I have just heard from a fellow supported of Bebo at TeachMeet07. Very encouraging to hear about others fighting to keep it open (or get it open in schools). To use it as a tool in the fight against bullying, and even to use it as a vehicle for a curriculum for excellence! Good Work Neil - Keep it up
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While trying to track down the full report for the MTV/Microsoft/etal survey (thanks for the lead David) I found two things. Firstly thast the full report is internal to MTV and its partners, and that MTV have a site for those with an interesting following or studying youth trends. I have signed up and initial explorations show a mix of the plan bizzare (Chewbacca mimobot® USB drive)
and the interesting. (Wiffiti a service to text places, rather than people!)
Its the kind of site that could have kept me going in interesting blog postings for years, but it would be selfish of me not to share it! I would very much recomend the site to you - and I have only scratched its surface!
You must try out http://aveaword.glueserv.com/
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5 years ago when I took up my current post, as the schools ICT coordinator, I had a very clear, and detailed vision of where I wanted the school to be in 5 years time. I am glad to say that in many ways my vision has been fulfilled. It is however time for me to figure out where the school is going in the next 5 years. While each school will have aspects of ICT vision which are determined by levels of hardware, software or server provision, local expertise or the terms of a local or regional service agreement with an ICT provider, there must be a core vision which is common to all sound and forward looking ICT managers!The question is, what is that core vision? With IT changing as fast as it does, what are the new technologies that we will be able to take advantage of? What will be the implications of Glow once it has been in place for a year or so? To new exciting things will be able to do with mobile phones, MP3/4 players, GPS devices or games consoles? To what extent will we be able to make assumptions about what technology pupils have access to at home?While these questions are worth asking (and I am interested in your answers), I suspect that the answers to them will affect the fringe of the future vision. I suspect that the main core of the vision will be based on taking what is already available and squeezing as much educational benefit out of it as possible. At the moment I am developing the possible vision for the following areas in the hope that the big picture emerges out of the individual pieces.
I know that some of the above overlap, but I recon that they are the key areas for my context. All that said, I do think that there is a common vision for ICT coordinators, and would welcome comments and thoughts particularly from any ICT coordinators out there in the ether.
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I will be heading down after school on Wednesday 19th September to TeachMeet07. This is the first time that I will have made it although it is an event that I have wanted to go to for a while. I cant get the day off work to go to the learning festival (gutted - wednesday looks like the best day), but am looking forward to catching up with some colleageus and meeting some new ones at the science centre. Never having heard of the venue for dinner ( Khublai Khan’s ) I took a look at their site. if you are unfamiliar with Mongolian cuisine, then you really should take a look at their menu! Its going to be a hard call between the crocodile and the mars bar cheese cake! Whos choice was the venue?
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For those who subscribe to the tree house, sorry its been so long.Im back with some thoughts on how young people see bebo and other social networking sites. I have been reflecting on various aspects of this for the last year or so, and for those who have followed my bebo ramblings I hope you find these thoughts worth a read!As the first member of my school community to have a bebo page, I have been able to watch its growth in my local community, and in particular within the student population. In particular it has been interesting to see the response of students to my presence (in the capacity of the schools ICT coordinator) on what some of them see as their space. I first created my bebo account to learn about networking sites, but very quickly it became a tool to help my students stay safe online. This remains the primary focus even now. It has however also had other benefits. Since all the students in my school know I have a bebo page, some (or their parents) come to me when they or a friend feels threatened by something that is happening online. Some students however have used my bebo page as a discussion board! I should perhaps point out that I have kept my commenting on my own page to a minimum, as a number of the pupil comments were in relation to specific pupils or issues at the school. A minority used it to question my motives for being on bebo, or question my character. The hardest part of this was not being able to respond so these - I had taken a decisions that I would not delete any of the comments from students at my school. This approach did however pay off, as soon there were students posting in my defence, and backing up my stance on online safety.“hay mr G u cant b more right about da whole ‘hide ur identiti’ thing a mean sombody has 2 make sure we dont giv away our identities without nowing it and I gess thats why
ur on Bebo? bt dat dosny mater c ya
“Its worth pressing through the grief that we get from the minority. Ultimately, I know I have changed the habits of many of the young people around here who use Bebo or similar sites. A quick scan for surnames and locations shows that the majority have taken on board the message. However, the new S1 have just about all got bebo accounts, despite being under 13. Their homework for this week (if they had a bebo page) was to go home, get together with a friend, and check each others pages for clues that compromised their safety. One lad came to me afterwards and said,”but what if my parents dont believe me that my homework is to go onto bebo!” My final thought on this for the moment, is that if I could go back and do all this again, there is one thing I would change. I would have set up the account in the name of the school. This would have made it clear that my presence on bebo was related to my work. I think that every school should create a bebo account, and use it to remind students that
TheirSpace? MySpace? OurSpace!
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LTS are reporting that the BBC have done report on raising awareness of “internet savy” youngsters about online safety.
What I find particularly interesting about this is that it opened my eyes to the pressence and activities of the “Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre” or “CEOP” for short.
Its great to see the government taking online safety so seriously. I contacted them at work today and asked them to send through details of their educational materials. While I already knew about the thinkUknow website, I hadnt realised that this was part of the CEOP. More info, especialy for teachers at http://thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/
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As web 2.0 becomes more pervasive in society, and the members of that society become publishers, and contributors, there is perhaps an additional responsibility that should be placed on those with responsibility for delivering ICT education.
How many of our students know what “liable” means? The following is an extract from the conditions of use for Bebo.
you agree NOT to:
- Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
- Publish, distribute and/ or disseminate any harmful, obscene, indecent, unlawful, libellous, profane, defamatory, infringing, inappropriate, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material or information.
In how many ICT classes across the world have teachers taken students through these terms to help the students understand what they can, and what they cant (shouldn’t) do on Bebo or similar.
I have used Bebo successfully in raising awareness of online safety with pupils…. perhaps its time to start using it to raise their awareness of how to keep themselves from getting in trouble with the law!
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One of the hardest things about having a blog is wanting to share things that you know will be of benefit to colleagues, but because of a number of factors not being able to! Watch this space.
I was interested and encouraged to see WEB2.0 mentioned on Channel 4 news tonight, and although they were a little off the mark with one or two things they said, it was good to see web 2.0 becoming more mainstream.
Bebo, MySpace and (the new kid on the block) Univillage will continue to be a very real challenge to us as professional educators, and will further the opportunities for young people to compromise their online safety or increase their risk of identify theft.
On one final note (for now), I was very sorry to miss all you bloggers and web2.0 types at SETT and related events. Commitments at work and financial limitations meant that I couldn’t be released, despite very much wanting to be down and learn/share more with you all. I was there in spirit.
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Last term was me a little battle weary from a hard year, and other than an enthusiasm for a growing knowledge of web 2.0 found my passion for ICT waining a little. I always said that my current post (ICT Management) should not become about the technology, but should remain about people. This remains a challenge, but this years timetable seems me more in the class, and with less time for my management duties. A blessing of sorts. Its good to get back to the teaching, and esspecially back to teaching some biology. I hope to get back to the blogging very soon, but before I do, I thought I would indulgle myself by sharing a few of the highlights from my blog free summer.
It started with a week down in wales, most of which was spent sleeping or kite buggying on a rather splendid beach. Since moving to the west coast, I have missed the buggying (there isnt much flat land or large beaches arround here), so this was a real treat. The next couple of weeks were spend mullet fishing, snorkling, and other assorted water sports near girvan on the ayrshire coast. The highlight of this section of the holidays was snorkling with seals. There have long been seals on this part of the coast, but this year there one that was particularly inquisitive, and persuaded my brother and I get in the water with it. Priceless!
The next section saw our return as a family to Shetland, and my return to some spectacular coastal scenery by Kayak. For those of you who paddle, shetland is well worth a trip. The sea caves are second to none (in my humble opinion).
The final section of the holidays we finally got home, and spent some time recovering before starting back at work.
I have a feeling that this is going to be an interesting year, both professionally and personally, and I will of course share it all with you wonderfull people out there in the blogoshere! Now what have I got first thing tommorow?
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As those of you who have been reading the treehouse for a while will know, Bebo has been a hot topic, and although there hasn’t been a bebo related post for a while after visiting the site again tonight I felt it was time for another post.
I went on the site a few days ago and was pleased to see a NSPCC and ChildLine advert on the sites homepage dealing with issues of child abuse. Tonight when I went on I noticed that the first featured Bebo profile was also linked to the NSPCC campaign I am presuming that this had been done with the support of Bebo, and I am delighted to see such a frank and honest look at the issues being such an integral part of the site. The NSPCC had taken this message right into the very heart of youth culture by creating bebo profiles for the characters in its campaign.
There is even a flashbox of the advert on the site, also here
This new insight into how bebo can be used for good has come in a week where I have been trying to defend the line of keeping bebo available in the school where I work despite all other schools in the region blocking it. (That is all that have responded to my request for information). I think that bebo’s days are numbered in my school.
One positive thing that has however come from the debate is that I have been given the go-ahead to have a whole school assembly to look at online safety in order to ensure ALL pupils in the school are aware of the issues, not just the ones with ICT, or ICT related lessons.
As a final part to this post, I would to make a request to the NSPCC and Childline. Taking just a few minutes to work through the comments left on the above profiles highlights just how real an issue this is for many of the young people that we work with, and how many of the bebo’ers need the support of Childline. Please, please follow up the comments are are being left on the profiles - the campaign has reached some young folks that from the sound of it haven’t been reached before, and need you.
If you want to do something about child abuse, and ensuring that young people get the support they need you can visit the NSPCC support campaign where you can send Patricial Hewit (Secretary of State for Health) an email, or your local MP. Why stop there, you can send an email to Tony Blair via the No10 site, to David Cameron via email, or even visit the blog of Ming Campbell and post a comment! Finally you could donate some cash to the NSPCC - If this is too much hastle for you post a comment of support and I will add £1 for every comment to the donation I will make.
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