Copyright ... time to re-evaluate

Copyright laws/rules were set for printed materials and have evolved or have been morphed to include electronic sources since music and photo and video became available. The laws and rules do not seem to fit today's publishing methodology and need a complete rethink. Copyright is too complex for mortals and creative commons has helped but ...

My feeds (apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed )today took me towards a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This is well worth keeping as a reference guide to common sense and careful thought on the subject.

Is the study of such things soon to be part of the new e-curriculum we have yet to write ?

The Government responds to Tanya !!

Last week the Government announced its response to the Tanya Byron Review on e-Safety. You can read the press release here or go to the full Action Plan here. Again, it is good to note that there is a version for 'young people' .

The good, the bad and the ****

The title was just to catch attention ... I am reporting here on the excellent and the, frankly, stupid ...

The excellent first. I have been following the 'Cool Cat Blog' for some time now and am often amazed by the insightful nature of the comments there on students' work. A particular statement caught my eye today reported from the Horizon Project 2008:

"A teacher should, as Don Tapscott said, no longer be a transmitter of information, but a regulator of educational settings. Our teacher Mrs. Vicki could stand in from of the class room all day and lecture us on exactly what to do and how to do it. We would ace tests and learn a lot . . . for a while… However by next year about 65% of what we learned will be irrelevant due to technology changes and development. Instead, she gives us projects to complete that pose challenges to us that can repeat themselves. Such as giving us a project to make a video by using a program we are unfamiliar with. Though we may not ever make another video, it is inevitable that we face the challenge of having to use an unfamiliar program, ergo, we will be prepared to deal with this for the rest of our lives.

So in conclusion, the role of a teacher is now: to regulate the educational environment; to introduce students to the realm of ambiguities; and to no longer evaluate our overall knowledge, but our constructive, creative, and adaptive capabilities."

I just love the last paragraph. If this teacher has taught her students this then my optimism for the future is reset ! The idea of teachers introducing students to a realm of ambiguities is awesome and I want to hear more about it.

...... and now the frankly stupid .... and it has to STOP ...

Drew Burrett is a teacher and GLOW mentor from Argyll and Bute and his frustration boiled over:


Super School, Super Speed & Web(non)Sense

How Brilliant is Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope?

I’d love to be able to answer that question, but unfortunately my home PC is under spec’ed to do it justice - graphics card not up to the job of rendering the terabytes of images.

Nor is my school machine - lovely MacPCBookWinProXP - able to do it justice, simply because Websense will not allow it access to the internet.

I was quite excited by the announcement of the release of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, as I hoped it’d make for some interesting ‘find out for yourself’ collaborative Web 2.0 work for the kids as part of our up coming ‘Space’ topic.

Alas, Websense feels it is unsafe to allow such programs (and Google Earth, Stellarium etc) to be used in the education of children. This piece of software is slowly crushing my enthusiasm for incorporating ICT into my teaching.

[I had to laugh when I saw Websense’s corporate website - where they are selling themselves as ‘Integrated Security for the Web 2.0 world]

Andrew Brown made an interesting observation on his blog regarding filtering -

I wish there were some trust in the professionalism of teachers, rather than a blanket ban on everything until its proven to be’safe’. In the meantime, I’m thinking of abandoning any attempt at using ICT and going back to chalk.

The Byron Review ... getting going

Yesterday the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced that:
Kevin Brennan and Vernon Coaker today announced the UK Council for Child Internet Safety will launch in September 2008, six months ahead of the recommended timescale set out by Dr Tanya Byron in her report ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’.

Notice this is a UK Council ... not a European one or a World one but a UK one ... frankly I am surprised that it is not English!

So now soon we will have CEOPS and UKCCIS ... the timetables is:

• Inviting stakeholders to join the Council – 14 May
• Cross Department Action Plan - end of June 2008
• Launch of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety – September 2008
• First Child Internet Safety Summit hosted by the Prime Minister - spring 2009

It is difficult to be positive when the realisation that it will take until this time next year for anything to actually happen at the 'highest' level ... I wonder when the good ideas will get to the ground floor?
By then I suspect we will have all moved on a long, long way...

Hector's World

Tricia Neal on her blog Butterfly24 expains about Hector's World ... so I won't. Just to say that it is a series of animations aimed at 5-11 year olds has been launched on thinkuknow. From a successful New Zealand project they are to support teachers in internet safety work with those very young children.

The dog wags the tail or the tail wags the dog ?

Facebook appears to be getting really serious about protection ... but is it about protecting themselves if people look elsewhere because of their fears.

Facebook, the world's second-largest social-networking web site, will add more than 40 new safeguards to protect students and other users from sexual predators and cyber bullies, attorneys general from several states said. The changes include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users' ability to search online for subscribers under 18, and building a task force seeking ways to better verify users' ages and identities.

"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social-networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement with his counterparts in several other states.

This from eSchoolNews

So in USA States seem to have the upper hand at the moment ... meanwhile in Europe ...

Cyberwellness

I have been alerted by a post from Martin Owen concerning the Cyberwellness program operating in Singapore. In the 'Teaching and Learning' section there is a step-by-step planning guide to the development of a 'cyberwellness' programme:

The Framework focuses on developing the child’s instinct to protect himself and empower him to take responsibility for his own well-being in cyberspace. Thus, this framework highlights two principles to guide pupils in their actions, describes a 3-step process to explore cyberwellness issues and encourages schools to partner parents in promoting cyberwellness among pupils.

Well worth a look ...

Tanya Byron goes world wide

I have been watching my Google Alerts over the last week since the Byron Review surfaced and have noticed that the ripples have spread wider and wider. Blogs obviously have their uses in disseminating information quickly and easily.

Today I picked up on a comment from Canada on 'globeadmail' with the heading... A British lesson that Canadians would do well to study

It highlights a quote from the Review that people are taking to heart ... 'Kids don't need protection, we need guidance.' The Government today bring out new proposals to attempt to ban sex offenders from using social networking sites by releasing their email addresses to the sites concerned. There must be something in the data protection act that prevents email addresses from being passed around from pillar to post ! And, anyway, what is to prevent anyone from just getting another and another and another email?

The issue here is another instance of social networking and the internet and websites in general all being 'mucked' in together under a 'fear' banner.

OpenEducation .net also picked up on the Review...
... this is a site dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today. In an era where it is possible to photoshop images, facebook people, and access an endless stream of knowledge by googling, the Internet Age offers both great promise and enormous challenges for educators. At OpenEducation.net, readers will be exposed to both an objective and subjective look at the many issues facing the profession today.

There is obviously an urgent need to educate now in a positive way. If we wait for projects and proposals and systems to be put into place it will take too long. A common-sense approach at a localised level would make sense here. The juggernaut of institutionalisation is not the only means to create change.

Dial 999 someone is watching me ( on my computer)

An article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph states that Social Networking sites will have to advertise the 999 emergency services number according to new government guidelines. It is hoped that this will encourage children to call the police directly to report abuse.

I bet the police are really pleased about this ... I wonder if they were consulted?
The article also says:
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, will publish the 73-page document on Friday, which also warns parents about anorexic websites which encourage teenage girls to compete to lose weight, and sites which promote self-harm and suicide.

Doesn't this make the third none/semi connected document from 'Government' sources on the subject of eSafety in a week ... no wonder parents are getting worried ... a bit of coordination would go a long way!

Watch out for Friday ...

Ofcom's Research into Social Networking

Tanya Byron last week Ofcom this week. Their report (in full here) today about the proliferation of social networking sites (read the BBC's interpretation here) and widespread access stresses the safety aspects over and above the positives concerning the building of wider networks and a new digital definition of 'friend'. Interestingly, the BBC report does not make any connection between what Ofcom says and what the Byron Review suggests.

So are you an alpha socialiser, an attention seeker, a follower, a fathful, a functional or a none user? You can see which social category of 'networker' you fit into here.

The Byron Review - everyone has their say

I am only picking up on the Internet safety issues here rather than muddy the waters with the rating for video games. There are many comments from the industry on the already well-publicised rating sysytem and whether a new one will have any more effect ...

There are so many views on Tanya Byron's Review ... You can read some of them here.

More here if you wish to get Keith Vaz's point of view.

The Times have their own viewpoint ... strange scare mongering...

An Irish point of view ... here

From the 'HandHeld' Learning Forum ... here

itsneak notes that there is a Government anomaly here

This is enough to be going on with .... What is your view?

PS
More Google Alerts on this by the hour but none appear to be any more than just reporting that the Review has happened.

So ... back to the Byron Review

I read and read again the exec summary and was taken by some of the analogies which I thought would make sense to parents and teachers and then I looked at the summary of the report for children and young people (The exec summary didn't appear to have a cover)


What is that cover about ?
What image is it trying to put over?

The title says 'BE SAFE, BE AWARE, HAVE FUN' ... great ... a screen tells me that 'I know who you are and where you live' another exhorts the reader to 'Shoot them all' ... A weird individual pops out of the screen saying 'I'm coming' and a hand reaches for a throat... wonderful ... HAVE FUN !!

What were they thinking of ?

I noticed later that the cover was the same for the main report !!

PS

My Google Alert for 'Byron Review' has reported 17 separate mentions over the last two days ...

Tanya Byron Review ...

Today's papers and the News channels are full of reports of the review by Dr Tanya Byron into 'the effects of online content and video game violence on children and young people'.

The BBC featured it on their early morning Breakfast programme and bloggers (!) have been recording sightings of the information for the last four hours or so.



You can read the diverse views in the National press here: The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times (The Independent chose not to feature it)

You can listen to a Guardian interview with Dr Tanya Byron, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham here.

Ewan Mcintosh has come out up front commenting on the dilemma of allowing children to take risks without them actually being exposed to any. We have over the last thirty or so years gradually reduced the area of risk taking for our young people until, frightened by the paranoia into not playing out they now seek to risk take in virtual worlds ... if we stop this where will they go next to grow up?

I have just been informed of the link to the report (thanks Pete) and am reading ... so more here when I have digested bits of it.

PS

Unusually for me (you might say) I feel that this is not the time to comment rather a time to read and reflect on what has been written but (I can't resist) I like the way the case has been presented for children and young people and love the analogy about road safety in the exec summary (especially as it is one I have been using for a long while now)

Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 & 4

Yesterday I spent my time in a policy workshop at the Learning Science Research Centre of Nottingham University discussing eSafety issues as part of a project on Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 and 4.

The workshop was called not to establish a consensus about eSafety in the use of Web 2.0 technology but was to investigate differences of opinion on the subject through a process of structured debate:

The aim of the Delphi workshop is to get behind the rhetoric and assess how the benefits of learning through Web2.0 can be achieved while protecting children from the dangers of communicating online.

The Policy Delphi method is a structured group process to survey and
collect the opinions of experts on a complex problem. Rather than
striving for an early consensus, the emphasis is on identifying
differing opinions through a process of structured debate.

What was really interesting was the shared opinion that there was a fundemental education process which needed to be developed to support the work. It was heartening to listen to colleagues treading similar pathways towards similar goals, which, though difficult, they felt were worth making the journey for.

This was the first stage of the process.It ...

...will be followed by a second round, at a later date, using the same or different experts, to rate and extend the findings, define the positions, and explore whether
or not a consensus can be reached.

More details will certainly be published about this at a later date.

Safeguarding children in a digital world

The Becta Conference held earlier this week in Birmingham brought to the fore some of the key concerns and the subsequent calls for action to protect young people growing up in a digital world. There was concern about digital awareness in a population driven by technology aired by a number of speakers. Jenny Simpson, Safeguarding Development Officer, Leicestershire CYPS, gave valuable tips on developing a Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB) strategy taken from her own experience and she made clear points saying that:

'... in developing a co-ordinated response, it was important to recognise:
e-safety comes within the context of Every Child Matters
e-safety is part of the wider work of the LSCB
e-safety is not a technological issue
the importance of education, training and information

For me the key point here is the fact that this is not a technological issue. The safety of people in a digital world should not and must not depend on the producers of the technology. We do not hold television manufacturers responsible for the programmes we and our children watch. And you can't hold the BBC responsible for programmes watched by minors after the watershed.

It is down to education ... in our schools it is a PSHE issue and in our homes it is about knowledge and responsibility. Penny Patterson, ICT Inspector, London Grid for Learning (LGfL), London Borough of Havering made a very valuable point when she commented: children and young people should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own e-safety and those of their peers, and be given the skills so that they are better able to make the process ‘self policing’...

I totally agree here that it is up to everyone to invest time and effort into teaching and learning the necessary skills and techniques that living in a digital age necessitates. After all, we are all familiar with 'road safety' issues and this education has formed a part of the curriculum in schools for decades. Time to move forward. Road saftey is still important as is drug awareness, sex education and 'not going with strangers'. The e-safety agenda is another in the line of responsibilities we have towards our young people. To help them we may need some help ourselves.

Stephen Carrick-Davies, Chief Executive of Childnet International, spoke of the pressures on parents and their plight in trying to keep their children safe on the internet, when many are intimidated by their own lack of knowledge. He commented: Some parents feel intimidated by the internet and unable to help their children because of their own lack of internet knowledge. We need to continue to inform and develop adult confidence and competence so that our young people can feel supported not only at school but at home as well.
This is not an issue which will go away and so all of us must engage in it - collective responsibility must be the theme.