Tag: blogging

Blog Action Day in Birmingham – a social media surgery for voluntary orgs.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty

Over here Jon Bounds has reminded us of our collective Birmingham blogger wish to mark Blog Action day next week in some shared way. When Tom Watson asked us about this a while back there was plenty of enthusiastic muttering.

The theme for blog action day 2008 is poverty, considered in it’s widest sense. So rather than simply blog, we’re arranging to do something more practical:  run a social media surgery for voluntary and community groups in Birmingham. Many of these deal directly with poverty in the city, I think all of them contribute in some way to creating life opportunities or alleviating suffering or disadvantage.

The aim is simply to get a group of volunteer social media savvy people together who can give one to one advice on which bits of the social media palette might be able to help these groups accomplish more.

Perhaps we might set up some blogs, get people using video or images in a new way, help them map problems?  Who knows? I’m quite certain everyone who takes part will learn something. (I’m wondering if this will help me imagine what a digital mentor might do.

Half an hour ago Candy Passmore at BVSC  agreed to provide a room at their place (138 Digbeth, B5 6DR, map). The proposal fits very closely with their attempts to encourage the voluntary sector to find new ways to communicate, lobby and network. The offer also comes with wifi and some food between 5.30 and 9  on the evening of Wednesday 15th October 2008. Once we’ve got something written she will also pass the invitation onto their networks within the city.

So who fancies helping and who knows any community or voluntary groups who might like to come?

Update: It’s on.
Birmingham Voluntary Services Council love the idea and are happy to help us with space at their place, tea coffee and perhaps a morsel for those who want to stave off their tea time pangs. time is 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm Wednesday 15th October 2008.

Sign up here: http://birminghamblogactionday2008.eventbrite.com/  any problems with that don’t give up – leave a comment below or call me on 0777 909 5692.  If you want to find out about this stuff we want you there!

The new UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

I’ve got real concerns about this (see the bottom of the post). According to this news release it will:

• establish a comprehensive public information and awareness and child internet safety campaign across Government and industry including a ‘one-stop shop’ on child internet safety;

• provide specific measures to support vulnerable children and young people, such as taking down illegal internet sites that promote harmful behaviour;

• promote responsible advertising to children online; and

• establish voluntary codes of practice for user-generated content sites, making such sites commit to take down inappropriate content within a given time.

This is what Tanya Byron thinks:

“Every parent will know that know that video games and the internet are a part of childhood like never before. This is extremely positive; giving kids the opportunities to learn to have fun and communicate in ways that previous generations could only dream of. But it can also present a huge challenge to parents and other adults involved in the welfare of children.

“That this why we need industry, regulators and parents to work together to protect children against the risks. Setting up UKCISS was a key recommendation in my report and I’m delighted that the Government along with industry, education, law enforcement, and the children’s charities have acted so promptly to make this a reality. “The Council will be a powerful union of some of our key players giving support to parents and guidance to children as they come more and more accustomed to the virtual world – it will also give families, teachers and most importantly children and young people the ability to input experiences and concerns. The UK is a world leader on internet safety for children and I look forward to others adopting this partnership approach.”

I’m worried this organisation will be risk averse, burdened with the pr fear of any internet abuse being laid at it’s door. Already the government has been looking for ways to police the internet.

The country that manages to balance the risk/opportunity that the web represents for young people is the one that will be best placed to enjoy the economic benefits on offer.  Having run a quango once, I know that you don’t create an energetic and imaginative attitude to risk by creating a new quango.

However it is easy to carp.  I think UKCCIS should start with teachers. If we can warm them up to the possibilities that come with an open attitude to the internet, rather than a closed or mistrustful one, we then have a hope of encouraging them to teach children to manage risk rather than run from the slightest suggestion of it.  Until teachers have high levels of digital literacy we’ll struggle to have schools that are anything but freakishly fearful of the web.

Got an idea about the web and learning? Here's $1.8 million dollars of help.

digital media and learning competition header

Beth Kanter has been in touch to ask me to spread the word about an American competition which this year is open to applicants from the UK. The Digital Media in Learning Competition has a deadline of October 15th and allows bids from $30,000 to $250,000.

The 2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition theme is Participatory Learning. Participatory Learning includes the many ways that learners (of any age) use new technologies to participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another’s projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together.

It’s funded by the Macarthur foundation, who’s spotlight blog falls short of some of he principles it is trying to encourage (no trackback – lots of hurdles to joining the conversation). Having said that the MacArthur Foundation has been working long, hard, patiently and  intelligently at pulling together the threads of how we must understand digital media and learning.

It’s a brilliant opportunity, so whether you are the School of Everything or the North Birmingham Social Enterprise – go Britain, get the dosh.  Quickly mind, no faffing.

This is a no brainer for the UK.

Free Debates is an important democratic movement. They are demanding that a condition of a network getting to screen presidential debates is that they make the material available with open source/creative commons licensing, so it can be rehashed and mashed etc.

It is a great idea and any public sector broadcaster like channel 4, ITV, BBC  here in the uk should be delighted to make the resources available for what could be a blossoming of political engagement. So David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg just imagine citzenship lessons where people are mashing video of political debates.

This is their open letter to Barack Obama and John McCain:

Dear Senator McCain and Senator Obama,

We are a coalition of people and organizations across the ideological spectrum asking you to make this year’s presidential debates more “of the people” than ever before by bringing them more fully into the Internet age.

Specifically, we ask you to embrace these two “open debate” principles for the 2008 debates:

  1. The presidential debates are for the benefit of the public. Therefore, the right to speak about the debates ought to be “owned” by the public, not controlled by the media.

    2. During the primaries, a large coalition asked that media companies release rights to presidential debate video to ensure that key moments can be legally blogged about, shared on YouTube, or otherwise shared without fear of legal repercussion.CNN, ABC, and NBC agreed to release video rights. But one media company threatened legal action against Senator McCain for using a debate clip to spread a message. Such control over political speech is inconsistent with our democracy.

    We therefore call upon both candidates to commit to a principle that whenever you debate publicly, the raw footage of that debate will be dedicated to the public domain. Those in charge of the video feed should be directed to make it free for anyone to use.

  2. “Town hall” Internet questions should be chosen by the people, not solely by the media.

    3. The two campaigns recently said of the October 7 debate, “In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or Internet), and not the moderator.” We agree with the spirit of this statement. In order to ensure that the Internet portion of this debate is true bottom-up democracy, the format needs to allow the public to help select the questions in addition to asking them.This cycle’s YouTube debates were a milestone for Internet participation in presidential debates. But they put too much discretion in the hands of gatekeepers. Many of the questions chosen by TV producers were considered gimmicky and not hard-hitting enough, and never would have bubbled up on their own.

    This “bubble up” idea is the essence of the Internet as we know it. The best ideas rise to the top, and the wisdom of crowds prevails. We’d propose debate organizers utilize existing bubble-up voting technology and choose Internet questions from the top 25 that bubbled up. We ask you to instruct the October 7 debate planners to use bubble-up technology in this fashion.

    This is a historic election. The signers of this letter don’t agree on every issue. But we do agree that in order for Americans to make the best decision for president, we need open debates that are “of the people” in the ways described above. You have the power to make that happen, and we ask you to do so.

    Thank you for your willingness to take these ideas to heart. If you have any questions, please contact: OpenDebateCoalition@gmail.com

    Sincerely,

    Lawrence Lessig; Professor, Stanford Law School, Founder, Center for Internet and Society

    Glenn Reynolds; Professor, University of Tennessee Law, and founder of Instapundit.com blog

    Craig Newmark; Founder, Craigslist

    Jimmy Wales; Founder, Wikipedia

    David Kralik; Director of Internet Strategy, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions

    Eli Pariser; Executive Director, MoveOn.org Political Action

    Adam Green; Director of Strategic Campaigns, MoveOn.org Political Action

    Mindy Finn; Republican strategist, former Mitt Romney Online Director

    Patrick Ruffini; Republican consultant, Former Republican National Committee eCampaign Director

    Arianna Huffington; Founder, Huffington Post

    Markos Moulitsas; Founder, DailyKos.com

    Jon Henke; New media consultant, including for Fred Thompson, George Allen, and Senate Republican Caucus

    Mike Krempasky; Co-Founder of RedState.com

    Matt Stoller; Founder/Editor, OpenLeft.com

    James Rucker; Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org

    Robert Greenwald; President, BraveNewFilms

    Kim Gandy; President, National Organization for Women

    Carl Pope; Executive Director, Sierra Club

    Micah Sifry; Co-Founder, Personal Democracy Forum and TechPresident.com

    Shari Steele; Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

    Josh Silver; Executive Director, Free Press

    Carl Malamud; Founder, Public.Resource.Org

    Roger Hickey; Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future