Case study:exploring children’s password knowledge and practices

Children use technology from a very young age, and often have to authenticate themselves. Yet very little attention has been paid to designing authentication specifically for this particular target group. The usual practice is to deploy the ubiquitous password, and this might well be a suboptimal choice. Designing authentication for children requires acknowledgement of child-specific developmental challenges related to literacy, cognitive abilities and differing developmental stages. Understanding the current state of play is essential, to deliver insights that can inform the development of child-centred authentication mechanisms and processes. We carried out a systematic literature review of all research related to children and authentication since 2000. A distinct research gap emerged from the analysis. Thus, we designed and administered a survey to school children in the United States (US), so as to gain insights into their current password usage and behaviors. This paper reports preliminary results from a case study of 189 children (part of a much larger research effort). The findings highlight age-related differences in children’s password understanding and practices. We also discovered that children confuse concepts of safety and security. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research. This paper reports on work in progress.<br/

Internet u obrazovnome sustavu

In recent years, internet use have been transformed into an activity that is increasingly popular for the young people. They can make the internet part of their lives, intertwining it with the social, emotional and spiritual one. There is a growing number of studies that try to find the positive and negative aspects of the internet use. Our overall interest in this research is to explore the positive and negative effects of internet use on the educational system, as one of the main factor of the youth culture. A positive example could be that access to much more information has brough more sophistication and awarness in the educational process of young people; on the other hand this prevalence of internet have intensified psychological and cognitive problems, changed cultural norms governing traditional events such as funeral mourning, incited new kinds of fears, and have also been used by marketers to aggressively target these same young people for financial gain. From a systematic review of the recent literature, we find conclusive evidence regarding different factors that influence the learning process and the educational system in general.Posljednjih je godina uporaba interneta postala aktivnost koja je znatno popularna među mladim ljudima. Internet je postao dijelom njihova života, isprepleten skupa s društvenim, emocionalnim i duhovnim životom. Raste broj studija koji se bave pozitivnim i negativnim aspektima uporabe interneta. Istraživački je interes rada istražiti pozitivne i negativne učinke uporabe interneta na odgojno-obrazovni sustav, kao jedan od glavnih čimbenika kulture mladih. Pozitivno je što pristup informacijama donosi i više sofisticiranosti i svijesti u odgojno-obrazovnome procesu mladih ljudi; s druge strane rasprostranjenost interneta povećala je psihološke i kognitivne probleme, promijenila kulturne norme koje upravljaju tradicionalnim događajima poput karmina, novim vrstama strahova, i koje koriste trgovci kako bi iskoristili financijsku korist od mladih ljudi. Iz sustavne analize recentne literature zaključujemo o različitim čimbenicima koji utječu na proces učenja i odgojno-obrazovni sustav općenito

The use of technology to build digital communities

In today’s digital world social media has the potential to strengthen and broaden communities. It can provide a bridge between on and off-line communication, helping to strengthen links between children, parents and practitioners as they engage in shared activities (Carter Olson, 2016). Online communities can serve as an audience for sharing children’s digital products and experiences with a wider audience, and, as Magos et.al. (2013) suggest, international interactions can build intercultural understandings. When technology is used to build links between children across the world it can act as both a window and a mirror for young children: a ‘window’ to help them understand each other’s cultures and a ‘mirror’ to help develop their own identity (Cox and Galda, 1990). This chapter addresses the following themes: • the challenges and benefits of using online communities to enhance children’s learning; • how practitioners might use digital media in their daily interactions with children and as part of their own professional networking activities; • the role of technology in establishing links between children’s homes and early years settings. The chapter offers examples of these themes in practice through a detailed case study of how The Leicestershire Early Years Writing Project used technology to build communities of practice among practitioners, parents and children

Harnessing Technology: analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education (September 2008)

Research to support the delivery and development of Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008–1

Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation

Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation

Children and social media

A bibliography of resources on the topic of children and social media

Exploring the Usefulness of School Education about Risks on Social Network Sites: A Survey Study

The growing popularity of social network sites (SNS) is causing concerns about privacy and security, especially with teenagers, since they show various forms of unsafe behavior on SNS. It has been put forth by researchers, teachers, parents, and teenagers that school is ideally placed to educate teens about risks on SNS and to teach youngsters how to use SNS safely. Privacy attitudes also need to be taken into account if we want to decrease the amount of unsafe behavior. However, there is a lack of research that focuses on the role and impact of school education on privacy attitudes or actual safe behavior on SNS. To counter this shortcoming, a survey study was set up with 638 pupils exploring teenagers’ attitudes towards privacy on SNS. The first question was: Do they care about their privacy? Next to that, the extent to which they show unsafe behavior on SNS was questioned. Finally, the impact that school education has on both privacy care and the safety of teenagers’ behavior on SNS was studied. It was found that teenagers do not care much for their privacy, and that a lack of privacy care leads to unsafe behavior on SNS. However, school education has a positive impact on privacy care, and by raising privacy care it also has an indirect positive impact on the safety of pupils’ behavior. Our results suggest, therefore, that more efforts for school education about safer use of SNS are important, especially since the attention for the topic in schools is still found to be extremely limited and not organized in the curriculum. Practical implications are discussed

Exploring Cyber Harassment among Women Who Use Social Media

The number of Internet users around the word is at an all-time high. The majority of North Americans are internet users and over two-thirds participate in some kind of social network (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Social networks and mobile technology enable individuals to connect instantaneously or asynchronously, across geographic boundaries publicly or anonymously. Few studies exploring cyber harassment have been conducted, primarily because these technologies are relatively recent. The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine U.S. women\u27s experiences with and attitudes toward cyber harassment by way of an anonymous electronic survey. A total of 293 adult women (mean age 24.6) recruited from popular social networking sites participated in the research. The majority of participants (58.5%) reported being a student enrolled at a college or university. Close to 20% repeatedly received an unsolicited sexually obscene message and/or sexual solicitation (excluding Spam messages for all categories) on the Internet. More than 10% (11.5%, n = 33) repeatedly received pornographic messages from someone they did not know. More than a third of those who did experience some form of cyber harassment reported feeling anxious. One- fifth indicated they noticed changes in their sleeping and eating patterns as well as feeling helpless because of the harassment. Implications and recommended strategies for health education and personal safety in the online environment are provided