Information Technology

All pupils  are issued with their own Google account upon entry to the college. These accounts stay with the pupil throughout the 5 years at the college. It is the responsibility of the pupil to maintain their account and to keep it secure. Pupils sign an Acceptable User Policy at the beginning of the year and then a shortened version every half term. Pupil accounts are monitored using Smoothwall. Pupils are taught how to keep themselves safe online through their Tutorial programme and computer science lessons.

As parents, you can help to keep your child safe online by:

• Establishing ground rules for the use of tech in your household ( where, when and what )
• Taking an interest in what your child is doing online and encouraging good behaviour
• Keeping to age ratings ( they are there for a reason )
• Improving your knowledge as a parent ( so you are able to have a more informed conversation with your child )

Chromebooks

Parents that purchase a chromebook usually do so to allow their child to use it in school.  So that all our students are safe, we place the chromebook in our google domain.  This allows us to filter content to meet safeguarding requirements and best practice.  This filtering is applied when in school and when at home.  Therefore, some web content will not be available to students when at home, just as it is not when in school and once in our school domain, only google accounts that are part of the school domain i.e. @cullomptoncollege.org will be able to gain access to the Chromebook. If you have any questions about the filtering within the google domain please contact our IT department.

Previous Chromebook models that were available to purchase have been designed and built for the education market, so they were "ruggedised", with a spill-proof casing and they had also been drop tested. The Chromebooks purchased from CCC also included a 3 year warranty, a case and connection to the school google domain. 

There is not a requirement to purchase a Chromebook from CCC as "other models are available" and can be purchased in major retail outlets.  However, if a parent or carer chooses to purchase a Chromebook for school use from somewhere other than CCC, there will be a fee to licence the chromebook to our school domain so we can meet our required e-safety and safeguarding obligations.  (This fee is included in the price of a Chromebook when purchased through the school). The fee is payable via the 'shop' option within Parentmail, our online payment system. When your child leaves CCC you can request that the Chromebook is removed from our domain and it can then be used freely with all filtering removed.

Whilst we cannot advise you which Chromebook to purchase, you should aim to purchase one with the longest possible Auto Update Expiration date (AUE date), the date up to which Google guarantees to support auto updates for that Chromebook. A retailer may have a Chromebook on offer at a great price but the AUE date may only be next year, where another device is dearer but has an AUE date 4 years ahead. You can check AUE dates for most Chrome devices via the Google Chrome Enterprise Help Page -  Google Chrome Auto Update policy