teaching and learning » online safety

Acceptable Use and Web 2.0

warrick — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 06:24:25 +0000

I’ve been trying to look at as many presentations as I can from the K12 Online Conference currently underway, and have been enjoying them a lot. I posted earlier about the New Imagery Conference I attended earlier this month, but this online conference also has some great presentations, more focused on technology generally. Each presentation from the K12 Online Conference has a .mp3 presentation, supporting links, a biog page and sometimes even a slide show with the voice, such as this one (powered by voicethread)

One such presentation, that I enjoyed a lot was by Joseph Bires, called Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0. He tackles some of the issue around identity, acceptable use, safety and security but always with the picture of learning in mind. He has some tips for promoting web 2.0 effectively and safely in schools. They are:

Create sandboxes of success
Manage the chaos
Refine the policies
Invest in the infrastructure
Support the innovators: feed the hungry
Accept that some close the door (on web 2.0)

It’s at the conference site here, or you can link to the enhanced slideshow version directly HERE

Student cracks internet filter and then says sensible things about net filtering!

warrick — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:19:41 +0000

The Herald-Sun reported today that Tom Woods, a sixteen year old schoolboy from Melbourne, had cracked the Federal Government’s new $84m internet porn filter in about half an hour.

He then cracked a upgraded filter in forty minutes.

However, what interested me most wasn’t this boy’s prospective career path in the IT industry or his supporting actor role in Die Hard 7.0, it was what he had to say about filters themselves, which seemed eminently sensible and something the government cold learn from:

“Filters aren’t addressing the bigger issues anyway,” he said. “Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix. “They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them.”

And so say all of us.

The full story is HERE

Stop CyberBullying: Video

warrick — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 08:15:40 +0000

I’ve been leading a committee at school called Online Safety and Ethics which consists of a group of students and teachers working together to establish some clear outcomes, and some age-relevant activities for students to undertake during home group time. This YouTube video, against Cyberbullying, might be a resource we could use with Middle School students:

Don’t Dehumanise Us

warrick — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:10:00 +0000

Following up on the topic I posted about earlier this week, about the connection between self-harm and internet commuinities, this letter in the AGE today:

Don’t dehumanise us

THE concept of cyberspace has nothing to do with the fact that
these girls killed themselves. Being a teenager myself, I feel I
can shed more insight into the truth of the story than most adults
could ever pretend to. Teenagers bottle things up, too; we all do.
If they haven’t written anything about it on MySpace, they would
have written it in their journal, or at least would have thought
about it.

MSN doesn’t encourage suicide, if anything, it gives teens an
opportunity to talk about what’s on their minds without fear of
retribution. And the fact that psychologists and experts decide to
blame the subculture of “emo” just proves that we are always
looking for an easy answer to everything.

Please stop stereotyping. Saying that everyone who likes “emo”
music is contemplating suicide is like saying every Korean is
planning an in-school shooting: dehumanising.

Tess Darlington, Beaconsfield Upper

Dangers of social networking

warrick — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:31:03 +0000

The tragic death of two teenage girls earlier this week has re-focused media attention on social network sites like myspace where both girls had online profiles. There’s been lots of talk about the dangers of sites like this bringing together like-minded individuals who might be supported in their alienation and depression by others who feel the same.
The argument I think is that, while traditionally these teenagers would have found little support for these feelings in their immediate communities, the internet and social networks provide a means for anyone to connect, and it’s one that has some validity, for good and bad I suspect.

The AGE yesterday headed up a front page story with Lost in cyberspace: Fears that new networks are breeding grounds for real-life tragedies (AGE 24/4) with this quote from a child psychologist: “Don’t let them disappear behind this emotional firewall called MSN.” – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg)

Coincidentally the ABC’s new program Difference of Opinion had four ‘experts’ talking about the changes in communication that the new technologies had enabled for young people who were born into it.

The digital divide was played out right before our eyes with the two ‘oldies’ on the panel nostalgicising about how ‘we used to play outside in the sunshine’ and ‘you shouldn’t be stuck in your room all by yourself for hours’ and the younger ones saying things like ‘we’re not alone in our room; we’re there with all our friends’ and ‘you just don’t get it’. (these are remembered quotes; I didn’t write this stuff down

I’ve been working with a committee of students and teachers at my school on a program we’re calling Online Safety and Ethics, attempting to deepen student knowledge and awareness of online issues like safety from ‘predators’, ‘cyber-bullying’ and ‘identity theft’. Lots of people are. Look at http://del.icio.us/tag/online_safety

Still, looking at the lists and dimensions of the program we’re envisaging, I don’t think anything we’re planning would have prevented a tragedy like this one. These aren’t internet skills that are needed here; it’s counselling, positive reinforcement, communication and hope, wherever it comes from.

So it was interesting to see an AGE article on self-harm among teenage girls today conclude:

Professor McGorry said there was also little evidence to suggest
a link between internet chat rooms and teenage suicide.

“To dry to draw a link between the internet and the risk of
suicide is pretty difficult. Those sites facilitate a lot of good
things where teenagers can share information about each other
… they could even have a protective effect.”

He said there had, in fact, been a decline in youth suicides in
the time that virtual communities such as MySpace had become
popular.