Pretty in pink playing with grandpa’s gadgets
John Hockemeier
Yea! The grandkids are coming! School’s out and there’s so much fun at grandma and grandpa’s house with all kinds of things to do. And it’s 100° outside! Oh, no. What can we do for fun? Let’s play with the computer or the laptop or the iPad! Oh, no!
Well, it’s probably inevitable that the kids will want to amuse themselves by playing on your electronic gadgets. Assuming they’re not bent on destruction, how can we keep the kids safe? There are solutions. Nearly every device has a switch or button or setting that will help keep the little ones from putting themselves in danger and you from unexpected charges if they try to buy games for instance.
Although there’s a lot of variation on how devices can restrict access to dangerous sites on the internet, there are some basics that, will help. You’ll have to read the users guides to find them all. Here we’ll cover some of the features on the iPad, currently the most popular of the tablet computers because it’s intuitive, mostly.
To keep the kids from inadvertently accessing the internet, turning off Wi-Fi is the most obvious and easiest step to take. On the iPad, select the Settings icon, touch the Wi-Fi listing and when the Wi-Fi page opens, turn Wi-Fi OFF. The Bluetooth system can connect to the internet so turn Bluetooth off in the same way as Wi-Fi. If 3G is used to access the internet, it can be turned off as well. To turn all internet accessibility off, on the Settings page, turn Airplane Mode ON. Now the iPad, or other tablet device, is isolated from the internet.
The above steps should keep the little ones from accidentally or intentionally going online. As most people know, kids today become computer literate at a very young age and can probably figure out how to turn all those settings back on. So to prevent an accidental internet connection or, in the case of kids older than about four, more sophisticated restrictions are called for. Entering a passcode should keep anyone not authorized from accessing certain internet sites. To enter a passcode, select General on the Settings page. On the General page, find the Restrictions heading and select it. Touch Enable Restrictions on the top of the next page. A Set Passcode box appears where a four digit code can be entered. When the code has been set, certain apps can be removed from the tablet’s main pages, adding or deleting apps can be prevented, access to music, movies, TV shows, and books can be controlled.
Supervision is the best method of protecting the kids, and a side benefit is that the kids might teach you something.
I’ve been suggesting to computer users and email writers that using the Bcc address line on emails can protect recipients from spammers and scammers. I found a good explanation for why this is a good idea. If you follow this link, the author gives a clear and simple reason for using this technique, http://ask-leo.com/how_does_using_bcc_help_reduce_spam.html. v