Growing Up Digital: Resources for Families

We recently hosted another edition of our annual Growing Up Digital night for grade 6 families and grade 7 and 8 families new to UWCSEA East. The evening's primary purpose is to provide space and time to begin the important conversations between Middle School students and their parents around how and when digital technology is used at home. We recognize that putting a device -- a Macbook Air -- in the hands of a (pre) teen can often change the dynamics of the home. While it's impossible (and, some might argue, inappropriate) for us to give blanket "digital rules" for every family, we do think it's crucial for each family to have conversations to determine parameters and agreements for technology and media in the home. Growing Up Digital night acts as a prompt to begin these discussions, guided by our leadership team and Digital Literacy Coaches, who can act as both facilitators and consultants with families.

Slides from the evening are below. You'll note that a significant part of the evening -- nearly 30 minutes -- was for active discussion between parents and children around the Family Media Agreement.



As promised, we have for you a list of resources to help you navigate your conversations about Growing Up Digital in your family. We've roughly divided these into three categories, but you'll note that there is a lot of overlap between them.

Time Management Tools

SelfControl is an app for Mac OSX that you can set to block what you determine to be distracting websites. You can block them for a certain period of time, or forever. 

StayFocusd is a Chrome extension you can use similarly to SelfControl, but just for sites you access in your Chrome browser. It's highly customizable -- you can set it to kick in at the same times every day, for example -- and easy to set up. However, keep in mind it is only for one specific browser. 

RescueTime is an app that installs on your Mac or mobile device, and it tracks all of the time you spend on every app or website. It automatically determines standard "productivity" ratings for each site and app, but you can customize this in a very granular way. While RescueTime does not block or limit any apps or sites, it's an excellent tool to use to track how you are actually using your digital time. Each week it sends you a report with detailed infographics which you can view by the day, week, or month. 

Parental Controls exist in the System Preferences panel of your Mac. You may want to consider setting up a separate "study buddy" account on your Mac that has Parental Controls enabled. 

The Tomato Timer is a web-based tool based on the Pomodoro Technique. (There are several other tools and apps available based on this technique -- a quick search will turn up hundreds of hits!) Set the timer and while it is running (25 min), dedicate your time to focus on a specific task. When the timer finishes, take a break! Check your Facebook, go for a walk, get a drink, and then get back to work. 

Tips for managing media at home

Common Sense Media is one of our favorite organizations, and they have several ideas to help you manage devices at home, from setting screen limits to helping kids use Facebook (or not) for homework. On a related note, our colleagues at Dover have written a piece about how multi-tasking and learning don't mix very well. 

For families who would like to set up filters, there are a couple of solid options. Norton Family allows you to set filters on specific computers and other devices. If you'd like something that isn't device-specific but rather filters all traffic into the home, Starhub and SingTel both offer "safe surfing" options, though there is a small monthly fee for these services. 

School policies

You and your child signed several forms before we allowed you to take that laptop home. If you'd like to review the official policies and protocols for use of College technology, on and off campus, our College iLearn page has all the paperwork you need. 

We're here to help! Please feel free to email us or stop by our desks in C319. 

This is how we roll (out)

Happy Girls photo by @klbeasley

This is the third rotation of handing out laptops to our families. Our process has evolved quite a bit from it's inception in August 2011. Here are is an outline of what we do, why we do it, and how it's working.

Context: We are an independent international school with around 4,000 students across two campuses. Our students in grades 6-12 use a school-provided MacBook for the purpose of enhancing their learning.

Collaboration: This process is a true collaboration in every sense of the word and we're not claiming to have invented anything brand new. We'd specifically like to acknowledge the collaboration with our friends at Singapore American School and with Robyn Treyvaud. 

Overview: (Grade 5 moving to Grade 6)
June
- families attend "Growing up Digital" session together
- students participate in the "Eggcellent Adventure"
- families attend and "Out of the Box" session where they get their laptops
-student mentored by Grade 8 students
August
-support and learning in Mentor classes
-tools/techniques taught in academic classes
-parent sessions 

All in the Family: though some of our students already have access to their own technology, for some this is the first time the child has had a laptop of their own. We take care to help families establish a positive environment for digital media and laptop use in the home. 

We begin the process before the tool is even in the hands of the family by requiring parents and students to attend a "Growing up Digital" session where we scaffold a discussion between the parents and student around our Family Media Agreement. The understanding is that this document will be living and evolving as needed starting with a few agreements based on "pressure points" like time limits, where the laptop will be used, and expectations around completing homework.
It's important to note that this is a family agreement. There are considerations for all members of the family because modeling attentive behavior is really important.

Eggcellently Dressed

Proper care and feeding of the laptop is reinforced by students completing the "Eggcellent Adventure" where they carry a blown-out egg shell around for a week. Through this process they learn to be responsible for a fragile object and, should it break, they need to see a number of people like Heads of Grade, IT Support, Vice Principals, and the Digital Literacy Coach for a short chat and their signature on an "Insurance Claim report."
Read my daughter's account of the process and learning from the experience.

Next, we bring the family back in to collect their signed technology agreement forms, hand over their new laptop, and walk them through a presentation on points related to caring for and use of the laptop including common causes of damage, healthy use tips, warranty and insurance coverage, initial set-up of accounts, and some apps to help avoid distraction.

We round out the week with a mentoring session where Grade 8 students talk with the Grade 5s about peaks, pitfalls, and protips related to learning with the laptop. These tips were created by the students when challenged with the task of explaining the important points students with new laptops might need to know.


Ongoing support is given to students both during their mentor sessions when the new school year begins and in their other academic classes. Students are guided through the process of organizing their files and calendars, collaborating, communicating, setting up a reflective portfolio, and practicing our core values both online and in person. 

Again, we were fortunate to have so much support from a broad community of educators when setting up our process. We hope you find this useful and share with us any feedback if you've been through this process as a student or parent to make it even better.