Earlier this week I was made aware of the fact that Simon Whitehouse from Digital Birmingham had used some of my work with 4OQ on web tools at the launch of the new Birmingham eSafety Strategy.
You can read his write up of the event here, and his presentation is below.
It sounds like our work provoked much discussion, with some people asserting that is raised “concerns about using social media tools in practice and how it might lead to inappropriate behaviour and a blurring of the relationship between (in this case) youth workers and young people.”. I would have been interested to hear these points of view, and the chance to respond, especially as I feel a lot of the thought that has gone into my work is not really visible from looking at the end products.
It was really encouraging to see my work being defended by Andy Pyper, the lead on e-Safety within Link2ICT, and Tony Howell, the Director of Childrens Services for Birmingham. It is nice to see figures of the establishment in our city looking at what we are doing, and being realistic about weighing up the benefits with the dangers rather than clamping down on it, as large establishments can sometimes do in matters of eSafety.
As an NQT it is also encouraging to see what I am doing recognised and debated at this level, and has encouraged me that despite this year being challenging it is well worth pushing on with what I am trying to achieve.
The first part is about Home Access programmes (which looks very interesting), our work begins on slide 26.
[slideshare id=2474756&doc=2009-10-11-e-safetystrategylaunch-091111091319-phpapp02]
Leave a Reply