YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
All | Events | Youth | Technology | Volunteering | YouthNet | Charity World
Wednesday Jul 30, 2008
Changing the site...
We're doing a lot of work on TheSite.org at the moment... thinking about the future. You can follow what we're doing at www.changethesite.org. And if you want to contribute, let me know!
Cheers,
Olly
Posted by Olly Benson ( 1:32 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Tuesday Jul 29, 2008
School's Out
This summer you could imagine students meeting up and talking about their studies during the year: "I've just done a physics course at MIT, checked out an 'Introduction to Psych' at Yale and followed up with a well established course in non-violence at UC Berkeley".
All these courses are online and freely available in exploratory developments by US universities in the last two years to open up the content of their academic offerings. MIT, then Berkeley and then Yale. In the UK we've had the less impressive, but totally worthy Open Learn - an initiative from the Open University.
Taken together the depth of this content offers a glimpse into a more open and free learning world. This is ace and my only question really is why have we had to wait until 2008 for these kind of open learning initiatives to ripple outwards online? When you think about it, the academic world doesn't have the same excuses most of have had.
- They have had loads of warning: many academics have been using internet-like tools since the 1980's.
- They have had the resources: many academics have had access to the technical equipment, infrastructure and know-how for many, many years
- They have had the motivation: many academics will do anything for an opportunity to share their passion and knowledge for their own area of interest and expertise
Why then haven't academics been in the vanguard of this transformation in the use of communication technology to broaden learning opportunities? It's a puzzle and the truth is I have no idea why not. 40 years ago in 1968, universities and educational establishments became a hotbed for new ideas and social change. In 2008, it's seems to be venture capitalists with fuzzy business models spearheading social change through developments in today's technology.
My personal theory for why educational establishments have been left behind by the communication and information revolution is the following:
It's all about how learning has traditionally been conceived by the educational institutions: education is something 'they' do to 'us'. As a result this makes the institutions' model of learning incompatible with the free and open platform offered by emerging technology. Hence the near absence of formal academic-led developments in free and open learning resources on the internet. It's corporates that are making a running with things like: Authors@Google, Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope and Ted Talks. But if educational institutions wanted to play the game, they could knock these out of the park, couldn't they. Couldn't they?
One sticking point seems to be that institutions and establishments need and want rights protection and the ability to monetize learning aka the education industry. It's no coincidence that the big US universities have financed their initiatives thanks to donations from wealthy foundations rather than using money from the central pot. Impressive as the above resources are that are currently available, surely we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible.
We don't need no edukashun. We want, what I think humans have always cherished: a free and open space to learn and share that learning (long before Pink Floyd made the point).
As for the future, the internet will be full of bolder and more mature free and open opportunities to learn and share knowledge, previously the domain of education institutions. The only question is who's going to lead the way and how we all access and benefit from this new meta learning environment.
Posted by Patrick Daniels ( 3:02 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Thursday Jul 24, 2008
Future of a free internet
Yesterday an article appeared on the BBC news site about the big ISP's in the UK signing some kind of deal with the UK Government to combat piracy. This morning it was headline news across BBC radio and television. Fergal Sharkey was asked for the music industry's view, but no one asked us consumers.
It's shocking and disappointing how a public broadcaster like the BBC frames the debate in such outdated and simplistic terms. It's at moments like this that it's possible to see just how out of step big media companies and organisations are with the issues that the rise of new media has thrown up for consumers. Their focus tends to always be on the issues new media throws up for themselves- not us. To coin a phrase: it's about privacy, not piracy stupid.
Rarely is consumer privacy raised as an issue in the music industry's war on piracy. Will ISP's be expected to handover personal data of their customers? How will illegal file sharing be defined when, for example, anyone can download mp3s of any music they like from prominent websites like Facebook and YouTube? What sanctions will they take against file sharers? Will young people increasingly see the internet as a constraint on their liberty, rather than liberating?
It's interesting to contrast the broadly sympathetic coverage that the BBC has given to the music industry's efforts to clamp down on file-sharing (hey, it's not just music that people share these days), with it's coverage of the development of deep packet inspection (deep packet what?) by the advertising industry "a system that tracks where people go on the web, and builds up a profile so it can serve up adverts based on what that person has seen" (BBC's Click presenter Spencer Kelly).
Yeh, deep packet inspection (DPI), it's the biggest issue in net neutrality at the moment and most people haven't heard a thing about it outside of the tech pages in old style mainstream broadcasters like the BBC. For the last two years the technology has been secretly trialled and is set to come on stream officially in the next month or so.
Both these issues raise questions of consumers' privacy, and both developments seem to suggest that consumer privacy should be sacrificed in the interest of corporate needs.
In May 2008 on BBC technology programme 'Click', the BBC interviewed Kent Ertegrul and Alex Hanff. Ertegrul who heads up Phorm- a company looking to profit from DPI technology- had his "most notable foray online as the founder of PeopleOnPage, an ad network that operated earlier in the decade and which was blacklisted as spyware by the likes of Symantec and F-Secure".
Alex Hanff wrote his dissertation on the privacy issues of DPI technology with special reference to Phorm and has headed up the campaign against DPI in the UK. Hanff previously hit the headlines after being sacked from his job for airing pro file sharing views on BBC's Newsnight. He's also been the recipient of a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros back in 2005.
The head to head brought together the opposite ends of the spectrum in the modern privacy debate- that encompasses corporate spyware developers and file-sharing facilitators. It's a mainstream debate that is currently marginalised by mainstream broadcasters. But anyone interested in the future of freedom on the internet should be sitting up and taking plenty of notice.
Monday Jul 21, 2008
Half marathon training: What NOT to do
About three months ago, having recently returned from a holiday in Australia, full of energy and enthusiasm, and evidently have lost the power of rational thought, I agreed to run a half marathon to raise money for YouthNet. At the time, October seemed soooo far away, and I was in the depths of a health-kick, ready to (literally) hit the ground running. The feeling was...ummm...short lived.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still up for the challenge and am really pleased to be representing one of the best charities in the world (with one of the best softball teams I might add), and raising much-needed funds for a well-deserved cause. I just wish it had dawned on me before last week how much hard work it's going to be.
Having realised last week that I really need to get myself into gear and get training, I put together a training plan (a somewhat condensed training plan, owing to the fact I should have started a few weeks ago). I went for a couple of runs last week, which went well. Dragging yourself out of bed at 6am to run around Streatham Common isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's very satisfying when you manage it.
My first 'big' run was scheduled for yesterday. I was going to tackle a 7 miler, having managed 5 miles quite easily the previous week. Now, at about 5 o'clock yesterday, I kitted myself in my best running outfit, complete with water bottle and iPod and headed for the hills. All seemed well for the first...umm...mile and a bit.
I could say it was too hot, but it really wasn't. I could say it was raining, but that would also be lie. I could say I haven't been well lately, but that would again be utter rubbish. I learnt something yesterday...
White wine, double chocolate cheesecake and marathon training REALLY don't mix.
Please learn from my mistakes folks.
Good luck!
Posted by Sarah McCoy ( 4:07 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Wednesday Jul 16, 2008
A penny for your thoughts? Young people, debt & finance
We ran a very topical presentation here at YouthNet alongside Citizens Advice, the Financial Services Authority and HM Treasury a few weeks ago. The theme was young people, debt and finance, and the presentation covered some key points about how debt impacts on their lives, where they find information on financial advice and what their understanding of financial terminology is.Most of what we covered was taken from a survey of 651 young people from TheSite.org. We got some great press coverage of the results of the survey, both here and in the USA, although interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly), most articles chose to focus on one finding in particular – that 66% of young people surveyed agreed that it was too easy to get credit.
If you'd like a copy of the survey or want to hear more about the presentation, just drop us a line.
Tuesday Jul 08, 2008
Changes to YouthNet.org
If you're reading this blog entry on the YouthNet.org website (rather than on email or your RSS reader) you might notice that things look a bit different. The blog's centred for one thing. So's the whole website. On the front page, there are new 'latest news' links which scroll from one story to the next. And if you look towards the bottom of the page, there's a quote from one of our users or partners will change if you refresh the page.
There are also a couple of changes which you might not notice much, but which will help us better understand how people are using this website (such as the addition of the new Google Analytics code) and help us better process any queries we receive (through an improved contact us form). We've also changed the URL of the YouthNet blog feed, so that we can better monitor how many subscribers we have. If you've subscribed in the past, it'd be great if you could change over to using this new feed so we can include you in our stats. Using the new functionality, we'll also soon be creating RSS feeds for our job vacancies and press releases. I'll be back to let you know when these go live.
We've also introduced a sitemap, as another way of navigating round the site. Over the next few months, we'll also be taking a look at the content of YouthNet.org – making sure that it's easy to find what you need whether you've come to the site looking for information about running the Royal Park's Half Marathon or wanting to find out our current volunteering opportunities.
If you've got any feedback about the new features or have suggestions for the content/navigation review that will follow soon, please leave us a comment below.
Posted by Natasha Judd ( 11:46 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]Pick me! Pick me!
When I was about 10 or 11 all I ever hoped for was a Blue Peter badge. They were the holy grail of children's television and I wanted one more than anything. Every time the show ran a competition I was positive that my painting, poem or photograph would be deemed worthy of a badge. I used to scream at Anthea Turner and Tim Vincent to "Say my name", but they never did.
I had to wait until I was 12 until I received a letter that contained what I'd always wanted. I'd entered a Blue Peter poster competition for the London Underground and had drawn a Beefeater with a tube sign in the background. It wasn't anything special but I thought I might as well send it in; they'd probably reward me for my persistency if not for my artistic talents.
Twelve years on and my hopes are slightly more demanding; a house, a car, a £10 million pound lottery win. Who knows, maybe if I scream loud enough I'll get these send in the post as well.
In TheSite.org's latest survey we want to know your hopes and fears. Let us know and you'll get your own prize, a £5 Amazon gift voucher.
Posted by Chris Denholm ( 10:56 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]