The Tablet Revolution and E-safety Education

E-safety TabletAs the latest sales figures for the Christmas shopping frenzy begin being released, it’s no surprise that technological gadgets are leading the charge.

It is reported that Microsoft sold 364,000 Xbox Ones while Sony sold 530,000 PS4s in the UK in the lead up to Christmas. The sale of digital games (which includes mobile gaming, PC and console downloads) is said to have grown by 16.4% taking it to a value of £1.18 billion and video games have also grown in the UK by 6.6% overall in 2013.

However, it is the ‘tablet revolution’ which makes the most striking impact on our engagement with the online world. Post Christmas sales figures estimate that 12-13 million units were sold in the UK which means that now over half of the UK population now owns or has access to a tablet. This huge leap has been fuelled by the emergence of retailer branded tablets (from the likes of Argos and Tesco) which are available at a much cheaper price than the market leading iPad – making tablets more financially accessible to more people.

The BBC recently reported that over the Christmas period, viewing of their iPlayer service saw mobile devices overtake computers for the first time - with access to the internet now so readily available it’s easy to understand why.

So where does e-safety come into all of this?

I spoke to colleagues, family and friends in the lead up to Christmas and found that the youngest request for a tablet came from 7 year olds – and some of them were getting their wish. Of course iPhones, laptops and consoles were also popular across all ages too.

So Christmas morning comes and the excited child (or indeed adult!) opens up the tiny box sitting under the tree to reveal the shiny new tablet and they are away - with full access to the internet. But how many of the parents set up filters, or activated parental controls before they wrapped the gift? I suspect far fewer than were prepared to admit.

It is this freedom to roam the internet, warts-n-all, that adds weight to the argument for education over prohibition when it comes to e-safety. It’s all very well having filters on school systems and parental controls on PCs at home, but with so many more children now having the world at their fingertips they not only have the ability to access the wealth of information available online but also can potentially become susceptible to the dangers that the environment offers too.

Written by Safeguarding Essentials on January 09, 2014 09:35

Safer Internet Day 2014

SID LogoHere at E-safety Support we are delighted to support the Safer Internet Day (SID), organised in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre.

The theme for Safer Internet Day 2014 is ‘Let’s create a better internet together’. This theme covers the responsibility that all users have in making the internet a better place. Whether children and young people, parents and carers, educators or social care workers, or indeed industry, decision makers or politicians, everyone has a role to play.

In championing a better internet, the theme recognises the balance between encouraging users to embrace and empowering them to make the most of the positive opportunities offered online, while responding to, dealing with and moving past the negative online.

The internet is such a part of everyday life that it is easy to forget how relatively new the environment is. Consequently it is also easy to be complacent about internet safety; surely our ‘digital native’ youth know what they are doing? But in reality there is an internet knowledge gap and indeed internet safety knowledge gap between the generations. So it is vital that our educators as well as their students are aware of the dangers the enable them to safely benefit from the positives.

It is also important to remember that we as users are contributing to the online environment too, so we also ensure that when we do interact online (as we would in the offline world), that we do so as responsible citizens. Education about cyber antics which can begin innocently but lead onto more serious bullying situations is key.
There are ways in which all users can contribute:

Children and young people can help to create a better internet by being kind and respectful to others online and seeking positive and safe opportunities to create, engage and share online.

Parents and carers can help to create a better internet by maintaining an open and honest dialogue with their children about their online lives, supporting them with their online activity (as appropriate to their age), particularly any concerns and issues, and seeking out positive opportunities to share with their children online. They can help to respond to the negative by modelling positive online behaviours themselves, and by also reporting any inappropriate or illegal content they find.

Educators and social care workers can help to empower children and young people to embrace the positive by equipping them with the digital literacy skills they require for today’s world, and giving them opportunities to use – and create – positive content online. They can help to respond to the negative by supporting youngsters if they encounter problems online, and by giving them the confidence and skills to seek help from others.

Safer Internet Day Resources
E-safety Support has many resources which can help teach, learn and practice online safety for the whole school community, including our Safer Internet Day 2014 Assemblies for primary schools and secondary schools, which are available to download by joining as a E-safety Support Free Member (Premium and Premium Plus members can also download the assemblies from their E-safety Support Dashboard).

Written by Safeguarding Essentials on January 07, 2014 16:01

The Robots are coming

RobotFrom a sociology perspective, the word technology is defined as the tools and practices enabled by the total knowledge and skills available within a society.

However, a definition that most readily sums up the way technology gets discussed in the public domain is that coined by computer scientist Alan Kay:

“Technology is anything invented after you were born.”

New technologies have always brought with them blind evangelisation and doom laden fear mongering in equal measure.

You can bet your rocket boots that as our early ancestors entered an age of controlled fire there were running arguments between those espousing the benefits of setting light to everything in sight and the placard wavers from the league for the protection of the dark, damp and cold.

Technology has always been in public debate.

In the early days of rail travel it was maintained by some that at the high speeds (a blistering 15 to 20 mph) that the locomotives could reach, the passengers would die of asphyxiation or damage their eyes as they tried to adjust to the strain of looking at the scenery rushing by.

These are fears based on lack of knowledge and understanding.

However, fear of technology can also be born not from ignorance but the complete opposite, a genuine understanding. It is easy to paint the 19th Century Luddite movement as irrational and reactionary, but at the heart of the cause was not a fear of technology but in fact a resistance to the profound effect that the application of that technology would have on the equality of society.

For good or for ill there is no doubt that the post industrial revolution death of the artisan culture has had a massive impact of power, freedom and self determination within our society.

Public discourse on technology as with all other aspects of society and organisation is imperative.

However, as a society adopts new technologies, be it with open arms or begrudging acceptance it can not adequately debate or critique the benefits or dangers without proper knowledge and understanding. In short - Education.

Although electronic computers had been around for some time, most notably embodied by the war time code cracking machines at Bletchley Park, it was not really until the 1950’s that they entered the public consciousness.

And when they did, it was in the form of ...

ROBOTS!

It is well understood that a society deals with it's anxieties through the stories it develops. An abstraction of a concept to a simplified metaphor provides a safe framework in which to examine, consider and debate a shared concern.

In Western culture in the 1950s, these stories manifested as books, magazines and above all movies.

Even the most amateur film theorists will be able to draw the parallels between the Science Fiction B movies about Alien invasion and the genuine cold war fears.

There was, I believe also something else starting to emerge. An underlying concern as to the role of electronics and computing within society was being embodied within the terrifying form of the Killer Robot.

It is not surprising that within an industrial society where manual labour was still a major aspect of working life, that an automaton in human form was considered most threatening. These machines were demonstrably stealing jobs and livelihoods.

The earliest incarnations of the fearful variant of the robot species were often defined by their great strength, robustness and the emotionless simplistic logic of their prefigured algorithmic decision making. Later evolutions developed sentience, though still mostly applied a cold rationalism.

The robot was an identifiable and understandable concept and thus the implications both positive and negative could be debated in the public consciousness.

The scientist and writer Issac Azimov famously encapsulated the notion of ethics or safe guarding into the technology when he defined the 'Three Laws of Robotics' in his 1942 story 'Runaround':

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

In his later books, the first law was expanded to safeguard humanity as a whole with the introduction of the 'zeroth law': A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

These ideas may have their origins in science fiction writing but they powerfully encapsulate the notions and needs for an ethical structure within robotics and are still a valuable touchstone for robotics researchers and a useful structure for the public at large.

We have in recent times moved from an industrial economy to a digital knowledge economy and as such the notion of the Robot has become less obvious as a threat to our jobs.

The Robot, is still with us however and in fact is changing our society in more radical ways than anyone ever imagined.

The Robot has shunned it's clumsy physical form and become virtual, in the shape of the artificial intelligence or complex logic based algorithms.

In the information economy, the 'robot' is no longer manipulating the physical environment but instead is concerning itself with the manipulation of data which has a real impact on our lives.

For instance, we have high-speed trading on the stock-market, essentially consisting of algorithms negotiating between themselves.

I have of course emphasized the negatives or fears for the sake of debate, but the key point is that in order for a society to have control over it's technology and put it to the most efficient, beneficial and ethical use it must understand it. To understand it, it must learn about it.

Is it really sensible, acceptable or useful in a society so dependent on data processing structures to still maintain the notions that computers are some how nerdy topics of interest. Despite the current fashion trend of 'Geek chic', the mainstream perception of Technology and Computing is still that it is the dull, overly complex preserve of nerdy boys.

In reality the best research is being done by multidisciplinary teams of men and woman with backgrounds as diverse as engineering, biology, humanities, arts, philosophy and social sciences. It's not all about 1's and 0's any more. Working in technology is not solely the preserve of mathematicians and computer scientists, people from all backgrounds can and should bring their experience and the expertise of their discipline to bear.

E-safety is best tackled by education and this education forms the bedrock upon which the future technological structures, practices and indeed ethics of our society will be built.

Written by Safeguarding Essentials on December 19, 2013 13:08


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