Before you send your child to school with their new technology ...

No sooner does one School Year finish and we’re thinking about the next.
 
For many parents with children heading off to secondary school for the first time, it is perhaps time to consider a first mobile phone for their child. It is also very common these days for even primary school children to carry a smartphone.

It may also be the year that your child starts using an iPad, Mac or Windows laptop at school.

Here are some things to think about before you hand over any of this type of technology to your child

Avoid iCloud Confusion

Whether it’s the latest iPhone XS or XR, or a hand-me-down iPhone from Mum or Dad, there are some critically important things to consider when setting up a new iPhone for your child.  The same applies for an iPad or Mac.

If these devices are not correctly set up from the start, iCloud confusion can take hold in the family, resulting in messages, contacts, notes and more ending up where they’re not intended - and, in some cases, the unintended deletion of vital information!  Don’t let it happen to you!

Here is a previous iTandCoffee articles on this topic:

• Please check your iCloud setup - not just for your own sake, but for the sake of your friends!

If you are 'handing down' a mobile device to your child, the best approach is to completely wipe it. On an iPad and iPhone, this means going to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Erase All Contents and Settings.
 
Protect your children from inappropriate content

Before any piece of technology is put in the hands of a child, it is essential that appropriate parental controls are established. Even smartphones and tablets are powerful computers that give children access to the sometimes dangerous online world - and may give the dangerous online world access to them!

Failure to establish parental controls on your child's device not only puts your own child at risk of seeing inappropriate and sometimes highly damaging content - it also puts other children at risk.

Here are some previous articles on this topic: 

• How do I stop all my kids games from appearing on my iPad and iPhone?
• How to retrieve a forgotten Restrictions passcode for an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch​
• Hiding purchased apps in your App Store purchases - so that kids can't bypass 'Ask to Buy'

We also have a set of tutorials on how to set and use the great built-in parental controls on iPad and iPhones - including the new Screen Time features of iOS 12.

• Tutorials of 'Keeping Kids Safe on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

Make sure your child's school work is safe

Whether your child is starting secondary school or entering those final critical high school years, now is the time to make sure that they have their own cloud storage and that all of their devices are being regularly backed up! 

Countless times we’ve seen students who have lost critical work because they have not backed up and do not store their work 'in the cloud'. At VCE and university level, this can be an absolute catastrophe.

No-one need suffer the stress and anxiety arising from the loss of school and homework in addition to the pain of a lost or damaged device. 

A current backup and use of a cloud storage solution is the best way to secure what cannot be replaced.  As the proverb goes, ‘A stitch in time, saves nine’. 

Here are some past iTandCoffee articles on this topic:

• ​A timely warning for students (and the rest of us!)  
• Kids who lose their school or uni work due to computer glitch - and the parents who suffer the consequences!  
• What is it with kids and their resistance to backing up their data?!
• Have you backed up your iPhone or iPad lately?
• How to back up your Mac
• Google introduces a new tool for protecting your precious files and photos     ​

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Don’t know where to start?  iTandCoffee Can help!

We've put together a handy checklist for setting up your child's iPad or iPhone.  View this checklist here »         

If you need assistance, iTandCoffee can help with back-to-school set-up of Macs, laptops, tablets and phones. 

Why not take advantage of our New Year special - receive a $10 discount off the first hour of all private appointments in January 2018.

Call 1300 885 420 today to book your place.​

​We have workshops for parents coming to help you get set up

​Why not come along to our 1-hour ‘Getting School Technology Ready’ information session / workshop - dates are shown below.

Bring your devices and stay for some hands-on help to make sure your family is ‘School Technology Ready’ in 2019.

And check out the dates for our 'Keeping Kids Safe on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch' information sessions - run at schools, and at iTandCoffee.

For further information about these sessions, select the session name below.