Parent Resources

Technology can transform teaching and instruction, but it also requires that families work with Le Sueur-Henderson school to provide a safe and secure online learning environment. Click on the links below to learn more about online safety.

Digital Health & Wellness:

Maintaining a Healthy Balance with Technology

As parents, we certainly can't be with our children constantly to monitor the potentially inappropriate material they may encounter. But we can help them learn to make good choices. We can take advantage of teachable moments to compare media content and messages to our family values--perhaps when watching a TV commercial or show, viewing a website, movie, or discussing the lyrics to a song.

Digital Health and Wellness is an important parent-child discussion to revisit frequently with your child, from elementary school through high school. Experts warn that children are most vulnerable to online dangers while in their own home. While many potential dangers are filtered so students can't access them at schools, parents sometimes forget that children may have direct access to inappropriate sites at home unless they take action.

Know the expectations at school.

Understand the expectations for use on a school issued device by reading the ISD 2397 Student Device Handbook and the Acceptable Use Policy approved by the school board.

Communicate expectations at home.

Have a conversation with your child about what online activities should be taking place online at home (specifically when parents aren't presence. Media contracts are great tools to facilitate these conversations and can be found at Common Sense Media or NetSmartz.

You can filter the internet, too.

While a digital internet filter is an essential tool in keeping children safe on the internet, nothing can replace your presence in their digital lives. Frequent monitoring of all social media accounts will help you see the public messages your child is sharing and sharing passwords so you can log in to their accounts will help you see the messages they are sending and receiving that are not public.

Give it a rest, but not in the bedroom.

Parenting experts suggest charging all technology devices, from cell phones to Chromebooks, in a common family room overnight. This will help discourage late night, unmonitored use. Don't allow your son or daughter to sleep with their cell phone or Chromebook. Remember to model appropriate use and balance of technology in your own life, too.

Talk about the responsibility to respect and protect.

Digital citizenship (responsible use on the internet) is an important skill for students in the 21st century. We have adopted six simple statements: Respect yourself, Protect yourself; Respect others, Protect others, Respect intellectual property, and Protect intellectual property. These six conditions of digital citizenship are detailed in the ISD 2397 Student Device Handbook.