Jurassic Journal
Friday, October 30th
Coat Drive 2020 was a success
Steggie Families:
First I want to thank all of you for supporting and coming out to the first annual McElwain Cocoa and Coats. Above, are pictures of success. Also, I would like to take a moment to talk about a problem that we are experiencing here at the school, which is online safety. We have been experiencing several students using google chats to discuss inappropriate topics or bully. We would like to partner with parents to teach the dangers of online messaging, social media, and most recently google chats. Please work with your children to understand the dangers of posting inappropriate content online. We want all of our students to grow up happy and healthy and avoid inappropriate comments that could come back to haunt them later. We also want to ensure that they are not chatting with someone that could be dangerous. Below you will find an article that gives some advice on what parents need to know and how you can talk with your son or daughter. There are also links about text language that we as adults might not understand. Talk with your kids, look at their online accounts, know their passwords and look at their phones. Let's keep all of our steggies safe!
Below are some examples of social media icons your students may be accessing.
Thank you
Have a fantastic weekend!
Sara Olson
Virtual Fall Clubs
Please Sign up HERE
Student Council: Run by Archuletta, Martinez and Bautista
On Wednesdays, 3:15-4:15
Yoga Club: run by Ms. Albrecht
Starting November 9th, held on Mondays all year from 3:30-4:15
Game Club run by Mr. Sommers and Ms. Holmes
Starting on November 10th, held on Tuesdays from 3:30-4:15
Talk to your kids about social media TODAY
Here are some helpful tips so you and your children can enjoy social media more safely.
Talk to your kids. Have conversations about how to avoid strangers, how to prevent revealing too much about themselves, and general internet safety.
Educate yourself about social media. Start by finding out what kind of apps and sites your child is interested in. Read app reviews, age limits, and fine print.
Get a head start. If you don’t have an account on the social media site your child wants to use, get one. Teach yourself the ins and outs of the site. Make sure you know exactly what they can and cannot do, and decide what they should and shouldn’t do.
Teach your kid about posting on sites. Deleting a post does not mean it’s permanently gone. Posting inappropriate content could impact their online reputation. It may not seem like a big deal now, but it could potentially hurt them when they get older and enter college or the job market.
Let your kids know the importance of privacy. Many social media sites request names, dates of birth, school names, and hometown. Teach your children how much personal information is too much information online. And remember that these types of personally identifying information, if exposed in a data breach, could make them vulnerable to identity theft.
Monitoring your kids’ social media accounts
Most apps have an age requirement. Enforce it.
Check the privacy setting on apps regularly. Companies often update their privacy policies. Make sure you read the fine print.
Consider using a trusted security suite with parental controls on your child’s device. Enable all safety features that prevent children from accidentally being exposed to inappropriate content online.
Make sure you change the settings on their devices to ask your permission before installing an app.
Learn their dialect. Kids have a language of their own when it comes to communicating online. Make sure you know what they’re talking about.
Here are some popular social media sites and the facts you should know about them.
1. Instagram: Minimum age: 13 years
Users can snap, edit, and share photos and short videos. Privacy settings allow content to be private or public. The platform allows sharing and commenting. As long as the account is private, no one can view or comment on a post. Risks include sharing inappropriate content among friends and sharing location publicly by using the location tags.
2. WhatsApp: Minimum age: 16 years A widely popular messaging app, WhatsApp allows users to send text messages, audio messages, videos, and photos to one or many people with no message limits or fees. It limits access to only those people in your contact list. But people in a group chat who aren’t on your contact list can communicate with you.
3. Snapchat: Minimum age: 13 years A popular photo-sharing app, Snapchat lets users share pictures and videos for a preset length of time. Content will self-destruct when that time runs out. But keep in mind, people can still take screenshots and save the content. It gives a false sense of permanent deletion. The Discover feature may allow kids to have access to inappropriate content.
4. Twitter Minimum age: 13 years A microblogging site that has the option to keep ‘tweets’ private or public. It can help teens keep up with their friends and favorite celebrities. Even though Twitter has the option to delete a tweet, the posted content could have been copied or stored.
5. Facebook Minimum age: 13 years This widely used social media app lets users share pictures, videos, and comments. It also has an instant messaging feature. Facebook helps teens catch up with friends, family and events.
6. Tick Tok Minimum Age: 13 This app lets individuals create videos. There is not a way to limit who views the video once it is created. Users may be exposed to bad language or mature content.
Here are some online safety tips to help your child minimize their exposure on social media.
Know your network. Advise your child never to approve friend requests or add people that they don’t know in real life. Be sure they know never to meet anyone in person that they have only met online.
Beware of imposters. Catfishing is a form of cyberstalking where the user sets up a fake profile and poses as someone else — often as another child — to try to engage contact with your child. Educate yourself about catfishing and cyberstalking, and then teach your child the red flags to look out for. Some of these include a limited number of photographs that look staged, asking for intimate photos or money, moving away from social media sites that are capable of catching catfishing.
Avoid questionnaires. “Free” giveaways and contests, or online quizzes, can be tempting. They can also be phishing scams that will try to trick your children into giving away personal information or to allow hackers to try to inject malware onto their computers.
Educate yourself about phishing scams. If your child really wants to enter a contest, review it first and make sure it’s legitimate.
Guard your location. Here’s a popular practice: personalizing social media status updates with a live location taken from a mobile device’s GPS. Kids may have fun tagging posts or photos with a location, but parents may not want their child’s precise whereabouts broadcast to the world. Here’s what you can do. Go into the settings menu on your child’s device and disable location services. This can be done just for specific apps while still allowing maps and other useful tools to access location data.
Watch out for apps within sites. Your kid may want to use games and other third-party apps within social networking sites. But such apps can share or post information by default without you knowing about it. Good ones will state clearly that they’ll never post on your behalf. For lesser-known apps, consider whether you want your child to allow the apps to access social media accounts at all.
Here are a few tips for parents on kids’ internet safety, please set ground rules for your kids on social media
Keep the computer in a common area of your home — like your living room or kitchen. Have designated areas to use tablets and cell phones. This can help you monitor what sites your child is visiting. Plus, they may be less tempted to visit sites or perform activities they’re not allowed to if you’re nearby.
Only allow your child to access the internet for a limited, set time each day. Homework might be an exception. Social media sites can be a time suck, and you don’t want your child spending all of their free time online.
If your child wants to join a social media site, request that you have access to their account credentials. This can help you check for undesirable activities, such as adding suspicious friends, receiving questionable messages, or posting unkind content.
If your child is an older teen, they may think giving you full access to their account is too invasive. Consider a compromise. Require them to add you as a friend so you can monitor their activities via your own account.
Stick with age-appropriate sites. Most social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have an age minimum of 13 years. Some of these sites have additional security settings for minors, as well. Facebook, for example, automatically imposes stricter privacy settings for kids than for adults, so be sure your child is using the correct birth year upon signup. Twitter gives a user the option for an account to be private. In that case, the user approves all follow requests.
And don’t forget, always review the privacy settings on your child’s profile.
Download the Infinite Campus App
This Month's Updates:
- Coffee with the Principal on November 4th with Spanish Translation 8:30 am
- November 11th- No School Veterans Day
- November 18th, Tea with the Principal with Dari Translation 8:30 am
- November 19th, PTLT 3:15-4:15 Virtual
- November 23rd-November 27th Thanksgiving Break NO SCHOOL
Tech Corner
NEED BETTER WIFI? Submit a request for a free internet hotspot here: https://familytechsupport.adams12.org/hc/en-us/requests/new
PLEASE USE the new TECH ISSUES form to communicate ANY tech complications
Please feel free to contact Ms. Snider at sni024831@adams12.org or (720)972-8555 if you have any questions about this. Thank you for your partnership!
Check Out this Classwork From Mr Chambers Online Class!
Be Prepared
- Make sure your student brings their charged computer back and forth everyday
- Have the school's phone number handy: 720-972-5500
- Connect to Class Dojo if you haven't already
- Make sure your student can sign into Schoology
- Need better Wifi? Submit a request for a free internet hotspot here: https://familytechsupport.adams12.org/hc/en-us/requests/new
Need Thanksgiving Support?
Weekend Meal Bags
Contact US
Administration
Principal: Sara Olson Email: Sara.K.Olson@adams12.orgAssistant Principal:Brooke Tolmachoff Email: Brooke.Tolmachoff@adams12.org
Website: https://mcelwain.adams12.org/welcome-mcelwain-elementary
Location: 1020 Dawson Drive, Denver, CO, USA
Phone: 720-972-5500
Facebook: facebook.com/McElwainElementary
Twitter: @NA