Ground Rules for iPads at Home

​Establishing ground rules for technology use at home
Families will differ in the daily behavioral expectations for their children. Technology use should be in line with your own family's already established ground rules. Below is a list of tips, strategies and resources for technology use at home. 

• Designate specific areas in the home for use of technology tools: You may determine that homework and research must be done outside the bedroom, in a location visible to you. In this manner, an adult can monitor technology usage at any moment. 
• Keep iPad charger plugged into the wall in a main room: We require that students bring the iPad to school fully charged each day. By leaving the charger plugged in a common area of the house, this ensures the device is not only fully charged, but is left in plain sight at the end of the evening.
• Set time limits for iPad use: You may decide that once homework is complete, there is a set amount of time to use the iPad for other purposes. You may establish a time in the day, say 9pm or 10pm, after which the iPad must be put away. You may even set a timer on the iPad or your own iDevice that alerts you and your child when time is up. If you are looking for a timer app, see Timers for iPad.
• Airplane Mode: You can shut off wifi on the iPad itself, or even shut off wifi at the house altogether during certain hours of the day. This allows your child to continue to use the iPad for reading, writing or other activity that does not require internet access. As one innovative parent has done, you can even connect your internet access to a sprinkler timer, so it shuts off and turns on at certain times of the day.
• Set restrictions on the iPad: You can set restrictions on the iPad, such as shutting off access to Safari or Youtube, using a passcode. You can even choose to do this temporarily, such as in the evenings, then open things back up during the day. More complete information regarding restrictions follows later in this section.
• Guided Access: You can utilize Guided Access in Settings and lock the child into a specific app so they aren't multitasking and popping back and forth, viewing notifications, etc. Better yet, you can teach your child to self-monitor and they can be in charge of their own time management.
• Set volume limits while using earbuds or headphones: If you have questions about the potentially damaging effects of earbud/headphone use at high volume levels view this article from Generation Deaf about the research behind this, and instructions on how you can set maximum volume levels on the iPad (which are the same as iPod/iPhone).
• Family Media Agreement Form: This form from Common Sense Media provides a contract in clear language between parents and child for appropriate use of technology and proper online behavior. To help formulate your own family agreement, consider these guiding questions from Edutopia.

​Techniques for checking on-task behavior
Our teachers will use these techniques in the classroom, but they are also relevant for the home:

• Flip the screen: If you want to see what your child is doing, ask them to flip the screen to you. It's a nice, simple way to check what they are working on. The screen will automatically orient correctly, unless they have chosen to lock orientation. Either way, you can see the screen. Tip: you can also tell when they click the home button in a panic to get out of what they are doing. ;-)
• Double-click on the home button to check the multi-task bar: Double-clicking the home button will reveal the most recent apps your child has been working (from left to right). If they say they weren't watching Youtube videos, you can verify by checking the apps starting from the left.