ISSUES
: The Internet of Things
Chapter 1: Digital issues
17
One young man, who wants to
remain anonymous, said that his
homosexuality was outed to his
unsupportive parents by parental
control software.
“They didn’t say they had seen what
I had looked at but they hinted very
strongly at it in conversation,” he
said, adding that he soon learned
how to work around his parent’s
system.
Barker says: “There’s certainly
evidence that suggests that
teenagers who know they are being
monitored at home will look at a
friend’s device. And then they don’t
have someone to talk to about it.”
So do software companies consider
these issues when creating their
services?
“Absolutely,” says Samani. “We’ll
always recommend that the
reporting and the communication
for children should be used as a
vehicle to begin or continue that
dialogue with children.
Shaw says Norton “looks at every
aspect when designing a tool”,
but adds that the primary focus is
protecting the child. “At the end of
the day it’s a tool … How people
use the tool is up to them.”
When it comes to balancing privacy
and protection, the key concepts
that emerge are education,
conversation, consent and the
fact that the Internet offers lots
of opportunities for children –
positive and negative. As for how
far parental control should go, our
anonymous gay man sums it up
well: “Computers shouldn’t do the
parenting.”
5 November 2015
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The above information is
reprinted with kind permission
from
The Guardian
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© 2016 Guardian News
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Bringing their own future
Helen Dorritt explores how primary and secondary
schools are harnessing BYOD for the benefit of learning.
W
hen mobile phones first
became a ubiquitous part
of day-to-day life, they
were an immediate distraction for
students, and teachers battled to
keep them out of the classroom.
But with the advent of smartphones
and tablets creating instant
access to limitless information and
resources, more and more schools
are changing their attitudes to these
beeping interlopers and actually
embracing their presence through
BYOD – bring your own device.
YouGov research from 2014 shows
that 81% of UK 13–18-year-olds
own their own smartphone, with
34% also owning a tablet. Primary-
aged children are equally tech
savvy, with statistics from the same
year recording that 25% of children
own their own tablet before the age
of eight and 70% are confident in
using mobile devices by the time
they go to school. So whether you
like it or not, there’s no getting away
from the fact that technology is an
intrinsic part of life today, and more
and more schools are realising the
benefits of integrating it into their
teaching in order to benefit learning.
“The way that students work on
a day-to-day basis is completely
different now,” says Brian Fischer,
assistant headteacher of Tibshelf
Community School. “They expect
access to Wi-Fi at all times and to
be able to use their devices.”
BYOD is a simple idea: students
bring in their own smartphones,
tablets and laptops for use in the
classroom. Teachers can plan a
lesson around them, or use them
in a more spontaneous manner to
encourage independent research.
Tablets for Schools, a charity that
helps schools use the transformative
powers of technology to build
learning and attainment, has done
a great deal of research into the
benefits of using devices in the
classroom and records that: “Many
learning benefits were apparent
soon after tablets were introduced,
from
greater
engagement
through to independent learning,
communication, collaboration and
content that could be customised
for different learning styles and
abilities. Students themselves
reported learning benefits.”
Tibshelf, a secondary school in
Derbyshire, is currently exploring
the benefits of BYOD for its 700
students. The school moved into
new premises in 2013 and took this
opportunity to integrate technology
into its everyday teaching practice,
of which BYOD was a part from the
beginning. “We started out small,
asking students to use their devices
to undertake research in lessons,”
explains Brian. “For example, if a
student wants to know something,
we encourage them to take out their
phone and find it out for themselves.
This also has the advantage of
lessons being more spontaneous
and allowing teachers to react to
events in class – they don’t have to
have planned everything in advance.
It’s also useful for students to be
able to access simple apps such as
dictionaries and calculators.”
In terms of more complex functions,
Tibshelf is trialling a free student
planner app, where homework
assignments can be automatically
uploaded to a student’s network
profile by teachers, and that parents
can also access to check what work
their child should be doing. There
have also been some unexpected
uses of BYOD that teachers hadn’t
predicted. “We’ve found that some
students are taking photos of things
on the board, such as diagrams
or equations, as it’s a quick and
easy way to capture information.”
Tibshelf’s BYOD scheme has
been received enthusiastically
by its students, with 95% of them
accessing the network – some even
accessed it on Christmas Day!
“They love it, and see having Wi-Fi
at school as a massive bonus.”
In addition to educational benefits,
there’s no denying the financial
