Minister appeals for parents to monitor their child’s technology use

A Government Minister is asking parents to ensure that they are monitoring their child or ward’s use of technology.

Speaking at the handing over ceremony of 40 tablets to the Class 3 students of the Vauxhall Primary School, Minister of Youth and Community Empowerment, Adrian Forde, made a special appeal to parents to monitor what happens on the devices of their children.
He noted that too often he saw children using technology in the wrong way.

“The device is a learning and empowering tool and should be used to edify our young people and I am saying that this is a privilege. It is important that when young persons are given opportunities that you take them and use them to the best of your ability,” he said.
“The devices are to be used for positive activity.”

To the 40 recipients of the tablets, Forde urged them to make sure that they were using their devices only “to augment positive activity and behaviour.”

Forde recalled a time when he was younger and when he heard the word tablet he immediately thought of a Panadol, “never in my life would I have thought of the tablet being what it is today.”

It is against this backdrop that the Minister of Youth and Community Empowerment encouraged the children to be appreciative of the device that they held in their hands as it brought a lot of ‘mileage and worth.’

However with great power comes great responsibility, and Forde also urged that the children not get caught up in the world of cyberbullying, because “once you press send you cannot take it back.”

As the future of the country, Forde encouraged the young people to make the best of every opportunity afforded to them.

He went on to thank Aron and Christina Truss of the Foundation for the work that they would have done over the past couple of years with their tablet programme to help link technology and education in the schools, and added that their work did not go unnoticed. (CLF)