While students are learning remotely, it is vital to look after their health and wellbeing.
I took time over Easter to think about our first completed week of offsite learning and to review the balance that Ivanhoe Girls’ has chosen to take between screen time, guided learning time and independent learning time across the various age ranges of our students.
Much learning takes place with movement around a room, in the outdoors, in small gatherings and in large gatherings. Moving around the School grounds between lessons requires students often to walk up and down stairs and to refocus their eyes on near and distant objects between lessons.
From personal experience I know how exhausting it is to be in back-to-back online meetings all day. While it may seem like an obvious way to replicate, as close as possible, what would ordinarily be happening in person, it simply isn’t sustainable and nor is it good for our children’s physical health and wellbeing.
I have read several articles that refer to the impact of sustained screen time for children. In her article, Psychologist Dr Katherine Dahlsgaard reminds us of the mental health impact of excessive screen time in general and notes the following tips to parents:
Dr Ayesha Malik, OD, pediatric optometrist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has talked about the risks to children’s eyes and sleep patterns from too much screen time. She reported that too much time indoors on screens can lead to:
With offsite learning at Ivanhoe Girls’ incorporating a significant amount of online lessons, it is important for students to regularly take breaks, not only to get some exercise, but also to rest their eyes. Dr Malik suggests that every 20 minutes, students should look away from the screen for 20 seconds and focus on something at least seven metres away, while researchers from the The New England Journal of Medicine remind all of us to blink often when working with prolonged screen time.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests active breaks for children in Prep to Year 12 promoting at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day. They also note that outside play provides a great "workout" for children's vision, giving them a chance to focus at different distances and getting exposure to natural sunlight. A final piece of simple but effective advice to cut down on glare and eye fatigue comes from a study published in the Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology & Research. The research notes that the level of lighting in a room when using a computer or other screen should be roughly half what it would be for other activities such as writing on paper or working on crafts.
I hope you find these tips useful in looking after the health of your children’s eyes as well as making our offsite learning experience as comfortable and sustainable as possible.
Dr Deborah Priest
Principal