Social Media and School
Social Media is again spilling into school and causing us headaches. It is my firm belief that social media has not enhanced the lives of our young people. I can see some benefits for adults in terms of easy information sharing, but even then, one has to keep their wits about them around who is posting information, and what their motives might be. 

The nasty follow on effects from social media use in young people are time consuming and at times incredibly distressing for those involved. It is timely to remind parents and caregivers to check what apps your children are using and put some controls in around internet usage. 

Our recommendations at DNI include:

• No screens (phones, computers, ipads) after 7.00pm
• No screens in bedrooms (buy an alarm clock if your child needs one)
• Use Parental Control Software such as for example Net Nanny https://www.netnanny.com/ Most parents are very careful about where their children go and who they associate with (physcially), however many do not apply the same controls to internet relationships
• Make use of internet filtering that allows you to shut down internet to particular devices at certain times
• No illegal use of social media/games (note that most social media platforms are R13 and games such as Fortnite are R12 - there is a good reason for this). 
• Check out Netsafe https://www.netsafe.org.nz/social-media-parents/

It is time consuming and difficult to resolve internet based issues and generally unrelated to eduation (our core business) so our first question to you as parents/caregivers will be “have you addressed the recommendations listed above”. 

Social media does little to enhance the lives of children and in fact often results in low self confidence and insidious bullying. Social media is addictive for children and they become reliant on ‘likes’ and online feedback to guide daily life. Like any addiction we know it is hard to quit, but we strongly suggest that if your child is already connected to these platforms, you reduce or ideally remove access altogether.  

 

Creative Maths Classes
As mentioned in our last newsletter, there will be another 6 week block scheduled for weeks 3 to 8 this term 9 (week starting 3 August). Maths Art will be on Wednesdays or Thursdays again and "Clockwork" will be added on Tuesdays. This is a programme for developing basic facts knowledge. 

A sign-up link can be found here: Term 3 Creative Maths After-School Classes

If you have any questions about these classes, please write directly to Sandra Rogers at sandra.dunedin@gmail.com

School Term and Public Holiday Dates - For your advance planning

Term 3 (Monday 20 July to Friday 25 September).

Term 4 (Monday 12 October to Wednesday 16 December).
Monday 26 October - Labour day

Sports!
For information on the different winter sports (such as team lists and links to weekly draws) check out the DNI sports page on our school website www.dni.school.nz/sports/ or follow this link. 

We continually update this as new information comes to hand.