Tag Archives: Cybersafety

Promise from Webwise

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Today is Safer Internet Day and across the world a number educators and organisations will work with students to explore the theme of  ‘Online Rights and Responsibilities – Connect with Respect’.

To coincide with the day, the Irish association Webwise have launched Promise, a thought provoking video exploring the impact of comments online. Whilst the video does touch on the damage caused by negative online comments, the piece also explores the power of communities and the potential of the web. It’s well worth a look, and would be a great conversation starter in your class today. You can watch Promise below and find other resources on the Webwise site.

Promise from PDST Technology in Education on Vimeo.

eSmart Libraries

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On Monday 27 August, 2012 The Hon Julia Gillard MP officially announced eSmart Libraries  – a 8 million dollar partnership between The Allannah & Madeline Foundation and the Telstra Foundation to address cybersafety through public libraries.

Given that over 54% of Australians are members of libraries, this could be a valuable piece of work – providing a roadmap to the tools and resources that will equip the library community with the skills and knowledge for smart, safe, and responsible use of technology.

A pilot will commence in early 2013 , and the initiative will eventually be rolled out to all public libraries nationally.

eSmart Libraries is an extension to eSmart Schools.

Cybersafety Summit 2012

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Today’s post comes from regular contributor Catherine Hainstock of Vermont Secondary College. Catherine tells us about her experiences at the recent National Cybersafety Summit.

On June 12th, I attended the National Cybersafety Summit in Canberra with two students from the school.  They were select members from the Youth Advisory Group (YAG) who took part in online forum discussions to help inform the government on cyber safety initiatives. The purpose of the Summit was to bring students, parents and teachers together with relevant industries and government sectors to discuss “how to keep young Australians safe online”.

The summit was hosted by Project Rockit team members and formally opened by Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Students attended sessions on Managing Your Reputation Online led by Ruby Rose, MTV presenter and spokesperson for HeadSpace. They discussed strategies for protecting their reputations, and the social and legal consequences of harassment, cyberbullying and sexting with the Federal Police. Students  also shared some opinions including the inconsistencies in dealing with bullies at school and that many of the Cybersafety resources used in schools were either not interesting or age-appropriate.

They then attended a session with ABC’s Good Game hosts, Bajo and Hex on Digital Etiquette and Gaming. The culture and nature of gaming was discussed including bullies and online trolls. Teens shared that there is pressure to keep up with obligations to the team in online games. They also said that parents should take more of an interest in what’s going on in their kids’ gaming world.

Adults also attended a  Digital Etiquette and Gaming session. They were surprised to hear that the average age of a gamer was 37 years old. Parental discussion focused on the language and bullying in games. Bajo and Hex urged adults to take interest in their children’s gaming, to keep lines of communication open, set limits and discuss online friendships. Above all the room agreed that it was important to help kids understand that “it’s only a game!” and to not invest too much emotion in it. The adults also attended a presentation by the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation outlining their eSmart Schools program.

The afternoon panel discussion was the highlight for most participants. Some excellent questions and discussion developed:

    • Should teachers and students be friends on Facebook (or other social networks)?
    • Should we stop under 13s from going on Facebook?
    • Should kids be using technology as an emotional outlet?
    • What is the duty of care for teachers in cyberbullying incidents that happen outside of the school?

The show stopper of the day though came from one of my own students. Her question and comment was that not enough was being done to educate young Australians about the mental health consequences of cyberbullying. She wanted to know why we don’t teach people that all the negative online behaviour (and bullying in general) leads to depression, self harm and suicide. She felt the statistics and incidents should not be taboo topics. The entire room fell silent as she spoke.

I think all of us left the summit with much to reflect on and some excellent strategies and directions. I feel privileged to have been a part of the discussion and will be discussing ideas with my Principal for new initiatives.

Thanks to Catherine for sharing her reflection on the event. You can find out more about Catherine’s work on her blog TL Under Construction.

Should we be teaching Facebook?

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Today’s post comes from a new regular contributor to Bright Ideas, Tony Richards.

What an interesting week we have just had in relation to movements around cyber safety. Recently we saw splashed across the traditional media a principal’s ultimatum to students and parents “Quit Facebook or be expelled, school says”. The headlines play on the social stigma of expulsion and the dreaded boogie man that is Facebook.

I am sure there is much more to this story that meets the eye but what frustrates me and should concern other educators is the lack of clear understanding that is shown by educational leaders, along with the fear mongering cyber safety experts that get their media ego fix and pump up the tyres of fear around social networks. Yes Facebook has lots of issues and challenges for our children and adults alike, however social networks are here to stay.

We need to change the model and educate our children around why some of these tools are not the best option for communicating, sharing or playing games. The responsibilities one takes on when creating a social networking presence has some profound implications if you choose to ignore or plead ignorance around privacy, friends, comments and all the other components associated with these networks.

We must start to provide social tools at school within the educational environment that students can engage in so that we can model, explore, test, bend and experience connectivity at this level and what it means to operate successfully online.

I find it extremely interesting that one of the great misunderstandings about social networks, especially the larger social networking sites, is that the 13 and over rule found in the Terms of Service (ToS) is based on the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). This act and the law behind it is to enforce privacy restriction on the site owners. As stated in the news article by a Melbourne based lawyer “the Facebook guideline that stipulated users must be aged 13 and older was not enforced by any law.”

When children sign up under the age of 13 in Australia they are breaking the terms of service of the site. Facebook has the onus to ensure that children under the age of 13 don’t sign up, which begs the question, “How do you enforce such a situation?” The stark reality is that you can’t.

The recommendations from some sections of the media around reporting your children to Facebook and getting their account deactivated and cancelled is certainly one step. From my experience working with thousands of students each year if students want to have access then they will get it. If parents or the school have taken these types of steps to remove them then all our children will do is take it underground where you will have no opportunity to help or support them. You will have no credible way to have smart, honest conversations about what they should and should not share.

I am not advocating children breaking the ToS, but I am advocating talking about the challenges, the risks, the complications and the moral question around being part of a service when clearly they should not. We have to talk and listen to our students and we have to help them grow and develop online.

If I were teaching in a class this topic and that media headline would be the foundation of a week’s worth of discussion around the use of Facebook. Why are students on it, what is the draw, why does the media react in such a way and what could have possibly tipped a principal over the edge like this? The headline “Quit Facebook or be expelled” is screaming out for an impromptu debate, preferably with another school using a collaborative tool like Skype to highlight the power of the environment we all access.

What will you be talking about this week with your students around cyber smarts?

Tony has listed a range of cybersafety resources at his blog and he is available to present Online Smart sessions to students, parents, teachers, community organisations and business around successfully navigating social networks and the internet. You can find all of  Tony’s contact details on his profile page, or find him on Twitter @itmadesimple. Let us know what you think about the post in the comments or, quite fittingly, on our Facebook page.

 

We love learning – feature blog

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Classroom teacher Nicole McMahon at St Luke the Evangelist School in Blackburn has developed a blog for her Prep class.

It would be great to make connections with others through our blog. In the Prep Classroom, we have commenced a blog sharing our learning in the classroom.

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At the moment it is in its very beginning phase but the goal is to have children using this class blog as a tool to reflect on their learning – not quite an individual PLN but rather a class learning network to make connections with the outside world. Being that the children are 5 or 6 years old, the content of our blog reflects this in its colour and creativity.

Nicole has set up blogging guidelines for her students and parents to ensure safety and respect for every student and parent. What a great space Nicole has created for sharing the work and learning of students. A bright and inviting space that showcases and celebrates learning. Congratulations Nicole!

eSmart schools

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The news released yesterday that Victorian schools will be able to gain access to funding and support to become eSmart schools is a brilliant step towards cybersafety.

The program developed by the Allanah and Madeline Foundation and trialled by a number of schools is now set to be rolled out to Victorian schools.

Quick Tour 2.4 9 Nov

With funding, training, information and actions for students, teachers and students, eSmart schools will have a number of resources to hand to help avoid cyberbullying and policies to help deal with it if it does occur.

Detailed information is available on the eSmart schools website.

Sweet search

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This is an incredibly useful search engines for teachers to use with students at every level. In fact it is more than once search engine, as you can see in this screenshot:

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Sweet search has been developed carefully:  “It searches only the 35,000 Web sites that our staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved when creating the content on findingDulcinea. We constantly evaluate our search results and “fine-tune” them”.

Their blog post explains even more:

SweetSearch is the product of 100,000+ hours of research that went into creating findingDulcinea’s 700+ Web Guides and thousands of articles. This content links to tens of thousands of Web sites that have been evaluated and deemed reliable by our research experts and librarian and teacher consultants (for a bevy of reviews of findingDulcinea and SweetSearch from top educators, see our media kit; or get a widget for SweetSearch, so you can embed it on your school Web site.).

For younger learners, we’ve recently introduced a beta version of SweetSearch4Me, which is the only search engine that prominently ranks high quality Websites created for elementary (primary) school students, and mixes them with accessible primary source sites. Please send feedback on SweetSearch4Me to sweetsearch@dulcineamedia.com so we can fully launch it with your input in September.

Sweet search also has a terrific page for school librarians.

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This page has information on:

  • research guides
  • tips for better research
  • news of the day
  • improving research habits and more.

This site comes highly recommended from educators globally. However, as always, check it out first to see if it suits your needs.

OLMC Facebook Fan page update

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Bright Ideas featured Our Lady of Mercy College Heidelberg Library’s Facebook Fan page three weeks ago. As most readers would know, Facebook has had some serious fallout due to privacy changes (or more to the point, lack of privacy) and OLMC have changed their approach to Facebook. Teacher librarian Michael Jongen says:

This week following the lead of the Media Teacher I pulled down olmclibrary Facebook page as he had pulled down his media page.

This was because of safety concerns. A speaker on cyber-safety had spoken at the school and demonstrated that identifying a school is a danger to students who ‘fan’ the site.

Both of us have re-established our pages as a group which is invite only and private. The groups name is anonymous in terms of identifying the school. Both of us will need to build up the audience base we had to promote our services and useful links and information. We have used the same branding as the media department.

As a school we have looked at using Facebook for assessment and concluded that wikis and blogs and googlesites were better Web 2.0 tools for providing collaborative and private assessment within and educational context.

It seems clear that with recent Facebook controversies about safety and privacy that if as educators we wish use Face-book to communicate with our students it should only be done as a closed group with strict membership control.

This is a parallel post reproduced with permission from Michael’s blog web 2.0 and other library stuff. Thanks to Michael for taking the time to inform readers of Bright Ideas of the changes and why they were necessary.

Safer Internet Day

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Today is Safer Internet Day. The Victoria Police have just released this statement about the day:

Victoria Police are taking the opportunity on Safer Internet Day to engage with young people about cyber crime.

The annual international event aims to raise awareness about the safe and responsible use of online technologies, especially among children.

This year’s theme is ‘Think before you post’, an important message for young people to think about the possible consequences before posting information online.

Victoria Police will have our Cybersmart Detective Sergeant Jill Dyson in the hot seat today on a site called SuperclubsPLUS which is the protected Social Learning Network where primary school kids can meet friends, have fun and learn cool stuff, it can be found at http://www.superclubsplus.com/i/tour01.

Det Sgt Dyson has been a police officer for 22 years and will be live, answering questions posed by children on the topic of cyber crime.

Also on board for Safer Internet Day will be Victoria Police’s 11-year-old “recruit” Constable Zak who will be offering advice to young kids about being safe on the internet via a video which can be viewed at http://www.police.vic.gov.au/kids.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority‘s cyber(smart) page has lots of materials to keep kids safer today and everyday.

Safer internet day

Thanks to Karen Bonanno for passing on the Cybersmart page link.

The Wizard of Apps

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If anyone doubted the absolute brilliance of US teacher librarian Dr Joyce Valenza (as if they could!), then this presentation and accompanying information will make them join us believers.

Dr Valenza has produced a creative and engaging presentation for the 2009 K12 Online Conference Getting Started Keynote. Entitled The Wizard of Apps, this video will influence my professional practice for years to come. Discussing how students can stay safe online, Dr Valenza also showcases many Web 2.0 tools that can be moulded into effective ‘information skills’; that is, how students can and should find and organise the best online information.

Running at just over 50 minutes, it is certainly an excellent investment of time. You may wish to share the video and links with teaching colleagues and/or your personal learning network. (Loved the way students and teachers collaborated on the production of the video.)