A d c o l o g

Those who know me or follow my blogs will know that I have more than a passing interest in e-safety.  The first event I helped organise for JISC RSC YH was our “Creative Connectivity” event, which challenged the idea that we should only think about safety in terms of the danger to young people, students and learners FROM the net.  We asked, with the help of Dave Briggs, who is now a local government consultant, what the risk was of NOT opening up social networks.

Last week, JISC RSC YH’s “Excellence in E-Learning” managers forum met to look at the rapidly growing theme of e-safety and I, with the help f of technical advisor Ken Scott and policy expert Kathy Boyer, presented the issues involved.

My approach was to look at the different issues in e-safety and then think how they could be grouped.  I grouped them as ones related to Personal Safety, Institutional Responsibility and Infrastructre/Technical safety.  Each of these strands, I argued, could be approached in three different ways – the “shut eye” approach (ignore it and hopes it goes away), the “ban it” (lockdown) approach, or the “knowledge” (proactive) approach.

After that we looked at some of the emerging issues – where do we stand if people are using their OWN decices while in our care?

Finally, Kathy summed up the fact that e-safety is now a key aspect for OFSTED. The slides from this presentation are included in this post.  A list of safety resources are available from http://delicious.com/tag/eielsafe – you can add you own by using the “eielsafe”  tag in delicious.

Today, I’ve been following the SOCITM conference for local authority ICT professionals.   E-Safety is a top theme with them too.

So, how do we move this forward?  What do you think the issues are for e-safety and ACL?  How locked down is your system?  Do you have issues through the NGfL?  We’re looking at putting on some e-safety events later in the year, or early in the new year – so let us know, what are your issues and where would you like our support.