Digital Citizenship and Wellbeing at BST
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A Community-based approach to managing devices
Since schools returned after the COVID outbreak, there has been a marked increase in the number of instances of children misusing devices in their own time. Often this can impact their school life and others around them. In response to this, The British School in Tokyo has spent time researching the advice from a broad range of resources and has collated this website in order to offer guidance to parents as well as informing our policy on Digital Citizenship and Digital Wellbeing.
There are many different approaches to managing our use of digital devices and they all have their challenges. At BST we would like to encourage a community-based restorative justice approach. This idea places our wellbeing at the centre of all interactions and goes hand in hand with the 5 ways to wellbeing.
We have created this website in order to share information and recommendations made by specialists in this area. We recognise that different families will have different approaches to managing devices at home and by sharing these recommendations we hope we can create a common approach to helping our children manage their devices.
In order to help us in developing this community-based approach we would ask that all parents of children in the BST Primary School watch the three videos below, read the Digital Citizenship and Wellbeing policy and finally complete the form.
In total there are 5 steps and the process should take no longer than 30 minutes.
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Step 1 - Wellbeing and Devices
There are many different guidelines for managing our children's technology use. Rather than focus on screen time, many experts now recommend that we think about how activities that help our wellbeing are displaced by time spent using screens and the quality of that time. This idea forms the bedrock for the rest of our approach to managing devices.
Please watch the video below.
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Step 2 - Early Technology adoption
Families in our community will have different ideas about what is appropriate for their children to access and which technologies they allow their children to use. Early technology adoption is when a child gains access to technology before the recommended age. Whilst we appreciate that it is every individual family's right to decide when it is appropriate for their child to access certain materials, there are several recommendations that may help limit the impact on the wider community.
Please watch the video below
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Step 3 - Managing Devices at Home
Many of the recommendations surrounding technology use and our children have changed as technology has evolved. Please watch the video below for a summary of the recommendations made by several experts.
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Step 4 - Read the 'Digital Citizenship and Digital Wellbeing Policy' below.
Step 5 - Complete the form below
Please complete the form below to acknowledge you have watched the 3 videos and read the 'Digital Wellbeing and Digital Citizenship Policy'.
Thank you very much for taking the time to watch and read this information. You have now completed the required section of this website. For more recommendations, please see the links at the top of this page. Please do not hesitate to contact Iain Crummie (EdTech Coordinator) icrummie@bst.ac.jp should you have any questions or require further information.