This week the blog posts about teachers’ return to school have been flying, but few teachers will have that first hard week more in perspective than Caroline Gibson, who spent her holidays working in Malawi with the Global Teachers Programme.

During her adventures she managed to keep an online diary of her learning, the new experiences, the fun, and over the past few weeks has been emptying her brain of the remainder of this amazing journey.

My favourite aspect of her time there is probably one that’s unrelated to her reason for being there. A keen runner, Caroline somehow managed to maintain a training schedule, joined by the occasional local child on her 10k runs - the photo at the top of this post is indicative of just one day’s running companions!

Other adventurer teachers this summer included Musselburgh’s Ollie Bray, who led young people on an expedition across some of America and Canada’s best lakes and mountains with some vital survival equipment in hand, Sheila Laing, Headteacher of Forthview, who spent July visiting Hle Bee school in Thailand July 2008, and Mary Gillespie, Headteacher of Pirniehall, also in Edinburgh, who travelled to partner with Mae Sot Burmese school.

The Continuing Professional Development team would love to hear from other teachers who’ve been away this summer to the far flung, exotic or life-changing location. Leave a commenton their blog to share your experience.

The improvement in attainment has been significant, and you don’t have to read between the lines to see the potential for a second development the architects of Glow maybe hadn’t considered: Glow helps those teachers with less experience help their learners excel particularly more.

This research study tracked four S3 classes working through the same modules as part of the standard grade Biology course. Results were tested using summative instruments of assessment comprising topic-specific questions from past standard grade Biology papers, and an end of year exam. One class, after two modules taught without it, studied one module using ICT timetabled for one of three lessons each week over one school term, with a mixture of independent and collaborative learning tasks reinforcing the learning objectives for that week, delivered using the GLOW virtual learning environment.

Results for this class with the same pupils and the same teacher showed a mean increase of 32.27% for the GLOW vs. non-GLOW modules. The attainment of this class on the non-GLOW modules was consistent and significantly below the best of the four classes. However, on the GLOW module, it was better by 14.69% than the mean of the other three classes. Further examination of the results showed that the weaker students benefited at least as much as their more able classmates.

John Connell, one of Glow’s fathers (or is it uncles?) and now working for Cisco, has lifted the main questions that remain for us to answer in a superb sumary of Jaye’s extensive research. Likewise, I’d encourage those both implementing or deciding how to imlpement Glow to read the paper and make their own suggestions as to how those questions could be answered, here on Connected Live or on John’s blog.

Education
Education for parents on effective means of locking, privacy control and timing. This means developing adult skills so that they feel empowered to have conversations with children about online safety as well as understand how to take appropriate technical steps to manage online risks on behalf of their children, which are appropriate to their age and competence. Furthermore, we will empower children to develop their own skills and become strong swimmers in these rapidly moving online waters. This is part of what some
people call ‘media literacy’.

Filtering
Not a top-down approach. Must be collaborative with children, empowering them to take responsibility for their online behaviours.

Safety
There is too much information about web safety, so much it appears daunting. Web safety information will be drawn into a “one stop shop” later this year by a UK Government (Westminster) task force.

Increasing creativity
Creativity is limited to uploading photos on SNSs and creating profiles, with girls, who are more active on SNSs anyway, being more likely to do this than boys.

Other ‘creative’ activities are: making a playlist of music, adding comments (all above 30%). Other activities like making ringtones, short movies on mobile phones or camcorders or writing a blog are done by small amounts (less than one fifth of 12-15s). Rural teens seem to be more likely to be creative online.

Age-by-age: what do parents feel about their children using the net?
Early years’ parents
“Viruses and breaking the machine”
Concerns of parents of younger children (7 to 8 years) tended to be quite basic, i.e. focusing on breaking the computer or downloading viruses. They did not expect their children to surf much or really experiment although some had begun to try to communicate some of the basic rules around safety and had banned
certain sites.

Later Primary parents
“Accidental stumbling”
Parents of children in this age group (9-11 years) were beginning to feel more concerned about their
children stumbling across inappropriate material or being exposed to paedophile activity. However, they still felt reasonably confident about being in a position to monitor and control their children’s internet activity.

Parents of secondary
“Inappropriate communication”
The parents in the sample who expressed the greatest levels of concern were those whose children were in early secondary school. Parents of younger teens were particularly concerned about social networking sites and gaming communities. Their concerns centred around: Inappropriate sharing of personal details; the risks of befriending a paedophile; and the posting of inappropriate images.
They felt that the changing lifestage (and a growing interest in the opposite sex) coupled with their growing knowledge and confidence in using the internet meant a greater potential for inappropriate behaviour on-line. (Parental knowledge decreases here)
Parents of and children in the 10 to 15 year old age group were also particularly concerned about cyberbullying. (Mostly on MSN chat)
Most teenagers were confident that if they did end up somewhere they didn’t want to be they could just click away.

Parents of senior secondary
“Let them get on with it”
Parents of the oldest children in the sample felt that there was less they could do
to control their children’s safe use of the internet and tended to assume that their
children would be more aware and sensible by this point anyway. They were
more prepared to turn a blind eye and ‘let them get on with it’.

Most 8-11s do not trust what they see on television (44%) and actually trust material on the internet more (59%). Older children show similar patterns of trusting the internet (61%) significantly more than the television (47%).

Rural children show an apparently greater belief in the integrity of what they find online; all of this points to children evaluating what they find on the web (maybe more than what they see on the television). Around 56% at all age groups evaluate websites in some way, mostly by asking someone else if they have visited it or taking its look, feel and up-to-dateness into account.

There is overall a greater trust of news programmes and nature programmes than, say, reality TV.

Many parents argued that, superficially at least, the internet felt safe. Children could surf the internet in the safety of their own home. It kept them off the streets and gave them something to do.

Rules do exist to address concerns about the net. Current concerns are mostly surrounding illegal uses (44% are concerned about this), viruses (13%), innocently viewing pornography (11%), and only 6% are concerned about ID theft. 43% of youngsters don’t go anywhere for advice, 33% to parents and the same for schools, 20% to the net itself.

Parents need the most information - 57% don’t know where to go for information. 4 in 10 wouldn’t know who to complain to about content on the web.

“I wouldn’t listen to my parents anyway, as they don’t know enough.”
17 year old girl, London

“My Mum and Dad haven’t got a clue, I set up the virus software and parent filter, to control my brother, they should make it easier for parents to set up. The AOL has loads of options it’s really complicated”
16 year old girl, Cardiff

The level and nature of parental monitoring and controlling of their children’s internet use was very varied and often dictated by personality type and level of parental experience, as well as factors such as the age, personality and birth order of the child, previous exposure to on-line safety issues, and layout of the home. Many parents found internet usage hard to monitor and control and many did not even try. It was common for ‘rules’ to develop in an ad hoc way as parental knowledge grew.

Most kids don’t perceive there to be rules from parents, and don’t perceive conventions in the same way as real world. Meeting people for real is the main area where the safety message has not got through. Most recognise rules for publishing photos and personal info. Most friend surfers / lurkers are male and most attention seekers are female. Young females are also most likely to play with their identity.

There are different concerns about the internet between the sexes. Concern is generally greater for girls than it is for boys, more protective. Parents saw them as being more vulnerable to predators (especially as they used the internet more for chatting and socialising). Parents acknowledged that boys were more likely to access questionable material but often felt reasonably relaxed about this. They expected boys to be more experimental. Parents of sons were, typically, more relaxed about some sexual exploration arguing that boys would be boys and that it was fairly ‘normal’ for them to seek out porn at some stage or other. Many gave examples of their sons downloading pornographic ringtones or downloading and watching porn on-line. However, on reflection, some expressed concern about the extent of hard core porn on line.

Also, parents of children from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds are less able to protect against the risks of the internet and require additional support.

When asked where responsibility for protecting children is seen to lie, most in the UK say it lies with parents (97%), then schools and ISPs on equal measure and lastly government. Yet, at the same time, children themselves are seen as the number one source of help and information on the net (66%).

When it comes to playing games online 68% said that the games they played on the internet were not controlled in any way. Only 7% got advice from parents on what was suitable, with 6% saying parents trust them to play alone. A further 10% (5 & 5) have filters or parental blocks.

But youngsters are not necessarily well informed about staying safe in these online gaming environments: 55% don’t go anywhere to get advice (students are more confident with gaming online than with other net uses, where 44% would not seek advice on better/safer use), with only 16% using the net, 16% using friends. Most use parents (27%) despite the potential that they may not be in the best position to offer advice, the same that could be said of school (19% ask for advice on safe gaming there).
19% are not sure if the need more help, but 16% need more help.

The majority of adults believe that gaming is beneficial (up to 61% for any one aspect). Imagination seen as one of lowest gains [35%], with games of a more explicit ‘edu’ nature being seen as beneficial: 42% thought (education) games could be useful for road safety, drug use, political and global issues, social and moral responsibility, advice on diet and health). 39% thought games offered escapism. 37% saw games offering a technological understanding.

66% of 15-24 year olds have broadband and about 82% of them have Social Networking Service (SNS) profile. Most 16-17 yrs have a profile (67%).
15% of very young children (6-11 yrs) have used Bebo, 4% have used Facebook and 8% have used MySpace. By 12 yrs most kids can describe what a SNS is, although they don’t know the term. Most adults don’t have a SNS but are more likely to if their children do (is for the purposes of snooping?).

The most likely intellectual rejectors of social networks are older teens. In social networks most people have between 1-20 friends.

Mobile net use
24% are concerned that the existing ways of controlling the web would not have any effect on the many young people accessing the net on their mobile phones. Many of those who don’t use the net (this tends to be the older generations) are most likely to also not use mobile technology. Those who do use mobile phones use them most for (2007 compared to 2005):

• Sending texts (83%, up from 79)
• Taking pictures (60%, up from 38%)
• Sending photos (44%)
• Playing games (27%, down from 28%)
• Listening to music (25%)
• Accessing email or the net (15%, up from 11%)

Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs)
100% of schools should have Acceptable Use Policies that are regularly reviewed, monitored and agreed with parents and students.

29% of people in the UK have never had access before or used the net. A large number of these (17%) are nay-sayers, and never will get access to the net. The age where internet use starts to plummet is currently around 45. The reasons for this seem to be mostly down to lack of knowledge of how to use the internet or a computer. There is also more chance that a non-user thinks of the net as not making life easier, than a user believes (48% v 85%). The reasons people find for not using the net are likely to hit most on being complex, containing too much immoral material and, less so, being frustrating to work with.

Increasingly, though, access to equipment is an issue. Ironically, although costs are coming down but hardware is made more powerful and better designed, cost is seen as an increasing reason NOT to get a computer, although two thirds of internet users would find the notion of not having access a problem for carrying out their lives.