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online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Parents/Carers News

31 October 2013

And so it begins... California-based Glass Explorer Cecilia Adabie is the first person to get a ticket while wearing Google's head-mounted computer. And she won't be the last.

Abadie was driving in San Diego when an officer pulled her over for speeding. The primary infraction was for going 15 mph over the speed limit, but there was a secondary offense scrawled on the ticket: "driving w/ monitor visible to driver (Google Glass)."

 

Read the full story here.

17 October 2013

'Young people are frequently taking huge risks making and sending sexual images of themselves, also known as 'sexting'.

ChildLine and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are joining forces to ensure young people of 17 years and under know where to turn to get sexually explicit images removed from online.

In a ChildLine survey of 13-18 year olds:

60 per cent said they had been asked for a sexual image or video of themselves

40 per cent said they had created an image or video of themselves

25 per cent said they had sent an image or video of themselves to someone else

Sexual images and videos received and sent

by strangers

Over half of the young people surveyed by ChildLine said they had received a sexual photo or video, most received them from a partner but a third received them from a stranger.(1)

Whilst most said the image went to a boyfriend or girlfriend, a third said they sent it to someone they met online but didn't know in real life and 15 per cent said they had sent it to a total stranger.'

Click here for resources and more information.

17 October 2013

Facebook announced today that teenage users can now make their posts public on Facebook. Previously, the social network limited users between the ages of 13 and 17 to distributing posts to their extended network—i.e. friends and friends of friends. Teenage users also now have the option to turn on the "follow" setting for their accounts, letting public updates appear in news feeds.

In an apparent attempt to mitigate the impact, Facebook has set the default sharing setting for new teen accounts at "friends only," compared to the previous default of "friends of friends."

 

Read more here.

17 October 2013

Six out of 10 teenagers say they have been asked for sexual images or videos, an NSPCC/ChildLine poll seen by the BBC's Newsnight programme suggests.

Of those polled, 40% said they had created a sexual image or video, and about a quarter said they had sent one to someone else by text.

The NSPCC's head, Peter Wanless, said "sexting" was getting much more common. Read the full article here.

30 September 2013

'Remember in "The Dark Knight" when Batman turns all the mobile phones in Gotham City into one super-surveillance network that can show him what the populace is up to at any given moment? That basically exists already, only it's no masked vigilante behind it. It's Foursquare.'

Read more here.

Remember in “The Dark Knight” when Batman turns all the mobile phones in Gotham City into one super-surveillance network that can show him what the populace is up to at any given moment? That basically exists already, only it’s no masked vigilante behind it. It’s Foursquare.
18 September 2013

'Students at Saltash School are busy practising their French speaking skills as their teacher, Ben Rowe, stands at the front of the classroom armed with a smartphone. He types a message into his mobile: "Good use of vocab". A moment later the classroom computer bleeps and his feedback appears on its screen.

It might sound like a roundabout way to praise students, but Rowe's message travels wider than the classroom wall.'

Read The Guardian article here.