Netsafe

Notes from Netsafe seminar at Wellington East and some of my thoughts...

Netsafe and Netsafe schools kit - part of the ministry, but not.

For young people, ICT is the norm.  They mainly use it for communication and sharing media.

Mobiles and consoles are net capable so most traditional net safety ideas no longer apply.  No longer family PC in shared space where net usage can be open and, if need be, monitored.

With 5 million (?) net connected gaming consoles in NZ, we need to rethink our net safety strategies.

Peer and self action is very important for cybersafety.

When something goes wrong, young people go to their peers, rather than going to adults.  Adults who will probably need an explanation of what Bebo/Facebook/YouTube etc is before they can even comprehend the problem or have a realistic solution.

Shotgun v. Facebook

Basically, if you were to allow your child to use a shotgun, you would give them rules and skills so they could deal with any situation that may arise.

Apparently (hopefully getting this story correct), a young person said something like, "My parents don't mind me using a shotgun, but they won't let me use the internet."  

Obviously, this seems absurd, but there is some reality there.

Last year I had the pleasure of attending the Media Studies conference and one of the speakers there, Julian McDougall, talked about this exact thing.
When planning a field trip to a farm (my example, not Julian's), there might be the slight possibility that students are charged by an angry bull. As teachers, we plan for this, we write it into our risk management documentation, and we take our cell phones and a first aid kit. But we still go on the trip.

Isn't it the same with the internet? There are risks, sure, but if we are aware of the risks and make sure our students and supervisors are aware of how to deal with the risks, we can still go on that field trip (i.e. use the web).

What we need is to create an educated environment around young people about being safe.

Safe from what?

Cybersafety used to be all about avoiding porn.  Let's face it, it was the big scary thing on the net, and still is.  There are other things just as big and scary, but what are they? 

I think we need something of a list of actual risks, so that we can plan for ways of dealing with them.  My fear is that we will end up restricting our net usage so much, that our freedoms might become overly protected unnecessarily. 

How do we model good ways of avoiding the risks?

First we need to know how to protect ourselves and help our students to protect themselves. Check this out - just a few ideas about how to control the tools you use. There will always be settings for privacy and access.

If our students are using web apps, we need to make sure they are setting appropriate privacy controls.

What else?

• good searching skills
• online profiles
• providing banks of good sites 
• guiding their net use in class
• creating communities online where students access content in "controlled" environments (I'm thinking of class/subject sites or Moodle environments)

But what else do we need to do?

Apparently NAG 5 has something to do with all of this, so I looked it up and you can too:

Each board of trustees is also required to:

(a) provide a safe physical and emotional environment for students;

(b) promote healthy food and nutrition for all students; and

(c) comply in full with any legislation currently in force or that may be developed to ensure the safety of students and employees.

Schools are very good at setting up a cybersafety policy, but then they assume averything is covered and there will be no problems.  This needs to be more active and pro-active.

Cybersafety policies used to base risk definitions around traditional media (magazines, newspapers, TV, film, porn).  This needs to make a more definitive shift to the digital world where content is differnet and largely user created.  What happens now?

Schools are also very good at preventing students from getting in harms way, but not very good at providing students, and teachers, with the skills to get back out.

Oraganisational Risk Reduction

Usually, schools' risk management policies centred around keeping the school out of the media/news.  

Instead, we should be focused on protecting young people.  

Student centred.

Model safety.

Digital citizenship

Activity engaged in by young people on the net:

• research 
• communication
• games
• media consumption
• publishing content
• banking and trading

...all of these have benefits and challenges

NZC - all this links to the KCs

Digital literacy

Digital citizenship links NZC KCs and values to digital literacy and cybersafety skills.

Critical thinking skills

Challenges

Meaningful

Honesty and integrity

Rights - privacy, freedom of speech, etc

Participate

Contribute

Modelling - use the skills you wnat them to use

Not just for safety, but for ethical reasons too. (e.g. pirated music, films, etc)

Protecting studnets from copyright infringement just as important.

Netsafe's structure for safety

Learn - focused on students

Guide - for schools and parents

Protect - policy, infrastructure, support

Top 500 passwords

How to create a password

and make sure it is unique

and remember it

and not share it

MyLGP - community of teachers on NetSafe.  some really good stuff

The Scam Machine

Some EDtalks videos to watch

I haven't watched all of these, but they look good:)

Online dangers and responsibilities - not so virtual

Brett Lee

The key to supporting young people’s experiences of challenge in cyberspace

John Fenaughty is the Research Manager at Netsafe NZ

From e-safety to digital citizenship

Martin Cocker is the Executive Director of Netsafe NZ

Through the eyes of a child - the dark face of the Internet

Brett Lee

There's heaps more on the EDtalks site

Be safe