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I'm just going to close now with two things. I'm obviously going to end with a with a few
thank-yous, but I was asked to try and distil some of the key points from the workshops,
which has been a bit of a challenge because they were very rich and very engaging I think
for those who took part. But I will just try and pick out what I think are a few of the
key messages for us to take away with us.
In the workshop around emerging technologies in education, I think, there one of the key
messages was that teachers shouldn't be afraid to be learners with their children, and to
admit that there are things that they don't know and to make it part of the learning experience
that they themselves are learning. The teachers need to explore use of the tools with children
and young people and use those tools in class. And also importantly that teachers need to
be equipped, trained and aware and it should be a normal part of teacher's continuous professional
development to be dealing with these kinds of issues.
In terms of delivering messages to parents, the question was asked "What should parents
do?" and the answer was given "Be parents", by which it was meant that, okay maybe parents
don't know everything about technology, but they do you know about privacy, they do know
about trust and they do know about respect and they’re things which apply on- and offline,
and our messages which can be delivered by parents to children. Um, it was also, it also
came out of that workshop that um... it was felt that TV was much under-used as a delivery
channel for messages around internet safety, as well as obviously social media itself um...
and more obvious places like doctors and dentist surgeries.
In terms of online gaming, industry must be and is at the leading edge of developing parental
controls, along with a robust age-rating system (PEGI has already been referred to). And that
there particular challenges facing the gaming industry as games become the leading entertainment
medium in the world. But that organizations do need to collaborate in promoting safe and
sensible online gaming messages, and it was felt that the one-stop shop could be very
helpful in this regard. This group also talked about the challenge of overcoming peer pressure
and how difficult it is for the one child whose parents say they can't access a particular
game or a particular site when all of their friends are accessing it.
In terms of cyber-bullying in young people, there was a discussion around responsibility
and expectation, and parents needing to understand that there are some things that their children
will never want to talk to them about, and that that has to be balanced with parents
needing reassurance and advice, particularly in understanding what the degrees of risk
are that their children may be facing and how to talk about those risks with their children.
Children are concerned about takedown and closure, so some of the issues that Tanya
was referring to – being sure that content is being taken down, what's happening to it
when it is taken down. Children and young people do want controls and they do want to
be safe, but they don't want to be surrounded by negativity and negative messages. And there
was a feeling from that group as well that there aren't consistent definitions of cyber-bullying
and therefore it's hard to get consistent evidence and measurement around what's happening.
In terms of the experiences of children and young people, and I sat in on part of this
one myself, there is a need to discuss how serious cyber-bullying is for some young people,
and the young people in that group felt that wasn't necessarily the case that there was
sufficient discussion about it, a need for greater education about how to be careful
and how to be safe, considering a screening process for messages for young people and
also a recommendation at that we establish, or there is established, a group of young
people to work alongside the government in viewing and reviewing websites. And there's
a recommendation to go back maybe through DfE if the DfE colleagues are taking note,
and others.
In terms of the psychological and social support, discussion around leveraging social networks
to support for example young people with eating disorders, that young people and can be positive
ambassadors for safety and that social networking is a good opportunity for that to happen,
that social networks should be congruent with everything an organisation does and that organisations’
core mission must take account of that commitment.
In terms of improving parental controls, there was a discussion around mobile operators in
the parental controls they've had in place since 2004, welcoming applications coming
on phones that would prevent the by-passing of 3G filters, a sense that more companies
need to be involved in BS74 for it to be a success and a lot of support for the code
of practice.
And finally around technology and well-being, that parents don't understand how integral
technology is to young people's lives, a message we've had several times today, but adults
do need reassuring to find out how their kids are operating online. Young people do translate
offline values to the online world. Values don't disappear. We have to make sure that
we are always including young people's voices in the debate and the delivery. And finally,
that has been set again a couple of times, we have to just accept and understand that
the offline and online worlds have merged and have just become part of life.
Now that was a bit whistle-stop in terms of capturing eight workshops in about five minutes,
but hopefully that distilled some of the thoughts that came through. Notes were being taken
through all of the workshops so I’m sure there’ll be an opportunity to share some
of the richer discussions that went on.