Queenstown, a gorgeous ski resort town on New Zealand's South Island played host recently to an international conference on cybercitizenship, put together by NetSafe. NetSafe is New Zealand's government sponsored internet safety organization. Over 110 educators, government, legislators, vendors and private citizens came together to discuss a variety of internet safety topics, with a focus on cyberbullying.
I was there to help kick things off and was on the opening panel. The first speaker was the father of a suicide victim, who tragically found the method for her demise via a Google search. Mr. Neville Gates spoke movingly of his plea, that the various companies, governments and agencies that provide the Internet's underpinnings can find a way to limit dangerous information or somehow provide links to support and aid services. What he'd like to see is a prominent link to suicide prevention services on the top page of search results for any topic related to suicide. I'm sure we can imagine how that might work and it doesn't seem like a big request from someone so tragically impacted by the free distribution of information via the internet. Sadly, there was no representative from any of the major search engines and to date, Google hasn't replied to Mr. Gates' letter.
It was a very emotional speech and quite a difficult one for me to follow. Nevertheless, we did discuss the more common risks our children encounter via the Internet and the importance of collaboration between parents, educators, law enforcement, government and vendors to help reduce as many of these risks as we can. Such risks include cyberbullying, online predation, cybercrimes, reduced privacy and damaged reputations. One example of a way that we're seeing this sort of collaboration is the voluntary partnership of ISPs to block access to sites that host child porn. The means to do that is the database that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is agreeing to compile and maintain. That is no easy task in a web 2.0 world where everyone is a content creator and publisher.
Other interesting events of the conference was the release of a New Zealand study by the World Internet Project. The study found that 80% of Kiwi households with kids under 18 years of age are setting rules for internet use. That's great news! Additionally, 22% of New Zealanders are concerned that they are spending less face to face time with their family as a result of their time spent on the internet. I'm sure that's an issue we can all relate to.
Professor Shaheen Shariff of McGill University in Montreal shared her data from her recent book, "Cyber-Bullying: Issues and Solutions for the School, Classroom and the Home" including this tidbit. She describes a "chilled environment" in schools where you find a lot of cyber-bullying and that there are other common traits. Such as:
1. Dysfunctional relations between the adminstration and staff
2. The staff do not work well together or collaborate
3. New teachers find it difficult to stand up to older, or more tenured teachers
4. Didactic teaching methods are being used (too much step-by-step work)
5. School reputation is prioritized over student life and learning