e-Safety in Schools

 The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has been launched today wth the aim to help protect children from "harmful" web content, such as cyber-bullying and violent video games.

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety  wants to work with industry (such as Social Networking sites) to teach children about onlien risks, target harmful content and establish a code of conduct for sites featuring material uploaded by users.

Gordon Brown has said the move is a "landmark" in child protection. He stated

"The challenge for us is to make sure young people can use the internet safely and do so with the minimum of restrictions but the maximum of opportunities...but just as we would not allow them to go out unsupervised in playgrounds or in youth clubs or in swimming pools, so we must put in place the measures we need to keep our children safe online"

The council will report to the prime minister, and will have a membership of more than 100 public and private organisations, including technology and industy, such as Microsoft and Google, Facebook and mobile phone companies. The Council will be the largest ever coalition of internet safety experts, bringing together some of the biggest names in industry, children’s charities, law enforcement, Government as well as children, young people and parents. A full list of current members can be found here.

They will be working together to create a child internet safety strategy to be published next year.

The strategy will:

• Establish a public awareness safety campaign
• Establish measures to protect children and young people, such as taking down illegal internet sites and provide specific measures to support vulnerable children and young people, such as taking down illegal internet sites that promote harmful behaviour
• Promote responsible advertising to children online
• Create a "one-stop" shop for parents, providing information for them to keep themselves and their children safe online
• Establish voluntary codes of practice, with an an examination of how websites handle videos or messages posted by users.

 The UKCCIS follows recommendations as made in the Byron Review

DCSF Press Notice

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Parentline Plus has launched a new social networking site aimed at parents of teenagers. It has been funded by the government and also runs a 24-hour helpline.

Gotateenager is a "social networking and advice site that gives parents of teenagers an online space to support each other through the challenges and successes of bringing up teens".

Valerie Outram, an area manager for Parentline Plus, said that half the calls charity received by the charity were from parents of teenagers who felt that they had nowhere else to go for help. "After your child turns 13, you are pretty much on your own. Parents start to think they are the only ones going through it and the problems seem a lot bigger as a result".

The website covers problems from the lighthearted and funny to the serious and important. As well as a forum, which enables parents to chat anonymously about situations, the site will have 'e-learning' modules to help with problems such as drug or alcohol abuse. They can view acted-out storylines or comics covering scenarios such as teenagers staying out too late or getting drunk to get ideas on ways to communicating with their children. The site provides parents with an opportunity to create their own blog if they wish, about themselves and their family and share their own experiences. The site has sections which cover Sex and relationships, Drugs and alcohol, setting boundaries and Bullying (including Cyberbullying) cover Bullying (including Cyberbullying) and also has a list of useful sites for advice on internet safety with teenagers.

The website also has a "jargon buster" so parents can translate slang words their child uses, to help them to understand what their teenagers are talking about! Users are also able to add and edit new phrases.

How many do you know?

Rents  = Parents, eg, "I have to go on holiday with my rents"

Buff  = Attractive, eg, "He is buff"

Bedrin =  Mates/friend eg "He's my bedrin"

Research by Manchester University shows that almost 500,000 people in developing nations are earning a wage by making virtual goods in online games (known as gold-farming )to sell to players and the industry is increasing rapidly.

The industry (about 80% of which is based in China) is estimated to employ in  2008 400,000 people who earned an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth around $500m. Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester University who wrote the report said that very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to estimate and that gold farming has become a significant economic sector in many developing countries.

"I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands."

In many online games virtual cash is hard to gain and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to obtain money to outfit their avatars/characters with better equipment, weapons etc. Some gold-farming operations also offer the service of "power levelling" in which a worker assumes control of a player's character and turn it into a high-powered (or "levelled") character far quicker than the original owner could manage themselves due to time constraints or knowledge.

In most online games the activities associated with gold farming - gathering in-game cash to items to sell, buying game gold or sharing accounts - are a violation of the terms and anyone caught engaging in these activities is likely to be banned from the game and have their account shut down.

For more information read the BBC report here