Bradley Howard's Blog

5 child safety online tips

Oct 24, 2011 at 12:07pm

I remember that when I started studying Computer Science at University (in those days it was a Polytechnic), in the first lecture we were told that at any social gathering we shouldn't tell anyone we were studying Computer Science because the conversation would either stop immediately, or follow the route of "ah, that's interesting, do you know how I can fix my [insert electrical item here]?"

One of the questions I get asked a lot is how I help my kids stay safe online.

I'll start these tips with the viewpoint that the Internet is 99.9% a good thing for kids. I think it's better than television, which is a passive, brain-switch-off experience. It's a type of entertainment as much as educational experience for children (and adults) which should be embraced.

My kids range between five and nine years old although I think this advice is useful for any children up to about twelve. Here are my top tips:

Keep the family computer in a visible place. I don't agree with kids (under twelve) having a PC in their bedroom, or for that matter, a laptop which can move around the house. We have a family computer on the corner of our living room and kitchen, so we can always glance across and see what the kids are doing.
Enable fast escalation. Our kids can approach my wife or I at any time and say "Why is this happening?" on the computer and we'll always try to help. Like anything with children, if they feel they might be told off, they won't talk to an adult, so whatever happens online we'll always make them aware it's not their fault.
We use free Family filtering software - the Windows Live Family Safety filter. Each of the kids has their own user accounts and we have another one for guests. Family Safety provides time limits (which we enable for weekday mornings) as well as stopping some sites. For our five year old, it's on maximum control setting and for the nine year old it's set to block anything adult and allow most other sites. At the moment none of the kids are allowed Facebook, although we do allow YouTube because they like listening to music and you'd be surprised how young kids don't realise that YouTube contains videos that aren't music related.
Using the family filtering software we regularly check their accounts (it takes seconds) and make it very clear that we check what they've been doing online.
Stay aware of latest scams, websites and general web trends and behaviour. This is easier for our household because of my job, but my wife is still aware of most online 'problem areas'.

Even with all these tips, my wife phoned me at work last week to say one of the girls had asked her to look at a website she'd been using. On the site, which is a Flash games-based website aimed at young girls, there is a chat functionality, and someone on the site had been chatting to our daughter and been totally vulgar.

My wife took a number of screenshots, of which part of the chat window is shown above. I contacted the website to make them aware of the incident and haven't heard anything back from them.

I started off with these tips saying how the Internet is 99.9% a good thing for kids. Our experience highlighted that you need to be extremely vigilant of that 0.1% element.

tags:

children, education, tips, web security,

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Some academic work on the agenda

Nov 30, 2010 at 10:33pm

Tomorrow I am doing a short lecture at the School of Management at the University of Southampton showcasing some of our recent work. One of the nice consequences of working with clients who are huge superbrands is being asked to present our capabilities to other organisations. One of the lecturers, Dr Bev Hulbert approached me at a recent conference after I spoke about Spots V Stripes and asked if I would talk to his University class.

I know many people who criticise universities for not keeping up to date with 'the real World' (I prefer to use the verb "'tainted' by the real World") and yet those same people refuse to help universities to do so by giving a little time to them. These short sighted views make me pretty mad (you can tell I've been using the Tube recently!)

The reason I'm doing the lecture tomorrow is quite straightforward:

Spread the Endava brand (Hey, I'm being honest)
Spot talented students (still being honest)
These students will (eventually/ hopefully) find jobs and need companies to build the infrastructure Endava can provide
It's necessary to educate the next generation - and with university funding being reduced, it's important the private sector helps to fill in the gap
Working with young people gives a new perspective on work - and I always end up learning something else myself

tags:

SpotsVStripes, business, education, marketing,

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Google the answer engine, not 'just' the search engine

Nov 21, 2010 at 3:47pm

I watched my nine year old son doing some homework this week on the computer and noticed for the first time that Google didn't just point him in the right direction to answer a question, it actually provided the answer.

He didn't think anything of it. He thinks that Google is there to provide answers, and is an absolutely reliable source of those answers. He doesn't question the validity of the source any more than I would have questioned Encyclopaedia Britannica when I was his age. I found that it was a further leap for Google-kind than even, two years ago.

The question was "Who watched the ancient olympics?"

He actually typed in "who watch the ancient olympics?" which actually brought the answer closer to the top of the results than the grammatically correct question. That's a separate issue I'll have to deal with and it was difficult to ascertain whether he typed in the incorrect grammar to obtain the best results rather than a genuine mistake.

Education is changing at an amazingly quick rate. My son's [state funded, primary] school has an interactive projector in every classroom, and is aiming that within two years will have a laptop per child.

Children are being taught to use Google to search for answers.

In Richard Watson's book, Future Minds, he describes how it took less than a generation to go from reading long form (e.g. a paper article on Ancient Olympics) to consuming bite sized snippets on a screen. I don't have a major problem with this leap, except for the fact that we need to understand and accept that general knowledge will deteriorate because children will only know exactly what they've searched for, rather than anything broader.

Reading the paper article, or even one of the search results' full articles would have taught my son that the games used to be one day long, then five days long, the different events, and even that in boxing, the boxers would wear hard leather straps with metal over their knuckles - ouch.

Image courtesy of Arkntina

tags:

Olympics, children, content, education, future, google, search, seo, trends,

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Forstmann's three lessons

Nov 16, 2010 at 12:44pm

Three and a half years after I joined IMG, Mark McCormack passed away and Ted Forstmann's company took over the company. Whilst I disagree with several of Forstmann's (literally) ill advised decisions with IMG, there are three positive lessons that stand out.

The 3 "I"s. If you haven't read his article on the 3 i's, read it now. It's actually Forstann retelling a story by Warren Buffet, but Forstmann puts it into context. That link from the Wall Street Journal requires membership, so if you don't have membership, you can go to any of the myriad of copied articles available including this word for word copy.
When engaging with a new third party company, whether they are a supplier, customer or speculative in either category, Forstmann recommended keeping an eye out for hiring individual talent within the company, or the company itself. He even had a one page form that we could fill in and escalate quickly within IMG to look into buying that company or hiring the person(s).
I've continued this practice, and find that it raises your commercial senses/awareness when engaging with a new third party. It helps see the relationship longer term.
Take risks. Forstmann, by his very nature as an investor, takes and promotes risks. Investors get it right more than they get it wrong, and I'll always remember Forstmann standing on a stage in London telling all the IMG staff that he wanted to take more risks than IMG had in the past, and it was OK to take those risks. He taught that it's better to take a calculated risk and know that every few will become a success, than never take any risks and continue on a flat line.
We have a customer who has large posters in their meeting rooms that have in large letters: "Take A Risk" and a similar one promoting "Make A Decision". It's vital for modern businesses to take calculated risks, and make decisions quickly.

tags:

IMG, business, education, investment,

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Rupert Murdoch's speech

Oct 22, 2010 at 9:19am

I'm well aware of many of the regular readers of this blog aren't exactly fans of Rupert Murdoch, so I'm on thin ice on this one...

Rupert Murdoch gave a speech last night to the Centre of Policy Studies in London. My favourite part of the speech is this excerpt:

If children in the poorest parts of the world can learn how to read and write – as well as do maths and science in schools with dirt floors and tattered textbooks – there is no excuse for the way British children are being failed by well-resourced schools.
We must not stifle the growth of the brightest.

As Margaret Thatcher exhorted: “Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.”
In other words, we must celebrate a culture of success. The rise to prominence is too often accompanied by a surge in cynicism by the traditional elites.
I am something of a parvenu, but we should welcome the iconoclastic and the unconventional. And we shouldn’t curb their enthusiasm or energy.
That is what competition is all about. Yet when the upstart is too successful, somehow the old interests surface, and restrictions on growth are proposed or imposed.
That’s an issue for my company. More important, it’s an issue for our broader society.
These are the small thinkers who believe their job is to cut the cake up rather than make it bigger.
In my own industry, for example, digital technology is offering a chance for British companies to make their mark here and across the world.

When The Times was founded in 1785, its influence was confined to a handful of important people in this city. Today, its content echoes around the world every day. And it has digital competitors who were not even conceived a decade ago.
In the past too, television programmes were confined to a single screen. Now they can be watched whenever you want and wherever you are – whether on a mobile phone, a tablet or a computer. For all the change, we are still at the early stages of this revolution.

It’s not just media. This is an exciting period in every sector. And our competitive passions should be stirred by the sense of challenge and opportunity.
In short, Britain needs companies robust enough to compete in this global market – whether in finance or pharmaceuticals, transport or telecommunications, retail or entertainment. And we need to attract the brightest talent, regardless of background and ethnicity.
In other words, Britain should be a magnet for the best students and best workers from around the world.
What might a successful Britain look like in this new century?
A government that spends modestly, because it leaves its people free to make their own decisions for themselves …
Citizens who look out at the world with confidence, because they have grown up accustomed to taking responsibility for themselves, and are allergic to the culture of dependency….
Corporate and technological sectors that thrive on change, and use the freedom of the market to innovate and grow.
Above all, a successful Britain would have a society that cherishes opportunity and creativity – making opportunity available to all, and believing that there is creativity in all, where individuals do not feel guilty of wealth or being exceptional, but work hard and exercise humility.

So there you go. It's about education, which breathes creativity, which breeds opportunity, which leads to commercial success.

The full speech is available on News Corps' website.

tags:

Sunday Times Tech Track 100, business, creative, digital media, education, politics,

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Tags

5 child safety online tips

Some academic work on the agenda

Google the answer engine, not 'just' the search engine

Forstmann's three lessons

Rupert Murdoch's speech

Bradley Howard

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