SchoolZone woes (again...)

First day of term for most New Zealand schools today and I can't believe that the SchoolZone email system is not working! I shouldn't be surprised, as it's run by Telecom, but come on, probably the biggest ISP in New Zealand Schools and I'm greeted by a "we are having problems with email and are working on it " message when I ring for support. The phrases "Quality of Service", "Redundancy" and "House of cards" spring to mind....

Parental responsibility

A friend asked me today what I thought we should be doing as parents to protect our children in a connected world. I could have reeled off some of the well known pointers like keeping computers and cellphones out of childrens bedrooms, parental controls on PCs etc. but when I gave it some thought I began to think that although those sort of things might 'help' in the short term, they are really just ways of ignoring and delaying the issues. I think that the root of many of the problems related to children and the online world lie in the hands of parents themselves. First we replaced books with TV, then the VCR replaced TV. DVDs replaced the VCR and then along came the computer and for many parents it was just another way of keeping children occupied. Although most parents have come to realize that computers and the Internet is so much more than a distraction, I'm sure that the majority are still largely ignorant to the intracacies of what existing online means to young people. So my answer was that the best, and really the only thing to do was for parents to realize that they have a duty to upskill themselves so they do understand. Parents can no longer bury their heads in the sand or claim ignorance about computers, the Internet or technology in general. They need to learn, and then they need to communicate and keep communicating. To be continued......

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