Virtual Realities

7 July, 2011

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Volume 1, Issue 1

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Firstly, let me just say a massive thank you! I have so many “thank you”s, so many in fact, that well, I just won't force you to have to read my long endless rants here at least! So to you, the person who is reading what I write on this page at least, I want to say to you especially, thank you.

Thank you for not only taking the time to consider looking or exploring this "idea", (and that's what it really is) aka online magazine any further than the front page! I'm glad, that with the help of the best 27 years of learning I can directly attribute to my father in some degree, I have been able at least to do that. I take comfort in the fact, I was at least able to do that for him.

My dad, Grahame Maher, was what some might possibly call a "dreamer". He was a leader and a visionary – he had a certain kind of charisma, the kind that let him get away with what was, to be honest, at times some stupid shit. Stupid at times maybe, irresponsible some may have said, reckless even – but for every nay-sayer, there are 10 "converts".

"I dare you while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession."

- William Danforth .

Today would have been Dad’s 52nd birthday and I have been struggling the past few weeks especially to move this “concept” into a plan and make this event a reality! And as much as it sounds “like a bit of a line” Dad lived the later years of his life at least, with what he sincerely believed to be his life's purpose at the first and foremost in his line of sight. You see my father was the "son of a preacher man" as he song goes...But I must also state, he would in saying that, never have called himself a religious man by any means!

If you have ever designed a website you will know what I mean when I say that as "users" in an online sense at least, from an outsider's perspective we must appear selfish, impatient and easily distracted. To raise the next generation and those following them with the values required by this technology, is a challenge we must all face.

h t 7 f t o e h s n 7t u s At

“In this day and age, it is not enough for parents to ignore or avoid conversations about behaviour online when it comes to their kids.. We need to remember this is not about proxies or devices, its more than technology itself – really it boils down to be just being yet another medium for people to communicate.�

Jess Maher (2011)

Technological Approach

6

Exploring the focus of this issue Technology & the digital lives of youth has completely changed things but it is much like many other things in life- its a matter of balance. We hope to build awareness and get people talking in a number of ways. The “YoutTube Booth” & viral campaigns on YouTube and helps to overcome the online, offline cross over & pass msg.

What the #Be_Kind_Online campaign script really extends to is a summary of the research & various sources of guidance and advice relating to managing online behavior and protecting children from the dangers commonly faced online…

Cyberbullying & antisocial behavior online is one of the most prevalent of the risks youth face online. And scarily, this kind of bullying tends to lead to higher rates of suicide in youth as well.

htttp://www.twitter.com/#/SweetAsSocial NetHui 2011 was a conference bringing together everyone involved with Internet issues in New Zealand, held over three days from 29 June – 1 July 2011 in Auckland, with the theme for the 2011 conference being “Shaping our Future Together”.

“We’re failing our kids at the moment. We’re calling the kids “Digital Natives” and expecting them to be doing it themselves, but we’re not providing a good environment for them to be good “digital citizens”.

MP Gareth Hughes, Green Party

“If we’re going to have something cross party then we’ve got to look at all of these issues...part of the future as politicians is understanding the different mediums and who is contributing to various policy ideas.”

MP Nikki Kaye, National

"Nikki [Kaye, National MP] , I agree with you, the social media stuff has got to be a good thing- if its making politicians be more accountable and honest, that can't be a bad thing. I do worry about that, in the last three days though, we've talked a lot about the power of social media...24,000 people voting for certain things on Facebook – I'm looking at bullying, and cyberbullying with youth, and I think its interesting that we don't really talk about the fact that on Facebook in particular, a lot of the people that are voting on those things, aren't 18. They're not voters in the political debates. And on Twitter for example, I mean, I have 7 handles—so you can have as many as you like and say whatever you like; in terms of influencing the conversation in an online sense."

Jess Maher, AssistNZ Ltd "I think its an incredibly good point you made about whether we're at risk of descending into “Facebook fascism”, and whether or not people with commercial or political interests can in fact warp what we might naively think is a pretty clear expression of the public's attitude on something." - Sean Plunket, MC

NetHui had a number of streams, with major areas of focus being how to bring the advantages of high-speed internet access to every New Zealander who wants it, the many legal challenges posed by new technologies and how best to formulate policy for newly emerging issues.

Online rights and digital citizenship were discussed both in terms of the right to internet access, and how to uphold individual rights of access, privacy and free expression in the privately owned public space of the internet, as well as what responsibilities accompany these rights.

Education covered not only issues of not only how to use the internet in schools, but just as importantly how to spread digital literacy through the community as a whole.

Wireless internet access and a constant stream of twitter discussion provided for an ongoing sharing of ideas throughout, with the result that key themes were debated from many different viewpoints and contexts, with agreement on many issues by people from a broad range of backgrounds and political affiliations.

By James Williamson

http://nethui.org.nz/nethui-discussions-and-coverage

Reports for Sweet As Social Media on the NetHui event combine the many diverse views expressed by those present, with our personal reflections and discussion of the issues raised.

provided it with the greatest value and opportunity, derive from this freedom from the constraints of the everyday world. However this lack of regulation or oversight has also led to many risks and issues which were perhaps not anticipated.

NetHui 2011 brought together around 400 participants from a hugely varied range of backgrounds, united by a common interest in the future of the internet in New Zealand, and how to ensure that we as a country and people are able to make the most of the opportunities offered by the new technologies and not be left behind.

Professor Lawrence Lessig Creative Commons Founder

At the same time there was of course much discussion of the potential risks and unexpected consequences of the new digital age, and the need to recognise a range of fundamental rights in the online world, including the right not to take part if people choose not to. It was encouraging to see broad agreement across the political spectrum on a wide range of important issues; what was less reassuring was the consensus that many of the problems raised did not yet have adequate solutions, and the best ways to approach them still needed to be worked out.

Several themes came up repeatedly in the discussion, relating to different aspects of rights on and offline.

While in theory all of the same legal rights apply online, there are many complicating factors which make it different from the familiar everyday world. The internet is a privately owned public space, which often makes it difficult to establish who is responsible for particular parts, and there is no ultimate authority to appeal to or watch over the system.

The internet has two conflicting facets which constantly struggle for balance. On the one hand, the founding principles of the internet, championed by many of its early pioneers, have a strong focus on free exchange of information, freedom of expression, and freedom from centralised authority.

Many of the features of the internet that have

Key Note Speaker: The struggle between freedom and anonymity online versus tracking and monitoring to enforce existing laws, is perhaps most obvious with the issue of copyright in the digital age. There was an excellent presentation by Professor Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of Creative Commons. In this he dealt with both copyright issues and also more generally with the deep cultural changes that have come with the growth of the internet. The fact that being able to instantly connect with other people with similar interests all over the world, lends itself naturally to sharing and collaboration and should not be limited by inflexible and outdated laws.

Lessig emphasised how the underlying structure of the internet is designed for collaboration and sharing, and gives every user an entitlement to connect with information and other users, and contribute information themselves.

There is also a basis of equality built into the network, which from the start has given a voice to people who had been outsiders or felt somehow marginalised by mainstream society. The online community has promoted a "rewriteable" culture where recreating and remixing content and sharing it with friends is an ongoing process – a contrast from the one-way "read-only" culture of the 20th century, and a move from passive consumerism to a culture where consumers create and share content themselves.

"...that ability to engage with community, and the whole concept of an online community that are linked together in a distributed way, I think that has fundamentally changed the game, as much for commerce as for government." - Mike O' Donnell, TradeMe. This being the case, it was natural that a network designed for the sharing of content, would be used for sharing content. Lessig explained how the first music sharing network, Napster, quickly amassed the largest library of music ever collected in human history – and was quickly targeted with lawsuits by the music industry for breach of copyright. Napster offered $1 billion as a settlement, but this was refused and Napster was eventually closed down due to court rulings – spawning an entire generation of replacements, and an increase in piracy overall. In retrospect it was inevitable this would happen given the nature of the internet – but governments continued formulating policy as if nothing had changed.

A similar situation occurred with wikileaks, where they asked the US government what information out of the huge amount that they had been leaked, was particularly sensitive and should not be revealed publicly. The US government response was that none of it should be revealed, and followed this by trying to close down wikileaks and arrest the founder Julian Assange. Consequently almost all of the information was made public by wikileaks, and while the ongoing efforts by governments may result in wikileaks being closed down, it too has spawned a generation of replacements – some launched by hackers and aiming to reveal the most sensitive information possible.

so a new model is needed to compensate artists for their work – though at least in terms of the big record labels the extent of loss is unclear, and a leaked internal report referred to piracy as "better described as a global pricing problem", despite the claims of serious losses made publicly.

Another key theme was the concept of open access to the internet, that not just should everyone have a right to access the technology, but indeed that everyone online should be connected by high speed broadband so they can take full advantage of the internet's capabilities. He explains that in the US, internet access is monopolised by a few large companies who limit free access to some extent, and criticises New Zealand for allowing data caps, while acknowledging the greater technical hurdles to be overcome here due to our remoteness.

He also discussed the heavy influence on US politics by financial interests, with 30-70% of a congressman's time spent trying to raise money for re-election campaigns, and contrasted this with New Zealand’s embracing of the new technologies as shown by the government's adoption of Creative Commons licenses for government publications and policy of open access to government data.—even providing a website to allow the public to post official information act requests online.

He states that these developments are natural consequences of the nature of the internet, and the best response should be to change policy and law to suit the new circumstances, instead of trying to pretend that nothing has changed. Copyright is an essential part of the creative industries and the creative culture, but sharing is also inevitable,

By James Williamson

Copyright A general theme that emerged from the discussion was a perception that New Zealand has often been poorly served by overseas media companies, and a general feeling of injustice about the imposition of copyright standards on the rest of the world by the US government, largely at the prompting of US corporate interests. There was also a perception that copyright law has not so much lost its relevance in the internet age, but rather it is just in need of major reform, which has been actively resisted mainly by a relatively small group of very large companies who own the rights to much of the popular media produced, and remain committed to old-fashioned business models.

One example was given that the iPod range of mp3 music players was put on sale in New Zealand a long time before the iTunes service for legally buying digital music online was made available to New Zealanders, and at a time while few equivalent "legal downloading" services existed, and the range of tracks available was very limited – so a product was legally marketed here, for which the only purpose was storing and playing music content that could not at the time be obtained except by downloading content in breach of copyright (or by "ripping" it from CDs bought legally – but at the time there was ongoing debate whether this also constituted a breach of copyright or not, and media companies argued that this too was illegal, until the argument was rejected by courts in the USA).

A similar issue raised was that many US television series and even some major movies, are never released in New Zealand, or are released only many months after they have been played overseas.

Many of these are not made available for download from legiti-

mate sites, and can only be legally obtained, if at all, by buying them on DVD from third-party websites for a price which is vastly more expensive than consumers in most other western countries have to pay, especially once currency conversion, transaction fees and shipping costs are factored in.

The question was raised of whether it is fair or accurate for overseas media companies to claim that downloads of copyrighted content represent an actual loss of potential profits to them, when the content downloaded is never made available for sale in New Zealand at all, and so no profits would be made from sales of that content in this country whether there was downloading or not.

For copyright holders to sue consumers to recover supposed losses from downloading of this content would represent a windfall profit to the rights holder with all costs (if any) of reproduction and distribution of the content paid for by other parties – largely the consumer themselves through their internet bill.

To use threats of legal action as a business model for recovering profits from copied content, without the rights holder having to bother spending anything on marketing or making the content legally available to consumers, seems an entirely inappropriate use of the justice system. That such methods are resorted to by rights holders, seems more a sign that the system is flawed, than that thousands of otherwise law-abiding New Zealanders who wish to consume content that is not marketed here or is sold at an unrealistic and inflated price, should be considered to be criminals and potentially face large fines and even disconnection from the internet. Indeed the MPs who participated at NetHui were quite ready to acknowledge the inadequacy of the new file-sharing law, and admitted that it seemed likely to be reviewed again before long.

Much criticism was levelled at the way that large media corporations in the USA have success-

fully lobbied the US government over many years, to not only expand the length, breadth and duration of copyright until it is now far stricter than originally envisioned, but also to use political pressure and trade deals to coerce other countries into bringing their copyright law in to line with the USA, even targeting individual countries one by one after they were unable to press through their desired changes at the United Nations level.

The point was raised that New Zealand does not have a general "fair use" exception to 0copyright as in the USA, but instead a narrower "fair dealing" exception which covers only certain types of use, and does not include parody and satire for instance – so our copyright law in general should be less strict than that of the USA, to balance the reduced scope of exceptions available.

The history of copyright was briefly outlined, explaining how copyright was originally introduced in the UK with the 1709 Statute of Anne, but was not adopted by the USA or most European countries for more than 50 years after this. The original intent was to protect the rights of authors of books, from unregulated publishing companies reprinting their works for profit without paying royalties to the author. Since copyright is a type of monopoly, which are generally discouraged by law, it was held to be very important that the term of exclusivity was strictly limited, and the first copyright acts all have copyright terms of around 14 years, which was held to be a long enough time for the author to be able to make a reasonable return from their work – and this in an age when printing was a laborious process capable of producing only a few books per day, and distribution to consumers was by horse and cart and sailing ship.

The concept that copyright terms could be extended to as much as 120 years (or the lifetime of the author plus 70 years after their death, which can potentially be even longer), would consequently have been unthinkable at the time that copyright laws were introduced. One speaker quoted a famous speech by British MP Thomas Macaulay about how extending copyright terms excessively would bring the very concept of copyright into disrepute and cause the general public not to take it seriously – and this in 1841, when

copyright terms were still considerably shorter than they are now. Especially inconsistent with the original concept of copyright as a means of adequately compensating content creators for their work, is the fact that the main beneficiaries from this vastly extended copyright term are usually the immortal corporations to whom the author has licensed the rights – which seems especially inequitable when modern licensing deals often mean the author receives only 10% or less of the profits made from their work.

The conclusion that seemed to be reached by many was that existing copyright law is simply outdated and needs to be completely revised to stay relevant in the age of the internet, "the world's largest copying machine". There was a strong sense that New Zealand intellectual property law needs to place a higher priority on protecting the rights of New Zealand authors, artists, inventors and other content creators, rather than primarily protecting the profits of overseas media corporations, often at the expense of ordinary consumers. Along these lines, it was questioned why amendments to the Patents Act aimed at providing better protection to New Zealand inventors, have sat on Parliament's schedule for debate for 9 months with little progress, yet the controversial bill aimed at prohibiting online file sharing, which was seen by many as being largely for the benefit of overseas corporations, was rushed through under urgency conditions that were supposed to be for passing laws relating to recovery from the Christchurch earthquake.

“There are a lot of thorny issues that we as politicians have not thought through....not that many of us politicians are really up to speed with these issues, we have to become more up to speed...we need your input on that, and to push us politicians to be considering those issues.”

- MP Clare Curran, Labour

By James Williamson

Internet filtering Freedom of expression is of course an important right to be protected, but some people choose to express themselves in ways that are very adult, controversial or objectionable in nature, which might be acceptable in the right context among other adults with similar interests, but would be entirely inappropriate to be viewed by children. Other content is of course illegal in nature and is not allowed to be viewed by anyone, yet the lack of any central authority online makes it a constant struggle for police forces worldwide to try to control this.

“We don’t have a digital strategy, and we need one.” MP Clare Curran, Labour One controversial solution which has been suggested is the possibility of internet filtering. This was almost universally rejected by the participants of NetHui on several grounds, firstly that filtering available content was seen as too much like state censorship of the media and was not consistent with the principles of freedom and openness on which the internet was founded, especially the right to freedom of expression. The second objection is that internet filtering simply does not work, as there are many technological work around that allow knowledgeable persons to bypass any kind of filtering – as shown by dissidents in countries like China and Iran, where the internet is heavily filtered yet unpopular political opinions still manage to be spread and exchanged online.

Another aspect of this is the denial of innocent content to ordinary people who lack the skills to bypass the filter, as all strict internet filtering systems so far trialled around the world have always been found to produce some "false positive" blocks of websites containing no content that is remotely unsuitable – one anecdote was told of women being unable to search for information about breast cancer because searches containing the word "breast" had been blocked as pornography.

The point was raised that New Zealand already filters its internet to some extent, with access blocked to a small list of websites positively identified as containing illegal child pornography. There was little objection to blocking this kind of content specifically, especially as the list of sites is provided to the Department of Internal Affairs by Interpol so represents a list of sites that are banned internationally, containing content that is unacceptable everywhere.

However many concerns were raised that even this limited filtering was a slippery slope and created the potential for "scope creep", where future governments might decide to censor all sorts of content by adding it to the blocked list – the example was raised of how, when the Australian government's much more extensive list of blocked websites was posted on the whistle-blowing site wikileaks, the official response was to add wikileaks to the blocked list so that Australians could not see what content was being blocked. This kind of approach was generally agreed to be broadly inconsistent with the basic democratic rights and values we have in New Zealand, despite the Australian government's undoubtedly good intentions at the start, of blocking content perceived to be harmful or illegal.

Schools in New Zealand also routinely filter internet content, with around 90% of schools having strict internet filters, but this was seen as being generally much more acceptable given the vulnerable nature of the users of school networks and their legal responsibility to protect students. Teaching children netiquette and how to be good digital citizens is not part of the curriculum however, and many schools fail to take advantage of many of the capabilities offered by the internet, often because of a lack of confidence with the technology by the teachers themselves.

Even without filtering by government or schools, there are still other forms of filtering online – in the case of certain content which is legal but would be deemed objectionable to most people, it is possible for it to still be accessible but search engines can remove it from their indexing, so internet searches will not find it, but it can still be reached by following the correct link. There are potential merits to this as a way of "hiding" unsavoury content without forcing it to be removed from the internet and thereby infringing the rights of people with legal but extremist views and beliefs, but Google's own policy is that the vast majority of content should be available so long as it is generally legal. And of course, any sort of filter or restriction that is intended to limit access by tech-savvy youth will merely be a challenge to be beaten, as demonstrated by the ongoing arms race between computer game programmers and their legions of teenage fans, some of whom will always quickly figure out how to "crack" a new game so it can be shared illegally, no matter how ingenious the copy protection built in by the designers.

Privacy & digital c i t i z e n s h i p The very existence of internet filtering reminds us that everything viewed online, every page accessed or file downloaded, can in theory be traced back to the computer that accessed it – though as always this kind of detection can be avoided by people who are sufficiently technically skilled. A great amount of concern was expressed about the routine monitoring and recording of online activity by both governments and private companies. While there was general approval of police tracking down online criminals like child pornographers and malicious hackers, there was a strong feeling that seasoned cyber-criminals would most likely evade attempts at detection. It was an uncomfortable compromise, to try and catch out the illegal acts of a small minority, despite the principle that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear".

This increasing erosion of traditional notions of privacy is a growing concern to many. Social media sites such as Facebook are often criticized for the various inventive ways they find to re-use and data mine the personal information users upload, for their own commercial profit. But at the end of the day users agree to this when they sign up to the site and voluntarily hand over their data. Since there are no established boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not in terms of online privacy and re-use of personal information, there is always a temptation to keep pushing further – and at least Facebook have been somewhat responsive to user concerns when they have pushed it too far.

Given this lack of established boundaries for privacy online, and the permanent archiving of most data that is uploaded, it is important for all internet users to consider where their personal boundaries of privacy should be drawn, and think before you post or upload anything. whether it could potentially be something that you wouldn't want to be made public, or might regret later on. This is a particularly important topic for parents to discuss with children, given that young people are both among the heaviest users of social networking sites, online discussion forums and other online mediums for sharing and exchanging content,.

They are also more likely than adults to impulsively post or upload content in the heat of the moment,

Because it is now so easy for personal information to be uploaded, and the fact that once uploaded, you have effectively lost control of the data, there needs to be much more thought given to what information is uploaded in the first place. Discussion of online rights turned to the concept of a "right to disappear" from the internet – the idea that sites providing people with the ability to host personal profiles and express personal opinions through posting text, pictures, video etc, should also give people the opportunity to delete this content from the site at a later date.

While some services already provide this option, many of the largest sites like Facebook retain legal rights to user content under their terms of service, and "deletion" of content often means that it is merely hidden, and can potentially reappear later on quite unexpectedly.

The ease of reproducing information online is another factor that makes uploading personal data potentially risky, especially sensitive information like home addresses and phone numbers, or personally identifiable photographs or video. Even if sites do allow user data to be deleted later on, there is no way of knowing who has viewed it while it was online – and anything that is viewed can be copied and uploaded somewhere else, without the knowledge of the original uploaded. This is why it is so important for both children and adults to be familiar with the privacy settings of websites they use, and make sure that they only upload content to publicly accessible websites if they are comfortable with the possibility of it being shown to everyone they know. Another thing to be aware of is that some sites "reset" the privacy settings to default every time they are updated – and the default setting is often that everything is public.

A related issue to privacy online is the small but not insignificant percentage of people who choose not to use the internet at all. Official planning almost invariably talks about people who are not connected to the internet in terms of the "digital divide", and how to enable people to access the internet who are not able to do so because of not owning a computer, or lacking the required digital literacy. However this tends to ignore the fact that as more of the population goes online, an increasing proportion of people who are still not involved, is made up of people who simply do not want or need to use the internet, for any of a number of reasons. This "right to refuse" was also generally agreed to be important, especially with the slow but steady introduction of e-government services which for instance may require everyone to have a profile on the IRD web service in order to pay their taxes. There was broad agreement that it would be unfair to force people to have to go online against their will, and offline ways of accessing government services and paying tax must remain available for them. By James Williamson

4 July, 2011

Cyber-bullying One area where many of the difficult issues around internet and modern communication technologies come together, is in cyberbullying. Youth today make little distinction between bullying online or off; the online world is such an integrated part of their daily lives that cyber-bullying is just an expected part of bullying when it occurs. But for adults who did not grow up with these technologies, many aspects of bullying today can be quite unfamiliar, and its impacts can often be underestimated.

prove quite misleading. Children who are victims of old-fashioned bullying at school, may take revenge through vicious cyber-bullying attacks once they get home, and what would once have been minor disputes quickly forgotten about, are now broadcast to their entire social circle, and archived online forever to be dragged out again at some future time.

The anonymity and emotional distance that the internet provides can also worsen bullying behaviours. Without cues from context and body language (and especially when limited to 140 characters by Twitter or text message constraints), statements posted online can be much more ambiguous and open to different interpretations than what was intended, often leading to people taking offence at comments meant innocently. Without the feedback of seeing the reaction of the other person, cyberbullying may also be carried out by people who would never bully someone in the offline world. The lack of social cues has been shown to make people generally less civil and have less empathy for others online than in everyday life, and it is easy for someone to speak their mind in a way that is much more blunt and offensive than they would say it in person.

The reasons for bullying remain the same as they always have been, but the instantaneous and constantly connected nature of communication today change the way that it happens. ToThe online world has also brought many new day's youth seem inseparable from their cellphones, ways of bullying that did not exist in the past. While and to be cut off from their online social networks is problems such as name-calling and harassment, like being placed in solitary confinement. Yet while spreading rumours and malicious gossip, and excluthis means that in theory they should always be sion from groups or activities have always existed, able to reach out to someone for help, in practice victims of bullying are often reluc- “Then let’s have that conversation about we’re up to tant to admit to adults that it is happening, as a country. Because youth are literally killing themand similarly do not want to let their friends selves and I’m sure these issues, that we can’t even beknow that it is bothering them. While in past times bullying would largely stop at the gin to understand, they’re not ever going to be helping! school gate, these days it is more likely to intensify once kids get “Lets just admit that they “get” this, better than we do for a home from school and log onto second. They learn quicker than us, its just logical that they will their accounts online.

Bullying is also made much always be one step ahead. Really, we HAVE to engage them if easier online, and has broadened we want to help them, its not a matter of if we should or not.” the scope of who is likely to bully others. Traditional “Instead of telling them the rules, we should try explaining why the schoolyard bullying often rules are there, what's the reasons they should care, show them involves some degree of what's possible with this stuff. Then lets get them what you need to physical intimidation, but on the internet this ele- watch out for, drop the tech talk for a sec and bring it back to the hument is absent, and old man level. Its about people and relationships not proxies and devices.” stereotypes of who is Jess Maher, Nethui (29 June, 2011) likely to be a bully can

Let’s try trusting these kids for a sec eh? At least it might engage them in life if nothing else!

Lets get them to answer these questions and help us work out how to make shareable content that explains this to the world. Then lets have that much needed discussion again with youth, creative's and other ethnicities in the room & ASK the community what “New Zealand's” values really are instead of guessing.

Jess Maher, Nethui (29 June, 2011) some cyber-bullying issues are quite new. The ability to share media instantly around the world, creates an environment in which embarrassing photographs or videos, often stolen from the victim through hacked accounts or recorded against their will during physical bullying incidents offline, can be uploaded and shared with everyone the victim knows in an instant. Fights or other bullying incidents may be staged specifically so they can be videoed and uploaded to YouTube.

Hacking and identity theft add extra complications, as the boundary between public and private content may be breached unexpectedly if an email or social media profile account is hacked – with the only certain way of avoiding this risk being not to post too much sensitive content online in the first place, even if you think that it is somewhere private. Identity theft can also be a very serious and damaging type of cyberbullying, allowing malicious rumours about someone to seem to originate from their own posts. However with these kind of behaviours at least, they are clearly illegal in most countries and websites will also usually take immediate action to help stop them once notified, which helps make it easier to combat these serious types of cyber-bullying once they have been identified.

The modern culture that today's youth grow up in, often also tends to encourage the posting of inappropriate material that may be regretted later on. Role models in the media like Paris Hilton and Jackass normalise exhibitionism, often characterised by precocious sexual behaviour and a casual attitude towards violence and risk-taking, to an extent never previously experienced by older generations – and the easy and instant ability to post it online tempts many young people to seek their 15 minutes of fame impulsively, without thinking have been identified.

The modern culture that today's youth grow up in, often also tends to encourage the posting of inappropriate material that may be regretted later on. Role models in the media like Paris Hilton and Jackass normalise exhibitionism, often characterised by precocious sexual behaviour and a casual attitude towards violence and risk-taking, to an extent never previously experienced by older generations – and the easy and instant ability to post it online tempts many young people to seek their 15 minutes of fame impulsively, without thinking about whether or not they might regret posting it later.

Explicit photos sent privately to a high school boyfriend may be shared with the whole school after the relationship ends, potentially posing serious legal issues as well as bullying concerns if the pictures depict an underage subject and are therefore considered to be child pornography under the law.

Young people are often also much more ready to add people as "friends" on social networking sites without ever having met them, or even knowing who they are – and when privacy settings are set to make content viewable to "friends of friends", just one person adding a random stranger to their friends list, can reveal the private posts and photoBy James Williamson graphs of an entire social group.

4 July, 2011

Education and the digital divide One theme which attracted some discussion was the impact on education of the modern communication technologies and instant access to unlimited information the internet provides. Several different factors combine to make this a challenge for teachers today, though also with great opportunities. Much of the discussion at NetHui focused on the infrastructure needed to provide high-speed broadband to schools, and the challenge of integrating the new technologies into teaching so that they actually make learning more effective, as well as how best to teach the teachers to make effective use of the new technologies – in the face of students who frequently understand them better than the teacher, and are increasingly turned to by teachers for advice.

We heard about how while New Zealand is a nation of heavy internet users, the majority use it for only relatively simple tasks like email, paying bills and online shopping, and a more effective way is needed to spread better digital literacy throughout the community as a whole. Teachers in particular need to be convinced of the value of the new technology and how it can be used to make learning more effective, especially when they have well established and effective teaching methods already in use.

The increasing problem of the digital divide was also raised, both in terms of access to the physical hardware, and also the required digital literacy and confidence needed to make proper use of it. In terms of internet access itself, the government speakers emphasized their commitment to spreading high-speed broadband to all corners of even rural New Zealand as soon as reasonably affordable, and the great progress they have made towards this. However without knowing how to integrate this capability effectively into teaching, there is a risk that it could just mean easier distraction with faster YouTube! The resources available also influence how the technology can best be used – there is a big difference between a school with fast broadband access to its single “computer lab”, and one where every student has a laptop on their desk with its own wireless internet access via the school network, but national strategies need to be able to cater for both ends of the spectrum.

Since many teachers already effectively use online tools as teaching aids, it was discussed what the best way would be to share advice and experience with other teachers around New Zealand and worldwide, and how online learning communities could be used to allow students to access school teaching resources from home, and to share content between schools – while balancing this with tricky issues like copyright.

Another key issue is the huge excess of knowledge available instantly to anyone, meaning students can look up the answers to almost any question asked, without having to refer to their notes or think about it so much – but at the same time so much information is available about some topics that both students and teachers can be overwhelmed. Indeed the role of teachers has to adapt to some extent, filtering relevant content from online sources and integrating it with traditional sources such as textbooks. Student learning is often much more self-directed in today’s world, and teachers can find themselves having to answer questions about recent developments in the relevant topic that have been reported online, but the teacher may not yet have heard about themselves. Students need to understand the value of collating sources into their own original content, in an age when pre-written essays on almost any topic can be downloaded in minutes.

To take the best advantage of these changes, teaching too has to adapt, encouraging students to research topics on the internet themselves, to read beyond the content in the textbook and find out about new developments, in more of a two-way exchange of knowledge rather than the old fashioned “top-down” teaching approaches. Students need to be taught how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information online, and how to search more deeply to find appropriate academic content rather than just searching Google or Wikipedia for the first relevant answer they can find. Teachers now have a vast range of tools at their disposal for making interactive and engaging lessons, and libraries of online educational resources such as the Khan Academy to draw on, providing new ways to engage with students and encourage them to explore topics further on their own.

NetHui Conference 2011 - My Thoughts and Views by Michael Moore-Jones (Youngest NetHui 2011 Panellist) I'm Michael Moore-Jones - a 16 year old New Zealander passionate about technology and business. I'm the founder of They Don't Teach You This In School.

NetHui was held in Auckland last week over three days, and I attended representing They Don’t Teach You This In School. I thought it would be a good conference, but like a lot of other people, I was surprised by just how good it was. NetHui managed to get a good cross-section of New Zealand society to attend – people from all ages and all backgrounds came. It was a full-on three days, and here I’d like to briefly touch on three of the most interesting and important parts as I see them.

1.The Internet is a human right.

NetHui was divided into different “streams” for the first two days, meaning you had to decide which topics you wanted to discuss and see people talk on. Streams included topics like “Digital Citizenship”, and “Access and Diversity” (which I spoke on a panel for on the Friday). I attended a mix of the different streams, seeing all of the five or so streams at least one. And what really struck me was how interconnected a lot of the topics in each of the different streams were. The issue that came up in every stream?

Whether the Internet can be considered a human right.

There was the strong and obvious view that the Internet is most definitely a human right. Most people felt this way, and reasons for it were numerous. People generally felt that access to information and freedom of expression and human rights, and so access to the Internet should be one too as it facilitates both of these. This led to a discussion over whether it should be incorporated into an international bill of human rights.

As Judge David Harvey pointed out, it isn’t actually necessary that we legislate to create the Internet as a formal human right. The human right of freedom of expression actually states that it holds into the future across different platforms. This clearly includes the Internet.

2. Digital literacy is important, and there are different views on a solution.

One of the topics in the Access and Diversity stream was digital literacy. In general it’s talking about making sure people understand how to use computers and the Internet. A lot of people felt that the best way to give everyone in society a good level of digital literacy is to provide workshops to up-skill them. I personally strongly disagree with this, and I talked about it in the panel discussion I was

a part of on the Friday.

Why do I disagree with it? I see workshops as a very short-term solution. A workshop will teach people how to use current technologies. But we all know how fast technology moves – the workshop will only be useful for maybe a maximum of two years into the future before a new technology replaces the old, and people are not digitally literate once again. So, how do we have a long-term solution to giving people digital literacy?

My view is that we should focus on design. Digital literacy, in my opinion, is a producer problem, not a consumer problem. If you look at why more and more people have adopted computers and the Internet over the past ten years, it’s for a few reasons. Firstly, the cost of computers and their power has decreased. But secondly, the design of computers and websites has become much better, and therefore they are much more simple to use. This has allowed more people in society to start to use these technologies without workshops. Let’s focus on design to ensure that computers and websites/apps are as simple as they possibly can be, so that everyone in society can intuitively use them. I feel this is easily possible, and producers just need to pay more attention to design.

3. “Blended Learning” needs to be considered more by schools.

One of the streams I found most interesting was the one on education. The discussion centered around “blended learning”, which refers to education done both in a physical school environment and online. I’m going to do another post just on “blended learning” because it’s a big topic that I’d like to discuss further. But for those of you reading this interested in my stance, I generally feel that no school in New Zealand is doing enough with blended learning. It’s obvious that it’s the future of education, yet all schools are waiting for another school to take the first step.

The schools who are using elements of blended learning simply aren’t doing enough with it – and I think that’s very sad. Look out here in the next few days for another post on blended learning. Overall NetHui was a really interesting conference. Great people, great discussion, and some excellent points to think about. I hope you’ll share your thoughts, whether you attended or not. http://mmoorejones.com/2011/07/03/nethui-conference-2011-my-thoughts-and-views/

Weekly Reflection: If you want learn, don’t let the geek touch your device!

This week I took my PLN building offline. Initially I was just going to Internet NZ’s NetHui, however when @fionagrant offered up a seat to the Tai Tokerau Educamp, I got up at stupid o’clock on a Saturday to make the journey up to Whangarei to see what these camps are all about. The week was hugely rewarding not only because I meet so many people, but also because I met people I had interacted with on twitter. Nevertheless four days of back to back conferencing, means I’m pretty tired, but the conferences were unlike any I have attended in the past.

NetHui was a multi-stakeholder conference initiated by Internet NZ community organisations. The first two days of the conference were more participatory discussions on different aspects of the internet such as cyber citizenship and overall internet governance while the third day bought the discussions into a panel format. The last day I spent in a corner with my laptop (laptop battery is currently dying a painful death) quite happily tweeting while listening to keynote speeches and report-backs from panels. Unsurprisingly for a conference full of internet junkies the #nethui twitter stream was highly active which bought in further conversations and learning from people in different cities and even countries!

Towards the end of the day I tweeted that I wished my university education was like the conference. However reflecting on this further I’ve realized that my learning is like NetHui. I’m well accustomed to having facebook and chats via text with other students in my course about the week’s bulletin board/upcoming assignment/teaching experience. I’ve proclaimed my love of twitter and obviously reflective blogging is aiding in my practice. So perhaps what I want to do as a teacher is facilitate an environment for my students’ learning to resemble a conference like Nethui.

This could be done by Starting the day with an interesting keynote speaker (the @lessigspeech from NetHui was brilliant as was Rod Oram’s) perhaps a child like Adora Svitak. Encourage students to blog/tweet about their ideas, opening up their learning to people outside the classroom. Offer students workshops to choose from, information booths to browse between sessions and spaces to have break-out conversations. Ask students to present their own sessions, scaffolding where necessary. Have students interacting with different people then they would normally encounter, experts, students from other classes, other schools, other countries.

One of the key issues that came out of the last day was the digital literacy of New Zealanders or lack there of. We have a high level of internet usage but in general we use the internet to shop and pay bills but is there more we could be doing. Are we only to be a nation of shoppers? How do we learn to unleash the potential of ultrafast broadband?

The general consensus from hui was that learning

was something ‘done’ to them. A lot of speakers from the floor were concerned by the idea that we are currently developing digital literacy with people learning from each other. But really isn’t one person acquiring the knowledge and then sharing it with others, who then share it with more people go to the very core of what education is all about? It’s like a virus, software or otherwise.

Which is where unconferences like educamp come in. Educamp is basically a group of educators, some people have things to learn others have things to teach, and we learn from each other. I found the experience highly stimulating, especially during the smackdown session at the start of educamp where lots of cool ideas and apps were floated from the floor. What was also rewarding is that I was able to help others learn how to create a google doc and what the docs can do, the basics of twitter (I consider myself by no means an expert on twitter). I also managed to actually put into action what one astute NetHui attendee had remarked, don’t let a geek touch your device!

Speaking as a geek, it is to just take the device away and do whatever it is that the user wants do for them issuing long rambly instructions as I go. I know from last semester (and my own experience as a learner) that this sort of teaching is not very effective. It is little wonder that tech remains a great mystery to large sections of the population. So for anyone who happens to reading this blog who has some techphobia my advice is be open to learning from geeks, but keep your hands on your working device at all times! What did I take away from this week?

To be digitally literate means that you need to commit to be a life-long learner yourself. You need be open to pulling out ideas and tools learning with them, playing with them, and then passing on your knowledge to someone else. The importance of collaboration in learning. At educamp a not yet graduated teacher was helping out teachers with decades of experience to get to grips with new tools which benefited both parties. The real teachers were learning about new tools they can use in their practice while I had an opportunity to explain how tools work without taking over and doing it all by myself meant that I was also learning too. Be open to learning from anyone, experts come in different forms. Effective organisations take a bit of expertise from one person and add it to someone else’s expertise and share, something I need to think about when I’m looking for a school to work in next year.

But perhaps the most important thing from this week is that I have a vision of what I think a classroom might look like, sound like and feel like for students. Now I’ve got to learn how to effectively implement that vision into my teaching practice. I expect that might take some time, certainly a lot longer than the 6 months I’ve got left in my diploma.

Teacher Trainee

(3 June, 2011)

Netsage is the closest thing we have to the internet police in New Zealand

Most New Zealand schools are dealing with incidents of bullying or harassment online and in particular via mobile phone text messaging. Prelimi57 results of research suggest 2 out of 10 students have experienced text bullying and 1 out of 10, cyberbullying.

Schools will already have bullying/harassment policies in place so can make a comprehensive response appropriate to both perpetrator and victim. There are some distinctions to consider and serious implications when bullying goes online.

Bullying has always been around. What is different?  The 24/7 impact of cyberbullying can be greater than face to face bullying. Children cannot get away from cyberbullying like they can with face to face bullying.  Anonymous threats are more worrying and intimidating, even though statistically they are usually coming from someone known to the victim.  Posting information on the Net means potentially having global distribution of that material, which can intensify the humiliation and hurt of having such information made public.

Some harassment seems minor. What forms of harassment and bullying are actually occurring in our schools?

Bullying messages can range from the mild, ("You're the ugliest boy in class...") to the criminal;  Photos of individuals being posted on the Net in a negative context without permission (sometimes the photos are of an intimate nature and/or were taken surreptitiously).  Websites set up about an individual with nasty (or sometimes even defamatory) content that often reveals personal details about the victim.  Messages placed on message boards and passed on in chatrooms that contain false information about the victim (sometimes defamatory) and the victim's contact details.

How should the school respond to such a wide range of incidents?  Serious threats received by students or staff should be reported immediately to the police.  Raise school community awareness of the issue and get the message across to "tell someone". (A British survey by NCH found one in four young people reported being bullied via email or text messaging. Yet 29% didn't tell anyone about the harassment.) All staff need to be ready to respond appropriately.  Encourage parents to keep an open communication with their child and to not immediately respond to a worrying incident by removing access to the technology. Anecdotal information suggests young people may be encouraged to "tell someone" if they know there will be a calm response. Fear of losing their technology or making the bullying worse are main reasons for not telling an adult.

Netsafe Cyberbullying Support & Information Site

Cyberbullying information and advice for young people The information in this guide appears online at http://www.cyberbullying.org.nz/youngpeople/

What is cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying is bullying. It's using the internet, a mobile phone or other technology like a camera to hurt somebody or embarrass them.

What does cyberbullying look like?

Bullying on the internet or mobiles can include many things, like being sent anonymous text messages to your phone, posting nasty or threatening comments on your Bebo or Facebook page or sending mean or embarrassing photos or videos of you to other people.

Cyberbullying can involve people spreading rumours about you and scaring you. Sometimes people may try to stop you from communicating with others or they may hack and steal passwords for your online accounts.

Is cyberbullying a big deal?

No one likes to be bullied or harassed. Cyberbullying takes many forms and some of these may be harder to deal with than others. Depending on the situation, some young people are able to sort it out quickly, or simply shrug it off. Other situations may be more serious.

About 1 in 5 NZ high school students say they have been cyberbullied and many say it makes them feel scared, depressed, angry or ashamed. If you get sent nasty messages outside of school time sometimes it can feel hard to escape the bullying. Some people say it’s worse if you can't tell who the bullying messages are coming from. Posting mean or nasty pictures or videos of people online can embarrass them in front of their school and spread quickly out of control. If you post altered pictures of people online these can exist long after you delete them and can also be used as evidence by teachers and police.

What can I do to prevent cyberbullying?  Be careful who you give your mobile number to and don't pass on friends' numbers without asking them first.  Don’t respond to texts from people you don’t know. These can often be sent randomly to find people to bully.

Managing Cyberbullying from 3 sides youth, parents & teachers

 If you witness cyberbullying try to help the victim. You can offer them support, or report the bullying anonymously if that feels safer.  Don't post revealing pictures of yourself or others online - they may get sent on and used to bully you or other people.

Basic Online Security Tips

 Keep your online identity safe - create strong passwords with a mix of lower and upper case letters and numbers. Pick difficult answers for your “secret question” on your accounts that people who know you wouldn’t easily guess.  Don't share your password with anyone even your friends.

Young Kids, Digital Citizenship

How is cyberbullying different to other forms of bullying?

Cyberbullying is bullying. But where face-toface bullying ended when the target got home from school or work, cyberbullies can use the internet or their mobile to continue attacks on victims at any time of the day or night.

Young people are growing up with access to more and more technology, often using the internet and mobiles as the main way to reach friends. If threats continue outside of school it may make the target feel like there’s no escape.

If messages are sent anonymously this can make the bullying feel more intimidating. And if the bullying occurs online the harassment can be intensified, especially if public hate pages or embarrassing videos are passed around the school community.

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Netsafe Cyberbullying Support & Information Site When to call the police If any cyberbullying threatens harm ‐ like hurting or fighting ‐ this breaks the law. Save the evidence and contact the Police.

Reporting Crimes Online (The Orb)

What can I do to help someone being cyberbullied?

If a friend comes to you for help reassure them that they've done the right thing by talking with someone. Tell them not to reply to mean or nasty messages.

Make sure they save the bullying messages on their phone and/or take screenshots of website and chat abuse. This is important so that proof of the bullying is recorded and can be used as evidence later on. If you see that someone is being cyberbullied, contact them and let them know that you support them.

This can help them feel less isolated. Reporting the cyberbullying to someone who can help, like an adult you trust or to the website where the bullying is happening.

You can do that anonymously if you want to protect your identity.

Cyberbullying on mobile phones If they are receiving bullying text messages or calls they should tell their mobile phone company.

If they already have evidence of bullying texts the company should be able to take action. Report the abuse and ask them to take action.

Parents Guide to cyber safety

Cyberbullying at school Does the bullying involve people at school? If you think so tell the Principal or Deputy Principal as soon as possible.

Schools in New Zealand want all students to be safe and teachers want to help stop bullying.

Automated ICT User Agreements

Cyberbullying on your favourite websites Report internet cyberbullying to the website where the bullying took place - usually there is a “Report Abuse” button or "Safety" link.

Cyberbullying on IM If you can, block the bullying messages coming through. Take screenshots of any nasty messages sent to you and save them as evidence.

What if I'm scared about getting involved?

If you witness any form of cyberbullying but are worried about helping you can still do the following: • If you see cyberbullying online then report the problem anonymously to the website where bullying takes place.  You can also try to talk to the target of bullying away from an audience. Bystanders who support people being bullied can make that person feel less isolated.

What can I do to prevent cyberbullying amongst my students?

Cyberbullying is bullying. Apply school policy on bullying to cyberbullying.

‘Cyberbullying and the law Cyberbullying can be a criminal offence under a range of different laws, including sections 249-252 of the Crimes Act. The age of criminal responsibility in New Zealand is 10 years.

If young people commit an offence they may face warnings, police diversions, or a Family Group Conference.

Young people over 16 who commit an offence are treated as adults by the courts.

Education Law in New Zealand (Education Act 1998) includes the National Administrative Guideline 5, which says that schools are to provide a “safe physical and emotional environment for students”.

This includes addressing behaviours (such as cyberbullying) that occur outside school but which have implications for student’s well -being while at school.

At a Distance’ – standing up to cyberbullying Watch the New Zealand made short film about cyberbullying at http://www.cyberbullying.org.nz/at -a-distance-film/

Bystanders need to realize: 







They ARE a part of the problem that perpetuates the bullying cycle.

They CAN do something to make the lives of those bully victims better.

They SHOULD speak up when they see or hear something they think is wrong.

They HAVE THE POWER to make changes for the better in their school.

Are 'bystanders' important?

Bystanders are people who do not start a bullying situation but see it happening.

Bystanders can help or hinder bullying situations.

75% of peer (bystander) actions in a UK study (O’Connell, Pepler, & Craig, 1999) were successful in stopping bullying.

The 4 types of bystander There are four types of bystanders (Salmivalli, 1999):  Assistants: join in on bullying and help the bully  Reinforcers: laugh and encourage the bully but don’t personally attack the target  Outsiders: don’t get “involved”, but see it happen  Defenders: Try to stop the bullying on behalf of the target

The Bystander Pledge From this day on I pledge my word My voice, once silent, will now be heard.

When kids gets bullied I won’t look to the floor I will SPEAK UP; a BYSTANDER no more. http://www.bystander.us/blog/

How bystanders can help Defenders can be very effective in addressing cyberbullying situations. Cyberbullying de-fenders can avoid the physical dangers of intervening in face-to-face bullying situations.

Bystanders can intervene anonymously – by telling someone/ reporting abuse – and secretly – by talking directly to the target without an audience.

Bystanders to a cyberbullying situation help the person being bullied by letting them know that they support them.

Bystanders can save the evidence of the bullying and report the bullying to someone who can help (e.g., a principal at school, a parent or caregiver, etc.).

We celebrated our launch on the 27th May 2011 alongside Youth Week “Celebrate Technology” event & the showcase of our “YouTube Booth” at Massey Community House in Don Buck Rd

www.sweetasparents.tumblr.com

Your information – but is it really yours?

Do young people have control of their personal information, do they care about it and are they are aware of the privacy issues? The Privacy Commissioner began a project to find out.

Fifteen secondary school students from the greater Wellington and Wairarapa area came together for the first time in September 2009. With support from two university students, the group discussed the issues about their personal information. The group quickly came to the conclusion that they do care about privacy and the best people to give privacy messages to young people are other young people.

The group came up with three areas for action:   

to raise awareness about consent and appropriate use of personal information to create a privacy presentation pack for schools to work towards privacy discussions being included on the school curriculum.

Under the umbrella of "safety", the group developed materials using three key ideas: awareness, consent and appropriate use of information.

The materials that form part of the youth privacy kit include: 

a poster with the concept of personal information disappearing into a black hole



a wallet-sized brochure, filled with lots of ways to think about your personal information – your rights, how to safeguard it, and what to do if you think something has gone amiss.

The kit also includes a short film, guidance notes for presenters, privacy stories, activities and a quiz. It is available to secondary schools and youth outlets. And kits can be ordered of the website.

For more about the project see: http://privacy.org.nz/private-word-issue-75-september-201/#youth

SWEET AS SOCIAL MEDIA CHARITABLE TRUST WAS ESTABLISHED WITH THE PURPOSE OF BUILDING AWARENESS OF THE RELEVANCE & SIGNIFICANECE OF ISSUES THAT “DIGITIAL NATIVES ” ARE ALREADY FACING, SUCH AS CYBERBULLYING & ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR ONLINE AMOUNG MANY YOUTH IN KIWI SCHOOLS.....

“YouTube Booth” & Taking the Campaign Script to the streets…

We wrote a campaign script that touched on the primary pieces of advice we found throughout the material on preventing or managing cyberbullying from all over the world and the kind of "common sense" factors that perhaps due to generational differences and the "virtual realities" of kids today, require us to once again consider readdressing.

Having written it up, we went to a friends house and got their gorgeous six year old, Shizandra Bowden, who had told us she had now decided she wanted to be an actor, and asked her to read the script on camera for us.

She did amazingly well, especially when you consider that was her first read through! We have since set up a charitable trust, held a youth week event and celebrated our launch and showcase of the "YouTube Booth" and announced what we hope to be a six month or year long campaign...

Uploading it to YouTube we also set up a website with Tumblr and bought the domain www.sweetassocialmedia.com and uploaded the script asking for others to read it and record it and also upload their versions…

In the Booth, we asked people to help us share the message by reading the whole or part of our campaign script, with a prize pack up for grabs for the top video of the week/event. With each of the script sections recorded by different individuals, we have been able to mix and edit the videos already obtained into a complied video mash which represents the script outlined for the campaign.

“YOUTUBE BOOTH” LAUNCH & YOUTH WEEK EVENT 27 MAY 2011 AT MASSEY COMMUNITY HOUSE

The result of which we hope will be a series of 45 sec mixed edits of this script which we intend on trying to create airtime for on mainstream media channels and another, more impressive youth week event focusing on celebrating the opportunities and possibilities that the internet brings youth such as the one we attempted this year without any funding or financial assistance and passed off purely on "social currency" alone. The result so far can be seen in our first "Mash Up Edit" here which actually features Minister Paula Bennetthttp://youtu.be/o7CQARqlqT4

All the other camera footage from our booth, and I mean ALL, can be found on our YouTube channel (user name: sweetassocial).

We have included the

screenshots from videos used in this compilation which have been included to the side here, or you can check out our latest video on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/users/sweetassocial)

YOUTUBE BOOTH AT REVELRY20ELEVEN AT ZEAL WEST AUCKLAND

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We know from first hand experience how the internet and technology can open doors and give you access to opportunities s that otherwise would be unattainable

#Be Kind Online focuses on building awareness of the significance & relevance of the “cyber� aspect to bullying in Kiwi schools. Cyberbullying & antisocial behavior online is one of the most prevalent of the risks youth face online.

We get to go to some cool events and run the booth, but we need more hands! Its fun work really, and you guys are our target market so if its not a gig you don’t want to be at, chance are there is no point in us being there!

Does it matter, why & what does it mean to Youth in particular?

We have been asking youth that same question and intend on continuing to do so. This is partly because we are interested to know what gets them excited. Plus we think they will also find it easier than us at least to and we feel relevance to the industry and commercial considerations and issues we find in the ICT industry need to be highlighted and considered more thoroughly. However we also want to build awareness among the general public of the significance & relevance of this change in societies.

“THE INTERNET MADE THE WORLD DIFFERENT. “ The online world is largely unmonitored and outside the bounds of traditional legal models. With the likes of the Natalia Burgess (aka Facebook stalker) talking candidly and nonchalantly on national TV about going for young naive boys as her targets "because they're easier to trick". Yet at least in this particular case, the local police and community rushed to work out how it could be stopped and what she could potentially be charged with. And all this after only four of her victims came forward, out of an estimated 40 or more in total.

And while social networking sites often play to the more sinister side of human nature, it is the near encouragement of this kind of anti-

social behaviour from some sites that has shocked us. And whilst we talk about bullying, we seem to overlook the difference it really makes to not be able to leave the bullies at the school gate anymore.

We believe a large part of these problems has to do with the fact that we don't address the "cyber" aspect of this issue, an aspect that the kids experiencing it, take for granted. After dealing with the teenagers who have encountered these problems, we where shocked to find in most cases the schools had been informed, had not informed the parents (even though in one of these case the material constituted child pornography) nor had they offered any kind of actionable remedy or solution for these kids.

AND TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE’RE INTERACTING… BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY… ITS STILL, JUST ABOUT TALKING.”

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Be honest with your kids—they understand the technology better than we ever could, and we can learn from them here. On the flipside, parents understand life a lot better than their kids—so there has to be a two way exchange of knowledge. Youth intuitively find it hard to grasp the idea that while everything you say at 17 is cool, when you are 30 you are not going to want a public, permanent written record of everything you said back then—if this was the case, you might have acted very differently! Tell them why the rules are there, rather than just telling them more rules without explaining why they are needed. Today’s youth live in a world where anything you hear or read may or may not actually be the truth. In this context , they have to question every fact brought to them.

This realistically creates a generation whose very nature is engrained in being inquisitive, pushing the boundaries and resisting authority—so explain why you put rules in place, not just what they are.

“SOCIAL MEDIA” “Social media is the platforms and technology that enable a public conversation while creating a wide variety of user-generated content. At the core of these communications is the ability to build social relationships by listening and actively participating. As social media continues to evolve, marketers must be involved and use these tools to support customers interactions.” -Virtual Social Media Social Media Defined in 12 Points - http://url.assistnz.com/12SM The distinctive features of “social media” , lie in the principles of Web 2.0 & User generated content. In other words, before now, our emphasis was on the relevance of the traditional, mainstream, one way and controlled sources of information being exchanged. transfer having been decentralised and distributed to each of us, giving us all a voice.

"Information and Communication Technologies" is the industry we are talking about in this context, surely the name alone is an indication of the true essence of what we are talking about here, and that is just a whole raft of new ways for us to communicate with one another, which we can now do without the limits of physical time or location binding us any more.

“In 2008, 1 in 3 Kiwi High School Students reported to being cyber bullied” - NZ Herald WHAT IS CYBERBULLYING? Cyberbullying is not unlike normal bullying, yet instead of occurring just in person, technologies & websites can now facilitate bullying from a distance for some kids. Technology now means that bullying not only occurs in the playground but after school and can even follow kids home. With this medium largely unmonitored, bullying online can be hidden even more than traditional bullying and this causes a serious sense of isolate in a large number of cases. In other countries, the talk of suicides in child who were victimised in such ways has been far and wide, we don’t think we need to wait for a Kiwi kid to take their own life before the general public will talk about this issue.

WHAT MAKES CYBERBULLYING ANY DIFFERENT? There are a number of reasons which seem to make the nature & occurrence of Cyberbullying significantly more concerning than even traditional constructs of bullying in many cases. Cyberbullying can be extremely hard to escape. It can also be anonymous & impersonal and those acting as “bullies” don't have to directly experience the pain inflicted on their victim. The virtual invasion of the home and spread of the targeting that these technologies allow is also significantly concerning.

Often outside of legal bounds & difficult for the schools to manage, the ubiquitous nature of these medias means that the refuge of ones bedroom even, is no longer safe for kids today. While PM John Key emphasised the duty of care carried out & upheld by schools to provide a safe environment for kids, fact is- bullying is a NZ wide issue and this kind of behaviour is rarely limited just to the playground. Most commonly reported concern by many remains the apparent obliviousness of the parents to these issues.

MEDIA AWARENESS NETWORK ON CYBERBULLYING “As its name implies, cyberbullying is bullying through an electronic medium, such as a computer or cell phone.

The Internet’s reach and per-

ceived anonymity means that children who might not otherwise initiate bullying may initiate this sort of behaviour, and an unlimited number of young people may become bystanders who perpetuate the victimization as they read and forward harassing messages and/or images.“ SUGGESTIONS FOR PARENTS: “As a large portion of cyberbullying occurs in the home, you must get better informed about your children’s online activities. Get involved and talk to your child about behaving ethically online.

It can be difficult for a young person to come forward when being bullied; even to mum or dad. To foster a climate of trust, do not overreact. Do not forbid your child to use the Internet in the hope of eliminating the source of the problem: for your child, this is the equivalent of social death and will leave her or him feeling even more victimized (not to mention the fact that an extreme reaction such as this will probably cause your child to avoid confiding in you again when feeling threatened). “ http://url.assistnz.com/MEDIAAWARENESS

Understanding A Youth Perspective Today's youth do not seem to make any distinction between talking to others online or off. Nor do they make any distinction when it comes to bullying, which is understandable considering the idea of a world without the internet is an abstract and unfamiliar idea to modern youth.

With bullying again a newsworthy issue for mainstream media. We were surprised when Tori McAuley, the 13 year old student who had the opportunity to speak with John Key on the matter, was interviewed on Close Up, no mention was made of the fact that these issues are "digital" now. Despite Tori clearly being wise beyond her years, we suspect she would not be able to remember what the Y2K Bug was!

Schools are finding it increasingly more difficult to overcome these ongoing and prevalent issues for Kiwi youth. Yet this should be no surprise to a government that has for years, been stating their intentions to outpace and exceed the UK in becoming an e-democracy after e-government is set to launch in 2020. John Key has been making statements reminding schools of their "duty of care" to provide children with a safe environment – while meanwhile he has a thirteen year old advising him on what, as a country and a society, we should do to address the bullying issue in Kiwi schools. The majority of Kiwi parent appear to have as yet overlooked the significance of this social change, and still don't appear confident to extent their parenting in to the "online arena".

NZ youth suicide rates continue to be among the worst in the world, with three suicides linked to cyber-bullying in NZ reported since 2002. Kids worldwide continue to get to the point where they feel taking their lives is the only solution. Yet with Kiwi youth silently suffering from digital ills such as cyberbullying, no one seems to be making the importance of this factor apparent to those in a position to have influence over the issue.

More than anything, we would ask you to compel other parents not to "take away the toys" so to speak when it comes to having problems online, all this is doing is driving the issue downward. The fear of parents removing access is the number one reason kids are not telling an adult when stuff like this happens online.

AT LEAST 3 KIWI KIDS HAVE TAKEN THIER OWN LIVES SINCE 2002 ALONE AFTER BEING THE TARGETS OF CYBERBULLYING INCIDENTS...

What do you need for a “YouTube Booth”, technical requirements (current shortages) & extras?

We have now had the “YouTube Booth” running at two events now and both have provided us some pretty key learning's. However both have also provided us some key opportunities to engage with the general public, both those who were and weren’t willing to get in front of the camera.

Where can I find more??

Requires one hour preparation time to do required trial runs etc. The booth in this set up at a standard event requires 4 booth operators.

EQUIPMENT REQUIRED FOR SETUP:

3x White Rice Paper Blinds (Velcro between the adjoining edges)

1x Round Carpet Diameter 1.5m 2x Laptops (1 for recording, 1 for projecting, editing titles etc)

Power boards/extensions Projector, Screen & Stand Webcam, Microphone & rec light UV Barrell Blacklight Camera Tripod & remote Posters (set of 5 make up set) Callout cards, copies of script Info sheets, waiver sign in book 2 x Flip cameras or camera phone YouTube Booth shirts & lanyards Pens, Youth Privacy brochures, Spot Prizes & giveaways & “I went in the YouTube Booth” stickers

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There are vast numbers of ways you can assist us depending on what you are willing to do or capable of offering... We would love for your support and following on our content online, so please check out the website where one can register for email updates, “like” us on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/SweetAsSocial ) and/or “Follow” us on Twitter (), you can also subscribe to us on YouTube ( http:// www.youtube.com/user/sweetassocial )

#BeNiceOnline Campaign Script SOCIAL MEDIA…IT’S <INSERT YOUR VIEW HERE> THE INTERNET MADE THE WORLD DIFFERENT. AND TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE’RE INTERACTING… BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY… ITS STILL, JUST ABOUT TALKING. SO WHETHER IT’S ONLINE OR OFF, SPEAK TO PEOPLE WITH RESPECT, DON’T SAY THINGS YOU DON’T MEAN AND TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE TREATED. WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE GETTING PICKED ON, HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY SOMETHING… IF THERES SOMETHING ONLINE THAT YOU DON’T THINK SHOULD BE THERE, REPORT IT TO THE WEBSITE. AND REMEMBER, IN THE ONLINE WORLD… THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS AS THEY SEEM. SO… STOP AND THINK… CAUSE ONCE YOU CLICK, YOU LOSE CONTROL.

Really they are Canadians, they â&#x20AC;&#x153;just really like the birdâ&#x20AC;?

Cyber safety concerns: From the perspective of “parents”, highest concerns revolve around the following common concerns:  “Stranger

danger”, fear of predators or sex offenders, coming in from the “outside” and hurting our youth—evokes instinctive fear of the unknown.  How much personal information are youth revealing about themselves online—valid and justified concern, we refer to it as your “digital footprint”, and this should be a concern for all users. We all need to think about this more.

Little overtly concern from parents about issues of cyber bullying or sexting—until the issue comes up in real life as a concern that relates to them directly. Cyberbullying is more prevalent than we realise, experienced by up to 90% of kids. And Facebook is often slow to react or non responsive, but new measures let you notify a friend when reporting bullying incidents online. What statistics show is that the issues that are most prevalent and distressing for youth online, are considerably different from what their parents believe to be the main problems. If we don’t understand this world, how can we even begin to find solutions that will actually help without involving youth—we can’t! Why not start by getting them to paint us the picture instead.

"...if we're not intentional about what we're communicating with the children, our systems will communicate values, and the value that he's getting is, here's how to be a better hacker than you were before, as opposed to here’s how to engage positively."

Shaun (@shaunfish) Public librarian

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE A TARGET OF A CYBER BULLYING INCIDENT, REGARDLESS OF AGE: Both a technological and social approach is needed. It is understandable that youth often don’t want to tell their parents—so talk to another adult you trust, and be clear how you do or don’t want things to be handled.  Ask for people offline to show you support in an online sense.  Ask the person who uploaded the offensive content to delete it or take it down themselves, and make it clear you will report it otherwise.  Keep evidence of interaction—take a screen shot right away in case the content is changed or deleted.  Make the most of Facebook’s own tools and support services—use status update to announce if your account has been hijacked so people know it wasn’t you posting.  Step in when you see hate online, even if you don’t feel safe speaking out, you can always send a private message of support to the target.

10 Simple Ways to Show Kindness Online

by BRETT BORDERS on MAY 5, 2009

Being in front of a computer all day can feel quite isolating. Being kind costs nothing, it’s easier to do online than in real life, and it’ll score you major bonus points:

1. Say it With a Smile (use emoticons) 2. Praise and Show Affection 3. Use Terms of Endearment 4. Respond to Everyone 5. Express Your Appreciation & Thanks 6. Agree With People 7. Make Other People Look Good 8. Help Other People “Get It” 9. Avoid Negativity, Hostility, Criticism and Snark 10. Keep Your Promises http://copybrighter.com/10-simple-ways-to-show-kindness-online

For those of us who can actually fathom a world that wasn't globally connected and integrated, technology and ICTs especially have had fundamental roles in changing the way we "live, work, receive information and even where we choose to live". (TUANZ 2009).

Digital Safety & Security Contrary to popular opinion, as much as youth really need to have emphasised to them the nature and risk of the self managed system that facilitates social media interactions—many parents, I personally believe, have no way to really grasp the concept of a system having no defined governance or control. I feel by explaining and emphasising these “lessons”, I may actually have many more questions and queries from parents, on what I expect many “digital natives” inherently take for granted. And whilst I always would welcome queries or comments from any readers particularly concerned, I would also make sure that you initiate these kind of conversations at your own dinner table.

As Giazowski (2008) so eloquently put it in their article “Cyberbullying will stop when adults level with their kids”, when describing the permanence of information online, “the problem is that graffiti is particularly hard to erase on the Web.” Even more disconcerting for any parents of teenagers in this context unfortunately, is that cyberbullying is “difficult to prevent, spreads very quickly, and leaves a permanent online trail that can have devastating long term consequences for both the bully and target.” (Safety Web Blog, 2010). The pervasiveness and socially acceptable nature of these technologies only appear to emphasise this hurt and the speed at which it is experienced.

The internet was meant to be the “great leveller of society”, in that we have empowered innovation; entrepreneurs are currently ruling the world in a sense. And consider what it takes to define an entrepreneur. The economist and sociologist Schumpeter differentiated in a way that made him an innovator himself; when all his peers said an entrepreneur was the person who took “capital risk” , he suggested it was the breaking from the traditional, this action he called “innovation”, that made entrepreneurs different to those who were just acting as the manager of a small business. And innovation, in its very essence, is an act of rebellion. "the thing I loved the most about post Soviet poets was their depression because they said when we lived in the Soviet Union we could be creative because we had all these rules that we had. But now we live in a world of freedom, and how can you be creative in a world of freedom where you can say whatever you want?" - Professor Lawrence Lessig

For the record, while we all seem to appreciate and in fact widely quote Schumpeter when we talk about business and the economy today, in true short sighted nature, we miss the lesson he so passionately tried to emphasise while he was alive—and which he wrote about in his first book in English, published in 1911—yet while I can’t be the only one who now owns that book, most seem to overlook what Schumpeter himself was most repetitive and vocal about in his time. He tried to explain that in the previous century, we used to call all “businesses”, family business. All businesses at that time were in fact family businesses, so much that it seemed silly to call them that, and the “family” part was dropped as redundant. And while it was so obviously assumed by one generation, it was completely overlooked by another—who took for granted that “family” and “business” were separate and distinctly different.

Schumpeter wrote about this in German for years before writing it in English for the first time in 1911 in a book widely quoted in our society today, by economists especially. But Schumpeter died frustrated, not feeling like he had got his message across—ironically he was just ahead of his time. So far ahead of his time indeed that it had not been until the time I started my academic career almost a century later, that academics have really started to re-examine the other aspects of his work. And because he is now dead and has no voice, he cannot tell us off when we selectively quote from his work over and over again, without ever grasping the fundamental and underlying truth that we were meant to get from the start.

There is a whole raft of models which I could tell you about or provide links to, but rather than do that, we thought it best to keep things simple. (I would not claim to have made up this particular model but have taken liberties with its adaptations, and apologise for not having a direct attributable reference). We have set this as though it is applied to cyber-safety and interpreted slightly differently, depending on which perspective you may hold. Being that if it were me, I would have got sick of reading by now, I think its pretty safe to assume that explaining it from the perspectives of parents in this context is probably the best bet.

The three E’s are Engage, from a parents perspective this is pretty obvious, but from a youth perspective learn about how you can positively and proactively use this stuff to create the reality that you so desire.*; Educate, this means learn more about the topic obviously; Empower, again obvious from the parent’s perspective maybe, but for youth if you guys are getting the respect that you deserve from your parents, don’t shit on it! It takes a lot to admit you’re wrong or you don’t know everything, and their humility is something you could learn from.



Engage-

with your kids. Set up a regular time for you to get “lessons” from your kids about what

sites and services they are using—by allowing them to play the role of the teacher, this creates opportunities for understanding, and will make them more comfortable about you being part of their online life.

NB: even the most “techie” among us, taught ourselves how to use this stuff at the end of the day, so the lack of confidence reported by parents is unexplained and slightly confusing. If you are going to get your kids to be TEACHING you, this is very different to SHOWING you! One good rule we’ve heard is “Don’t let the “geek” touch the technology”. If you’ve ever had a 5 year old and an iPad and your trying to help them play a game , and you do it by completing the action for them, they will likely find it rather annoying and they will also probably at some point or another, ask you to do it again (its not how we learn really, broadly speaking, as people) — you have to do it yourself, they just have to tell you how to.



Educate—everyone in your household should have set up a “Alert” for your name and handle.

Services we like include Google Alerts and Social Mention but there are plenty out there. Set it up with your kids and share the alert notifications, so Mum gets little Johnny’s updates, but he also gets Mum’s. Alert systems like this work on a varied basis but generally if you had all your privacy settings set to closed and are not making blog posts that are getting highly trafficked, then its safe to say nobody will be getting any alerts.

Check out our Facebook page if you’re not sure how to do this!

NB: These sites and services work slightly different depending on the service, but Learn about privacy settings, if they are correct, you shouldn’t get many alerts. Not sure how to do this? Ask your kids to tell you how. Get them to be an effective and compassionate teacher, its one of the best skills you can give them.



Empower—make these lesson times a priority, its important for your kids to feel like you care about these issues and them, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the answers—your kids have accepted the fact they know that no one has all the answers!

NB: I can use a number of different analogues here, but I’ll do a service to the rest of those who were also fortunate enough to see @lessig speak at NetHui recently and suggest that anyone and everyone should watch this video - http://youtu.be/C1Pz5bTHy7k - Like ANYONE reading this! Now!

Seriously, it could be the best way that anyone could spend the next ten minutes following reading this, unless maybe you felt the need to read this sentence for some reason while you where, say, like about to jump from the plane door while you were sky diving or something– I think then I would probably give you a pass then I guess..maybe. ;) Although in saying that I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe half the initial draw card to the Kiwi audience at least was partly the fact that he starts a conference, in Auckland to an audience of politicians, tech leaders, teachers, random & us—so like “all sorts”, whom raved about it afterwards across the board (myself included obviously) using the following line; “I’d like you to think about an alcoholic, and I’m don’t mean a drop dead drunk alcoholic or even about I’m thinking about just a regular alcoholic and I don’t mean a drop dead alcohol, or even someone who has even recovered with alcoholics anonymous , I’m talking about just your regular alcoholic who works hard to control the addiction he has....”

But back to cyberbullying again... While there is a vast amount of resources out there, I’m not being narcissistic in thinking I can create better, in fact far from it, I need help myself with these technologies., even if people call me an expert sometimes! Like the surfer who rides the kick ass waves, I acknowledge and respect the power of the ocean that I’m riding , and don’t for a second fool myself into thinking I can control it. I am just perplexed especially after going to a conference where I had the opportunity to ask those people who are meant to have the answers to my questions, well, they said I —and for the record, they don’t. Then why has nobody considered admitting maybe we fucked up. Maybe we don’t know everything, and maybe we’re not even sure for a second why we thought we did.

But the one thing I can claim to knowing a bit about, especially after reading Keith Newman’s Connecting the Clouds (which thanks to Internet NZ and all the other sponsors at NetHui I scored myself a free copy of— cheers again btw!) is the ICT industry in New Zealand at least. However I am reminded not to sell myself short I have done a couple of degrees in this shit after all ! :) On watching the first text campaigns Vodafone did in New Zealand again just recently, I was reminded of the argument I remember having with my dad all those years ago about the very first development of “text language”. He thought “the future” of text language used y as the abbreviation for u, and I told him he was stupid! (check out this for a laugh, I should be clear this is not my video, its one care of a user called “tiki32” *props tiki ;) whoever you are+—http://youtu.be/GrNMrCFzGzI) But after all I was 16 at the time and can now tell you, although I didn’t believe it then, that I knew everything.

Cheers for taking the time to check this out and hopefully we may have provided some insight as we ourselves continue taking on this self appointed mission to “change the nature of the world” with hopefully your approval and at some stage no doubt I expect possibly, even your assistance. Check out our great many websites and profiles online– or to make things simple, just “like” us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ SweetAsSocial) so we can keep ya in the loop!! (and big ups to the 166 of you out there who already have– I feel so “liked-up” that it makes me just wana go round “liking” things!! Hehe— Till next time...! Jess

* If you don’t know how to do that, let me know, as I may know something that could help you, and you may know thing or two that could help me. If you don’t know what sort of reality you want to create, even more reason to email me, I’m doing some pretty cool shit and I always need some help!

Be Nice Online Project Organiserâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jess Maher - 022 671 4060

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