Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

France & Germany line up to bash Internet Explorer

Here’s a link to the article that might be of interest to you!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/18/browser_hole/

Well, it may be 5 years too late but at last Central Government has decided to catch up with the times and revise the primary school curriculum to include Internet Safety and prepare our children for the digital age.

It has long been the belief of IT educationalists that there is no point in restricting young people’s access to the wealth of information held on “t’internet”.  But, wouldn’t it be better preparing our future generations by providing them with the knowledge and understanding of not only the benefits, but the dangers of “t’internet” and enabling them to make informed decisions and judgements for themselves.  Because we all know, if you tell a young person not to do something … the likelihood is that they WILL go and do exactly what you’ve told them not to!

Last Tuesday I helped to launch Birmingham’s e-Safety Strategy on behalf of Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board.  My presentation, which is below, talked about the different work that Digital Birmingham has done around the Home Access agenda and then covered Social Networking Sites as a new technology being used by young people that professionals don’t always have a full understanding of.



So I spoke about the Aston Pride project to provide computers in the homes of primary and secondary school children and also the Computers for Pupils grant which has been used by the city to launch 40-50 Birmingham e-Learning Foundation schemes in Secondary Schools across the city. The latter means that more money is coming back in to the system to help provide kit to more kids. More - e-Safety Strategy Launch event

Last Thursday, myself and Matt Butler from Birmingham BEST went down to London for a Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) event about Social Media and councils.  It was a mixture of talks and panels about how politicians can use social media, which tended towards the campaigning value rather than talking with constituents, and possible usages of social media within local government.

Because there was a lot of content, I’m going to split these posts up between the political and council based bits with this one concentrating on the politics side.

The first keynote speaker was Iain Dale, the Conservative political blogger.  He was a very engaging speaker, often because he spoke of the effects that his blogging had made upon his personal life.  It had already become obvious that at least one person had strong opinions about him before he stood up as they had called him a liar on the Twitterfall in the room.  Iain used this opportunity to say how he had been targeted by some people he considered to be political obsessives as a result of his writing. More - Local Government and Social Media event - Political

The BBC’s Breathing Spaces project was aimed at getting people out and about in nature as well as setting up projects to create their own Breathing Spaces.  Examples they gave were of putting up a bird feeder or taking part in the inaugural National Moth Night on 18th-19th September (we’re thinking of leaving the light on for them tonight).

Aston Hall - A Breathing Space which is local to the Digital Birmingham office

An extension of this is Open Air, which uses Google’s Gears browser add-on  to do some clever location finding gubbins.  So, if you go to the site it checks where it thinks you are and then tells you about the closest Breathing Spaces. It also provides a weather forecast for your area.

More - BBC Open Air: location aware Breathing Spaces

Birmingham Bulletin the City’s own e-mail alert service delivered a great news story today into my in-box which I have to tell you all.  Birmingham has got its very own digitally enabled news site.  You must visit www.Birminghamnewsroom.com as its a one stop shop for all the news from the City Council.  

No more do I have to go hunting for information across various websites to get the latest news.  It has rss feeds, video, twitter, flickr and links to Birmingham own Youtube channel.   It is great to see that the City is at the forefront of embracing new technologies and social media and this can only enhance Birmingham reputation as a leading digital city.

4iP, Channel 4’s innovation fund for digital media, has started announcing its grant awards and it’s good to see that Birmingham has a part in them.

Will Perrin’s Talk About Local is a collaboration with UK Online Centres to establish a network of tools with support for individuals and community groups to set up their own online presence.  Because of the strength of blogging talent in Birmingham, more particularly the many people using social media to increase civic engagement and give people a voice in their community, Talk About Local will be doing a lot of it’s early work in the Midlands.  Much of this will be in Birmingham but the Black Country and Stoke should get a look in as well. More - 4iP Projects Announced

A few months ago I think my first question might have been, what is a hashtag?  So, for anybody still as unenlightened as I was: hashtags are a way of marking your message on Twitter so that it can then be grouped with other messages using the same tag.

That sounds really boring, doesn’t it?

But there have been a number of events that I’ve either attended, watched on telly or even not watched on telly where I’ve also followed the hashtag and found it really useful.  For instance, at the recent Digital Inclusion Conference there were a significant number of delegates, and importantly, people who hadn’t been able to attend, who were using the hashtag #ndi09 to follow what was going on across the conference.  This form of Live Blogging meant that a lot of interested people who couldn’t take two days away from work to attend the conference, but were very interested in the subject matter, could contribute to the discussions.

More - What’s the Hashtag?

Google Maps

As someone with an unfortunate combination of a terrible sense of direction and the complacency to assume I’ll somehow find the way (not to mention the common male trait of being reluctant to ask for directions), online maps have saved me many an hour of aimless wandering around unfamiliar areas. Any tool that helps me to spec a place out must, then, be a Good Thing. More - I can see your house from here!