Education journalist and broadcaster Mike Baker has written an interesting article for the education section of the BBC website.

He questions if the “government’s attitude to computer technology in schools taking us back to a “dark age” of chalk-and-talk…”

That is the fear of many in education who think the coalition government’s actions are turning back the clock on recent developments in the use of computers for learning.

First there was the decision to abolish Becta, the agency that advises schools on Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Then there were speeches on the curriculum given by the new Education Secretary, Michael Gove, which focused entirely on traditional subjects and were silent about ICT.

Then the government scrapped the Rose Review recommendations for primary schools, which had proposed putting ICT at the core of the curriculum. And just this week, the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, in a major speech on the curriculum, did not mention ICT at all.

But for many the straw that broke the camel’s back was an announcement slipped out quietly as part of the government’s “free schools” policy.

This said that to provide capital for these new parent-run schools, the government was taking £50m from the Harnessing Technology Fund for schools. This fund provides money to improve schools’ broadband connectivity, computer hardware and software and the sums involved represent a quarter of the total investment fund.

This came as a nasty shock to Mike Prince, head of Staveley CE primary school in Cumbria. He regards a fast broadband connection as essential not only to children’s learning, but also for keeping in touch with parents in a rural area. He says “to have the rug pulled on us mid-year leads me to think it’s either being done unwittingly or, more sinisterly, because the government has decided that these things are no longer important”.

After the recent push for parental engagement and rural schools connectivity, he says, it “feels like we are on the edge of the dark age”. Others too have detected more to this than simply the need to make financial savings.

Before the election, Merlin John – a journalist who specialises in technology and learning – tried to get details of the Conservatives’ policy on ICT. However, after a series of e-mail exchanges over almost two years, he failed to receive anything concrete from Conservative Party headquarters.

So, the question that is worrying many in education is whether the government is making these cuts reluctantly in order to avoid hitting core school budgets or whether it is indifferent, or even hostile, to ICT in education?

Access the rest of this article at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10495726.stm

Sky News reports that the number of children rescued from paedophiles prowling the internet has doubled to a record number in the past year.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) said it safeguarded 278 young people over the past 12 months. This was twice the amount protected in the previous period and the most in one year since Ceop was established in 2006.

Of the children, 47 were identified through analysis of photographs and videos posted online by paedophiles. Meanwhile, 417 suspected child sex offenders were arrested for offences from possessing indecent images to rape.

Home Office crime prevention minister James Brokenshire said the Government was committed to protecting children.

“Ceop plays a vital role which means more children are safeguarded, more offenders are apprehended and more professionals are trained,” he said.

The unit has seen some success in introducing a “panic button” for websites, despite a public spat with social networking site Facebook. Investigators received more than 6,200 reports of suspicious activity online through the button, including grooming and fraud.

The unit has also set up a network of more than 46,000 volunteers to give internet safety lessons.

Access the original article online here.

The Telegraph reports on how Google has promised to cease automatically redirecting its Chinese users to its Hong Kong website, which lies outside the bounds of Chinese regulations and can therefore offer uncensored results. However industry experts warned that its move may be too little too late.

The search engine had been using the Hong Kong loophole to game the system since March, after previously announcing that it was determined to stop censorship on its searches.

However, the Chinese authorities have now acted to close down the route. “It is clear from the conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed,” said David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, on the company’s official blog.

Without the license, which expires in two days, Google would not be able to operate a business in China and its site would “effectively go dark”, Mr Drummond added.

In a last-ditch bid to save its China site, Google has resurrected its Google.cn webpage and will now use it to offer its music service and its maps. Any user who then wishes to carry out a search can click a button which will send them back to Hong Kong. “This is not a concession, it is exactly the same service except with one extra click,” said one industry source.

A spokesman for Google would not comment on whether the gambit would satisfy the Chinese government. However, Yu Yang, the head of Analysys International and one of China’s most prominent internet experts, said it was “not likely” that Google would have its license renewed.

He said: “As long as the fundamental dispute over censorship continues, Google will have to keep stepping back as the government advances forward.” But he added that Google would probably “come back to China one day” and that the company’s Hong Kong and American websites would still be accessible to mainland Chinese. “If they blocked the Hong Kong site it would contradict the idea that Hong Kong is part of China,” he said.

Google has been locked in a head-to-head battle with the Chinese government since January, when it announced that it would stop all censorship on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. Although the company only has 30 per cent of the Chinese market, its users include the influential middle classes, academics and professionals.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7860639/Google-may-be-forced-out-of-China-despite-changing-censorship-tactics.html

CNN reports that the mobile web in China has loopholes where content could go under the radar of government censors, analysts say.

“It could be anything else the government normally frowns upon or does not consider healthy, which could be political content to pornographic content,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, a market research and strategy consultant firm.

Mobile phones in China have not escaped government control. Last December, nine Chinese ministries initiated a campaign, which ended in March, to crackdown on pornography transmitted via mobile networks.

Mobile carriers also began monitoring text messages for pornographic and other “illegal” content, blocking phone services to subscribers found to have sent such messages, state media reported in January.

However there are signs that the mobile Web has holes, which some say could grow bigger as more people buy smart phones and third-generation networks become stronger. Out of China’s 346 million netizens, as the country’s Web users are known, 233 million use mobiles to access the Internet, according to government statistics.

“It’s not because the government does not want to regulate the mobile Web, it’s because the system and the situation makes it much harder to regulate the mobile Web than the real Web,” said Li Qiang, a researcher with the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Technically, for the moment, the mobile Web is less regulated than the real Web.”

The country’s three mobile phone operators — China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom — shoulder responsibility for monitoring content flowing through their networks.

Access the full article online at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/17/china.mobile.phone.web/index.html

The Telegraph reports on a leading expert’s comment that children should be banned from using computers in schools until they are nine-years-old because the early use of technology is destroying their attention span.

The premature introduction and overuse of technology is damaging young children whose brains are not yet fully formed, according to Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist and author.

As a result, the “nappy curriculum” – the statutory rules introduced in 2008 which dictate that toddlers should be introduced to computers as early as 22 months of age – is “subverting the development of children’s cognitive skills”.

Speaking to a conference of childcare specialists yesterday, the academic said children needed to use the three dimensional, real world to learn.

“There is evidence to show that introducing information and communication technology (ICT) in the early years actually subverts the very skills that Government ministers said they want children to develop, such as the ability to pay attention for sustained periods,” said Mr Sigman.

“There is a conflict between multitasking and sustained attention. These things cannot and should not be developed at the same time. Sustained attention must be the building block.

“The big problems we are seeing now with children who do not read, or who find it difficult to pay attention to the teacher, or to communicate, are down to attention damage that we are finding in all age groups.”

The controversial Early Years Foundation Stage, which sets dozens of learning goals for children from their first year to the age of five, says that computers should be introduced from 22 months and that from 40 months children should be able to “perform simple ICT functions, such as select a channel on the TV remote control and use a mouse and keyboard to use age-appropriate software”.

Primary schoolchildren have at least one ICT lesson a week and computer use is widespread in other subjects. Research evidence on the effect of ICT on children’s learning, social development and health is mixed but the debate is becoming increasingly polarised.

In the US a number of studies show that age-appropriate software can bring benefits in areas like language development. Other research suggests that prolonged television and computer viewing stunts brain development.

Mr Sigman said that while screen technology can be an important tool in learning, it should feature in schools much later than it does at the moment. “It must be introduced and used judiciously at much later ages – ideally at least age nine – or it can subvert the development of the cognitive skills and curiosity it was intended to foster and enhance,” said the author of Remotely Controlled: How Television is Damaging Our Lives.

“We risk infantilising the child’s mind by spoon-feeding it with strong audio-visual sensations.”

The psychologist dismissed arguments used by some academics and the education technology industry to justify exposing very young children to computer use.

“The rationale behind it is that children are interested in these things and that it is the world that children are growing up in. Therefore we must have them getting to grips with it at 22 months,” he said. “Children might be interested in alcohol, hand guns and pornography – that doesn’t mean we should give them access to these things. Just because children are interested in something, it does not mean by any stretch of the imagination, that it is in their interests to expose them to these things. Children may well be good at using technology but monkeys can learn to use new technology, it is not necessarily something to strive for in itself.”

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/7823259/Ban-computers-from-schools-until-children-reach-age-9-says-expert.html

Protecting private data has always been an important issue, but none more so when it comes to the personal details of our children. There have been two news stories this week regarding the concern surrounding the storage of young peoples’ data…

Many of us may still consider biometric technology as quite futuristic and something often seen in films. However, it’s actually being used quite widely in education today, with about 30% of secondary schools asking children to swipe a fingerprint for registration and to borrow library books.

Some have likened this new technology to a ‘Big Brother’ environment, as thousands of pupils have their fingerprint data recorded and many without parental permission. There have been reports of schools such as the Capital City Academy in North London ‘frogmarching’ pupils to be fingerprinted, causing an uproar as parent’s were not consulted first.  The school had to apologise and delete all fingerprints that were taken without consent.

The Education Secretary Michael Gove has pledged to ban schools from fingerprinting pupils unless they have first obtained explicit parental permission.

Alex Deane, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, commented, “the use of fingerprinting in schools is disproportionate and intrusive – in some cases, parents aren’t even asked whether they agree with it. Schools are not equipped to hold this sort of unique and personal data. By taking it for trivial purposes schools are jeopardising the privacy of the students for the rest of their lives.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office states: “There is nothing explicit in the Data Protection Act to require schools to seek consent from all parents before implementing a fingerprinting application. However, unless schools can be certain that all children understand the implications of giving their fingerprints, they must fully involve parents in order to ensure that the information is obtained fairly.”

Schools insist biometric systems are not a concern because they do not store children’s actual fingerprints. The finger scan machines create a mathematical algorithm which cannot be converted back into an image of a fingerprint.

Elsewhere in the news, we heard yesterday that the ContactPoint database, which lists personal details of all 11 million children in England, will be scrapped by the new government.

The computerised database scheme cost £224 million. Although it was designed to protect children from harm, it caused many concerns about state snooping and large-scale costs.

Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, promised an end to ContactPoint as part of a fresh review of the role of social workers in protecting endangered children.

The ContactPoint database came about after the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie in 2000, intending to make sure no child in danger could ever again go unnoticed by authorities.

But a large number of people – around 400,000 – have had access to ContactPoint records, which include details regarding sex, drug and mental health problems. 50,000 people, such as politicians and celebrities, were to be allowed to keep their identities and details about their children off the system.

The main issue with both the biometric process and central database records is the actual storage of the data. If the records are stored for a period of time, this increases the chance of unauthorised individuals accessing private details or the information being accidentally leaked out. Organisations that handle children’s’ private data need to ensure that details are only stored if absolutely necessary and that they remain securely locked down and accessible only to a minimum number of people.

Last year on the parental control blog we reported on the launch of “Click Clever, Click Safe”, part of a new government strategy to help protect children online.

As part of the campaign, e-safety lessons were to become a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary schools from next year.  We thought this was a great idea, as educating kids from a young age about the dangers of the internet is key to keeping them safe online.

However, these plans are now under review since the new government came into power last month. The Conservative party will be scrapping Labour’s plans for the primary curriculum, in their effort to make £359m of education cuts.

Cuts are due to be made to ICT subjects as well as personal, social and health education, citizenship and RE. Cuts on these will save £7m, in a move towards a more traditional exam system.

Combined with Michael Gove’s announcement regarding state schools now being able to apply for academy status,  these changes could potentially spell out dramatic differences in how children are taught about ICT in schools.

As academies are free from local authority control, this gives them the chance to run the school how they wish – including choosing what subjects are taught. Let’s hope that both the new government and schools with new-found academy status hold e-safety in high regard and continue to help educate children on how to protect themselves when surfing the web.

Facebook confirmed today it is in discussions with the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to insiall a ‘panic button’ application on the site. Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of public policy for Europe told Sky News, “We have continued talking to CEOP and are working very closely with them on a Facebook application that allows Facebook users, when they have concerns, to connnect with CEOP.”

The social networking site had previously turned down calls by CEOP to add “panic buttons” to its pages, despite public concern following the conviction of serial rapist Peter Chapman who posing as a young boy, used the site to meet 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall and lure her to her death in October last year.

Initially, Facebook claimed it had its own “safety net” to ensure its users were secure online. However, it now appears that the site has backed down. “We have been in dialogue with Facebook for some time,” a spokesperson for CEOP told Sky News Online. “Obviously we cannot confirm progress until we have an agreement in place with Facebook, but we are continuing to work with them.”

Facebook also confirmed its willingness to co-operate with CEOP, stating “We have had a number of constructive meetings and are working on a range of innovative approaches that will help educate and raise awareness of how to keep safe online.”

Read more about CEOP here: http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

Government to close school IT quango

It has been announced that Becta, the previous government’s education ICT advisory, is to be closed down. The decision has been made as part of new government cuts for 2010-2011.

Formerly known as the British Educational and Communications Technology Association, Becta was set up in 1988 to promote the effective use of ICT in education.
Becta says that it has saved the education system an average of about £28m per year. It also says it has achieved cost savings of £55m for educational institutions and providers including schools, local authorities and the skills sector in the past year alone.

The organisation was also seen as having played an important role in driving down the cost of computers to schools. In 2005 it produced a paper suggesting that schools could halve their IT bills by adopting open source software rather than Microsoft’s Windows and other applications. In 2008, it suggested that schools should adopt more open source software – which led to Microsoft dropping some of its costs for licensing software to schools.

Becta has been promoting Home Access, the former Labour government’s scheme to bridge the “digital divide” by ensuring all children have a computer at home. It has encouraged English secondary schools to integrate the online reports into virtual learning environments so parents can see what their children are doing in the classroom.
However, it has admitted that despite schools being kitted out with the latest technology, only one in five is using it effectively.

Personally, we don’t think that the loss of Becta will have any significant consequences and the £80m it’ll save by closing will hopefully be better spent elsewhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/24/becta-government-closure

Google rolls out encrypted Web search option

CNN discusses how Google has started to offer an encrypted option for Web searchers, with plans to roll it out for all of its services eventually.

People who want to use the more secure search option can type “https://www.google.com” into their browser, scrambling the connection so the words and phrases they search on, and the results that Google displays, will be protected from interception.

The beta service of the secure Web search option begins in the United States on Friday and will be rolled out over the next few days to users around the world, said Murali Viswanathan, a Google search product manager.

Friday’s announcement makes Google the first major search engine to offer this privacy-protective feature. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft currently do not.
“Some users will want the extra privacy and security this feature will offer,” Viswanathan said in an interview with CNET. “But it’s not going to be the default option, at this point. There’s a lot of work to be done before we get there.”

The encryption protects only data in transit between an individual’s browser and the Google search server. When people click on a search result and are directed to another Web site, they leave the encrypted channel.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/24/cnet.google.encrypted/index.html

Be careful what you tweet

The BBC reports on the perils of Twitter, as Derek Simpson, the joint general secretary of the Unite union has found himself in hot water after sending some indiscreet messages via the micro-blogging service.

Attending sensitive talks with British Airways bosses to try to prevent further strike action by the airline’s cabin crews, Mr Simpson used his Twitter account to give a running commentary on the proceedings.

Entries on his Twitter page, @dereksimpsonjgs, included “Arguments over the eight sacked workers,” and “Fear of more sackings to come”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, BA’s chief executive Willie Walsh – who was also at the meeting – was livid when he later discovered what had been going on.

“I was shocked and angry when I found out that Derek was doing that,” Mr Walsh told the BBC. “Sending out his version of events to the wider audience, that really did undermine my confidence in his desire to resolve this situation. It is a really serious issue.”

Mr Simpson subsequently used Twitter to offer to apologise to Mr Walsh, but the episode did little to help the already strained relations between the two sides.
Let this be a lesson to any of us who are thinking about Tweeting too much private information…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10145993.stm