Recently in FOSI Conference Category
Just wanted to give a heads up - Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) has posted all of the information from their December conference on their website. Extensive coverage of the event is available, including photos, videos of speeches and breakout sessions, and reports published at the conference.
Check it out here.
Who should assume greater responsibility for keeping kids safe online? Law enforcement? Government? Parents?
Each of these groups has a critical role- government, for example, is certainly an important contributor to promoting online safety, but regulations can only extend so far. Ultimately, parents remain the greatest influence in affecting their children's behavior online.
At last month's FOSI conference, Roger Cochetti from the Computing Technology Industry Association shared a similar viewpoint. Cochetti compared perceptions of online safety vs. offline safety, asserting that it is common sense that parents should be the ultimate protectors of children in both worlds.
But what exactly can parents do to protect their children in the world of Web 2.0? AT&T's Dorothy Atwood shared insights about the tools available to aide parents, such as AT&T's Smart Limits, which allows parents to filter content and monitor online use. You can learn more about Smart Limits here.
At last week's FOSI conference, I served as moderator for the panel, "What the Research is Telling Us." After delivering brief introductory remarks, I introduced the speakers: Amanda Lenhart (Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet and American Life Project) and Sonia Livingstone (Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science). They presented the statistics regarding online predators, cyber bullying, and inappropriate content and contacts online. I followed their presentations with a question regarding Internet user's awareness of the lack of privacy for their personal information and photos online, particularly on social networks.
I believe the research information presented by these two experts is so important for anyone working on online safety. We need to understand what kids are experiencing online before we can determine the best way to protect them.
Both of their presentations are now available online:
I want to take a moment to call attention to several excellent resources from last week's FOSI conference. The day was packed with great speakers, workshops, and presentations, all of which were extremely valuable. Topics included trends, the role of government regulation, and international policy.
In coming posts, I'll focus more on a few of these topics, including research and the role of education, but I encourage anyone interested in the latest online safety information to review the following resources:
FOSI's Annual State of Online Safety Report
Media Creativity and the Public Good by the Aspen Institute
A blog post from Google's Chief Internet Evangelist on the company's role in keeping kids safe online
Last week I had the pleasure of participating in the first annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, "Rights and Responsibility: Child Protection in a Web 2.0 World." Stephen Balkam, FOSI's CEO, opened the conference, by discussing the "new culture of responsibility," a theme which continued throughout much of the day.
What does this mean? Simply put, as the Internet has confronted us with a new medium - one that is highly dynamic and unlike any we've seen before - and parents, teachers, policy makers, and others must work together in order to achieve the highest degree of online safety for our families. Even if parents lack a complete understanding of Web 2.0 tools, they still hold responsibility for instilling safe online practices in their children. One speaker referred to a "Web 2.0 approach based on educational resources; not fear."
Stephen Balkam is quite impressive and did a superb job of organizing the program. I want to congratule Stephen and the FOSI staff and Board for an excellent first annual online safety conferences. I expect there will be many more FOSI events, which is good news for the online safety community.
I will have more to post later this week about the conference.
