ICT Coalition Forum - January 2016

The ICT Coalition for Children Online aims to help younger internet users across Europe to make the most of the online world and deal with any potential challenges and risks. With the internet now one of the most important sources of information, education and entertainment for many people, it is vital that industry, government, schools and other relevant organisations work together to help children and young people use the internet in a safe and responsible way.

Date 2016-01-19 Author ICT Coalition
picture
The first ICT Coalition Forum meeting of the year took place on 19 January 2016 with discussion and presentations on current projects and activities of the attending stakeholders. Discussion centred around future trends with a focus on the emotional resilience of children.
 
A summary of the meeting follows:
 
The event started with Jutta Croll and her report ‘Let's Play it Safe: Children and Youths in the Digital World'. This report was commissioned by the ICT Coalition as an independent assessment of the emerging trends and evolutions in the areas covered by the services and products of its members.
 
Dr Richard Graham, Consultant Adolescent Psychiatrist and Technology Addiction Lead at the Tavistock Clinic delivered a presentation on ‘Building young people's online resilience'. He gave a medical perspective on internet safety and resilience, focusing on features associated with resilience, the relation between adverse life experiences and mental health.
 
Kira O'Connor from Twitter presented Periscope. Periscope is a live video streaming app purchased in January 2015 by Twitter and launched in March 2015, following a ‘safety' assessment. Aimed at users 13 years and older, the app already has 10 million accounts with over 40 years of video seen per day. The app connects users in real time, and includes broadcasting, chat, and it allows interactions through ‘hearts' etc. Community guidelines are provided with an emphasis on respect, dos and don'ts and zero tolerance to sexual child abuse. When a user is blocked, the blocked user and other users are advised. Periscope, like Twitter, relies on the community to flag problems related to content and behavior.
 
Better Internet for Kids (BIK) was represented by Hans Martens (Insafe network Coordinator), emphasising the BIK core service platform – including a portal, community, youth area and specifically the Safer Internet Day (SID) 2016 campaign. With a theme of ‘Play your part for a better internet!', SID 2016 was presented along with its various tools made available for those who are willing to actively engage in supporting the campaign.
 
John Carr presented the ‘LSE-UNICEF paper on children and internet governance'. The full report is available online.
 
Yves Boillot from Orange spoke about the ‘Orange Supercoders International Festival 2015': a series of international workshops promoting the initiation of children into coding by teaching them to create videos and animations using the Scratch platform developed by MIT. The workshops took place in nine countries in Europe and Africa, mobilising 400 volunteers from Orange and reaching 1,400 children. The aim of the project is to develop creativity, support and collaboration. More information is available at http://supercoders.orange.com/en/home. For the results of what the children produced see http://supercoders.orange.com/en/The-results.
 
Brittany Smith (Google) and Vicki Shotbolt (ParentZone) presented ‘Internet Legends – how to be safe and epic online'. Internet Legends is an exciting way to educate UK primary school children on online safety. With the memorable Internet Legends code, Google and ParentZone aim to empower children with the skills they need to stay safe and act responsibly online. There are four pillars: think before you share, protect your stuff, check it's for real, and respect each other. For further information, see g.co/internetlegends.
 
Paul Cording (Vodafone) shared information on the ‘Be Strong Online with Diana Awards' initiative. The Vodafone Guardian app functionality (presented in 2013) is becoming available within device operating systems, while Vodafone UK have distributed 1 million Vodafone Digital Parenting magazines for SID. Vodafone's education and awareness campaigns now include a peer-to-peer campaign for younger teenagers ‘Be Strong' with The Diana Award. This year will see the roll out across other markets and the integration with other initiatives such as partnership use of emoji through social media. More information is available here.
 
Sarah Andrew from OFCOM spoke about ‘The ICT Principles as a basis for UK Social Networking Guidelines' and presented the UKCCIS (UK Council for Child Internet Safety) work on Child safety online – a practical guide for providers of social media and interactive services. This guide provides practical advice based on current good practice for social media and interactive services to adopt a culture of ‘safety by design', targeting from start-ups to growth stage companies.
 
Visit the ICT Coalition website at www.ictcoalition.eu.

Related news