing any creative or helpful ideas.

Best wishes

Chris Ivey