Safety First
At Koa Academy, we prioritise your child’s safety online. Just as you would expect a traditional school to keep your child safe during the school day, at Koa, we are committed to protecting your child in the online space within our digital school ecosystem. We are dedicated to equipping your child with the tools they need to operate in the online space with confidence, support and responsibility.
It is important to understand that there are different ways to engage with the online world. How our students access their schooling online is different in nature to how they engage socially online, for example, in gaming or social media. At Koa, we take responsibility for the school environment, while equipping and supporting our families to take responsibility in other areas of their child’s digital experience.
A Safe Schooling Environment
We take the safety of our learners very seriously at Koa Academy and provide an environment with high transparency and accountability.
Our school operates using Google Workspace for Education, which our students log into using a unique student account. This provides us with a high level of protection and accountability for our learners. Google Workspace for Education has rigorous standards for safety and security compliance, as well as built-in security tools that allow for filtering of content, monitoring of all traffic through our domain, and access control to apps. All this is managed by our in-house team of trained IT administrators. Koa then hires an external EduTech company to audit us annually, to make sure that we are maintaining high standards in deploying these systems and tools. Our small Pods of 8 students with a teacher also provide the perfect environment for skill development, leading to responsible use of technology. In these Koa Pods, every learner is seen and heard. Experiences are shared and discussed and our strong values around empathy and self-management are instilled and reinforced in the learners.
We also educate our parents around their responsibilities when it comes to creating a safe space online for their children in other areas at home where Koa does not take the lead. For example, parents need to be thoughtful around access to personal accounts, platforms outside of our Koa ecosystem, and so on.
Soft Skills Required
We understand that growing up in the digital age doesn’t necessarily mean your child will automatically have all the soft skills required to navigate the online world. We like to say that “being a digital native does not automatically make you digitally literate”. In fact, even adults struggle to navigate all aspects of their online lives well! Setting up your child for success in the online space requires intentionality and accountability.
Here are just a few of the key soft skills that we intentionally develop at Koa, which are essential when navigating any online space:
- Healthy communication: positive words and dealing with confrontation.
- Critical thinking: understanding echo-chambers, sources, fake news, and more.
- Problem-solving: because difficult situations do arise!
- Empathy: understanding the experience of others online is not easy.
- Resilience: a Koa tree is famous for being both strong and flexible, and that’s what we want for our kids online!
- Good self-management: taking the lead in how we engage online, not following the herd.
These are all skills that teenagers are actively developing and improving as they transition into adulthood, and school provides an excellent environment for practicing, refining and reflecting on these skills. As adults, we need to be intentional about providing opportunities for children in these areas.
Our Partnership with Klikd
At Koa Academy, we believe that having open discussions about the online space will assist in equipping your child with the tools necessary to navigate it confidently. Instead of ignoring the issues or pretending they don’t exist, we engage with our learners in meaningful ways about what they are currently experiencing or may encounter online in the future.
This is why we have partnered with Klikd to provide our learners with relevant training to help them navigate their personal online world with confidence, while teaching them how to engage in responsible and healthy online behaviors.
The Klikd team is passionate about empowering families and schools to successfully navigate the online space. We have leveraged their excellent platform and resources at Koa to ensure your child receives the highest quality, real-world content in an ever-changing digital landscape.
The Klikd team has reimagined digital safety education and we use their content in our Pods to upskill and empower our students and parents throughout the year. Learners work through the Klikd App modules, each one focusing on a specific aspect of the online space, guided by their experienced Pod teachers. Instead of finger-wagging and fear-mongering, they are coached to develop a positive approach to the online world and how to navigate it happily and safely. The content is all presented by teens themselves, in a format that is easy for our kids to connect with. Here are just a few examples
(from many!) of the modules that a Koa student would complete thanks to Klikd:
- Privacy and Security Online: Understanding digital footprints, hackers, and how to protect your personal info.
- Cyberbullying: Recognizing the signs, how to handle it, and how to (not) make it worse!
- Social Media & Self-Worth: Living in a world of ‘likes’ and managing the need for validation, the highlight reel vs. reality, and how to build a healthy relationship with social media.
- Digital Addiction & Screen Time: Spotting the signs of overuse, balancing tech time with real life and setting boundaries that actually work.
For us as parents, the digital world evolves so quickly that it can be tough to keep up with trends, and we sometimes find ourselves out of the loop. To support this, Klikd also provides Koa parents with adult guides on each module, along with talking points and starter-questions to engage our kids at home in deeper conversations. But they don’t stop there: Klikd also sends our parents a weekly information blast, helping us to stay up to date with current online trends, along with conversation prompts that serve as starting points to discuss current issues with your child. In this way, you can stay current while incorporating your own family values in the conversation.
No Silver Bullet!
As you can tell, there is no one-stop-solution to keeping our kids safe online. It takes a lot of thought, the right tools, a little help from experts, and a lot of teamwork to make sure that we are creating the type of environment that our kids can thrive in. At Koa Academy, we are committed to walking that journey; leveraging the right tools, equipping our staff, drawing on the experience of others and partnering with our parents in navigating an ever-changing online landscape.
