Now is the time that many people are looking for rental accommodation to take up for 2012 whether it be for studying at Uni or other reasons.  We have noticed a spate of rental accommodation scams lately where a real bargain flat, apartment or house or flatmate situation is offered on one of a multitude of websites. Often it is advertised as central and includes great photos as well.  It will have lots of extras (like power and water included as well as internet access, dishwasher, heat pump etc).  The owner will be overseas and needs you to accept the offer without actually going through the place (which seems ok if you are in a different part of the country at the time).

So you look at the photos, email back and forth a few times and decide this will be great for you and the owner sounds really nice.  He or she may even email you a passport photo of themselves and the Title Deed to the property.

All you have to do is deposit the bond (say 4 weeks rent) and 2 weeks rent in advance into their bank account overseas or send it by Western Union because they can’t get to a bank easily, and the keys will be sent back to you as soon as the money clears so you have them well before you take up the tenancy.  The stories may vary a bit, but money first for keys second is the familiar theme – oh and along the way you will be asked to fill out an application form with a lot of personal information in included.

We have found that the photos of the rental may have been on a real estate sales site in the last few months or a different site under the actual owner’s name.  The photos have been copied and used to try to trick someone into parting with money or at the very least with personal information.

Read more about scams on www.scamwatch.govt.nz the Ministry or Consumer Affairs website and report scams to www.theorb.org.nz

On the one hand, kids growing up in this, the second decade of the 21st century, have never had it so good (despite the current recessionary GFC rumblings). Ample access to food, shelter and warmth and a distinct lack of world wars – what more can a child ask for?

On the other hand, stop to think for too long and you can list: child poverty, child abuse, climate change, the downward pressure on wages and a need to build skills and abilities to compete with schoolchildren anywhere and everywhere as globalisation takes effect on labour markets.

As the father of two primary age children I try to follow Monty Python’s advice and always look on the bright side of life. And so I’m going to launch in to a quick review of two separate but connected education related stories out there on today’s interweb.

First off, the news that one bold American state has abandoned testing cursive writing amongst schooolchildren to focus instead on keyboard skills.

How do you react to such a step change? It’s not exactly a battle on the scale of natural selection vs. creationary teachings. It does however – I think – reflect the way our world is moving. Who needs to write neatly if you spend 8+ hours a day typing and receiving emails?

One parent’s reaction: “How are they supposed to know how to sign their names?” Will children need to when everyone has their own personal digital signature?

No need for pens when we have our own personal robots!

A screenshot from the Latitude research at http://latd.tv/kids/kidsTech.pdf

Moving on then to my next piece of educational news as it applies to children’s desires for developments in Human Computer Interaction. A great study prepared by Latitude 42 entitled Children’s Future Requests for Computers & the Internet.

Interviewing 200 children around the globe, the study asks what tech changes would you like to see in years to come? Again as a parent and iPhone owner I can only confirm their finding that touch based interfaces (or anything better) wins out any day over mouse clicking.

In general I found the 12 slides – available embedded below – all very Star Trek:

• kids want computers that ‘print’ food (now almost working with chocolate)
• the ability to visit physical spaces (think the Holodeck)
• but my favourite is the slide artwork reproduced above showing any computer as a teleportation device! Gene Rodenberry was so ahead of his time…

How is this useful for educators? Well it certainly confirms for me one of NetSafe’s 4 truths of cybersafety – that technology for digital natives (terrible term) is very much normative and in fact part and parcel of everyday life.

Children no longer see their environment split into an online and offline world, they would if anything like to see those Star Trek novelties become real and so too would I.

What better way to both enhance learning with virtual field trips and save the planet from the carbon ravages of air travel than to invent a working transporter? Make it so!

Latitude 42 Study: Children’s Future Requests for Computers & the Internet

The organisation produces a video each year around the topic chosen and you can see the latest below on the theme of digital lives, the impact of sharing photos online and the ownership of information:

I’m not sure I understand this video completely but it’s prompted some debate in the NetSafe office about which cybersafety/digital literacy videos are the most effective in trying to reach a youth audience.

We’ve chosen 5 below on the topics of cyberbullying and internet safety in general. They are produced by organisations around the globe and take a very different approach to delivering the message.

Take a look at the ones we’ve chosen and please leave a comment about which one you think is best (based on tone /production values /any criteria you want to use).

If you’re an educator would you use any of these in your school and with your students?

We’d really value your feedback on this topic, details about the appropriate audience for these kinds of messages and if you think they spark some understanding with children and their parents.

5 short videos to review

First up we’ve chosen ‘Where’s Klaus‘ – Klaus is upstairs at home inviting some less than ideal friends to come visit

Next is a similar tale of unsuitable new childhood friends from Icelandic ISP Siminn – instead of CGI robots shooting up the house you have tweens and teens frequenting nightclubs, stripclubs and casinos:

Our third short video was also produced (in 2009) under the Safer Internet Day banner and shows the harmful effect of IM or online chat bullying:

This next video is aimed squarely at teens 13 – 16 years of age experimenting with webcams and their sexuality online and was produced by the Danish Media Council for Children and Young People:

Our last pick comes from the US Ad Council who have created some well known resources under the themes Delete Cyberbullying and Think Before You Post. This video simply titled Talent Show takes the insults associated with cyberbullying and exposes how unacceptable making those kind of remarks would be in front of a public audience:

What works?

Every nation addressing internet safety has a different cultural view of the problem and of ways to change behaviour – which video would be effective for your family, friends or students?

Leave a comment below or pick a choice on the poll top right of this page.

Ignore my four wheeled battle though and think of the children – 7/8 weeks away from their desks, large chunks of time having been spent with Nintendo DSs, Playstations and mobile phones texting to their mates. What spelling horrors will teachers face in those cute ‘what I did on my summer holiday’ stories they’ll soon be marking?

Texting and txt speak has been blamed in the past for the decline of one of civilisation’s core skills – the ability to spell. If I think back to my school days in the UK I can still sense the fear our class felt when Mr Campbell  would start marking our English exercise books, carefully drawing his ear shaped signs over our grammatical errors. I seem to remember those who really upset him being made to stand in the bin in the corner of the room (that could be a repressed memory though).

Back in 2003 Lynne Truss wrote the book Eat, Shoots & Leaves about her love of punctuation and the proper use of apostrophes amongst other things – she also touched on the decline in standards due to the rise of the web. As a former journalist myself, I like to think I can spell and punctuate correctly but if I’m honest I normally reached for the spellchecker function and used to wait for the sub-editor to do their thing.

You don’t have spellcheck on most mobile phones though and who can be bothered, to be honest, to type in all those vowels anyway? After spending six months learning shorthand to work as a court reporter I found it incredibly easy to move to txt speak which works in the same shorthand manner.

Not everyone finds it so easy as this great opinion piece in The Dominion Post by Linley Boniface explains:

In recent months, however, I’ve realised that being unable to text has long since ceased to be seen as charmingly eccentric and is now widely regarded as just plain weird. In status terms, it’s like not knowing how to tie your shoelaces, or being unable to cut the top off your boiled egg without assistance from a grown-up. Annoyingly, some people continue to send me texts, forcing me to ask my 10-year-old to retrieve them.

So does this digital divide between generations mean the end of English as we know it? Recent studies in Canada and the UK would suggest not – work done at Coventry University suggests that “a child’s level of ‘textism’ could be used to predict their reading ability and ‘phonological awareness’ – the ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of sound in speech.”

Keep this fact in mind if you find yourself reading homework featuring textisms over the next few weeks: “Texting also appears to be a valuable form of contact with written English for many children, which enables them to practice reading and spelling on a daily basis.”

* * *

It’s been several weeks since our last blog post. You may be well up to speed on the upcoming buzziness around the iTablet launch or also discussing the finer points of the Brangelina split (don’t forget to vote on our poll!). I know Christmas is a long time ago now but if you missed our Xmas video be sure to have a watch.

The 21 minute video below showcases the programme and also covers some of the issues experienced by staff and students at the centres:

Our approach this year was a little bit different – we actively sought out people already exploring the boundaries of cybersafety in schools and listened to how they are working to create New Zealand’s digital citizens of the future.

As well as creating a dedicated social networking site to recruit a new online panel of expert advisers, we also put together a poll and asked people ‘What are the 3 most important characteristics of a Digital Citizen?‘

The results of the poll are displayed below. For our thoughts on the event and related topics such as filtering in schools, check out these posts on the main NetSafe blog and our onsite reporting on the Learn:Guide:Protect site.

For those people who’ve never attended Ulearn, sit back and enjoy a 3 and a half minute video guide to the event, hosted by NetSafe’s own camera friendly talent, Martin Cocker:

What are the 3 most important characteristics of a Digital Citizen?

Georgia State Capital building shrouded in grey skys

Sean and Lee from NetSafe are in the southern US state of Georgia this week delivering the training modules associated with the NetSafe Kit for Schools.

Whilst the visit has been on the cards for several months, their timing appears to have coincided with severe flooding that has left 7 people dead as massive rainfall has swept the southern states.

Undeterred, the pair are now feeding back updates on their visit as they share their wisdom and training techniques with a crowd of 30 attendees who will be delivering cybersafety training to teachers and students in schools all across the state.

Trainers attend the courses over video conference from across the state

NetSafe was approached by educators in Georgia several years ago and an agreement was reached to provide the New Zealand schools kit for use across 159 counties.

Sean and Lee are spending 5 days working in Atlanta. Many of the participants are coming in to the classroom over video conference due partly to the size of the state (it’s roughly the same size as the North Island and has more than 5 million people living in the Atlanta metro area alone) and partly because of the horrendous weather.

We hope the course goes well, the rains subside and that they build strong ties with the Georgia cybersafety trainers.

There’s plenty of time to get used to biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

Our new model, to be titled ‘Learn – Guide – Protect’, reflects the changing face of ICT in schools and the fact that things have come along leaps and bounds since the kit was first launched in 2001.

The short 9 minute video below covers Martin’s introduction to the meeting and how our thinking around cybersafe schools has evolved. It should also give you a taste of what happens at our monthly meetings.

If you’d like to be involved in the LGP drafting process or come along to the next meeting then leave a comment or email us at queries@netsafe.org.nz.

We hope the new framework will allow greater involvement with teachers working through issues in the classroom and other professionals who are making increased use of what technology has to offer New Zealand students.

Vodafone this week introduced a new service to assist people who are being harassed, bullied or receiving unwanted texts. Prepay users have found they were unable to speak to the Vodafone call centre to lay a complaint if they didn’t have $1 credit on their phone. The $1 credit has also caused problems for people with issues about loading credit on their phone being caught in a Catch 22.

Now, if someone is receiving unwanted texts, they can text ‘BULLY’ to 4001, and Vodafone undertake to ring them back within 2 working days.  Hopefully this will mean that people can access the complaints process and the offending texter can be warned or if necessary taken off the network.

Vodafone need to be more public about the criteria for a complaint -4 or more unwanted UNREPLIED to texts within a week qualifies for a warning. Many people do unknowingly reply and so then have to wait for another 4 texts to come in.

I’ll be interested to see how well the TXT ‘BULLY’ to 4001 works – will people be called back after 3.15 pm  so students are not in class? (the call centre hours are 8 am to 5 pm Mon to Friday), how many times will Vodfaone try to get hold of the person? Will people bother to continue the process if they have to wait 2 working days, then learn that they have to stop replying and collect 4 unwanted texts, TXT ‘BULLY’ to 4001 again, and wait another 2 working days for a response?

It will be more effective when we see all new mobiles having a block function so users can do it themselves! And good on Vodafone for providing another channel for people to use, especially one which may be more popular for youth.