On the 31st March 2005, Childnet Internaional held a special confrence entitled "Childnet and the Internet - Releasing Potential Minimising Risk". The conference was centred around children and young people from this year's Childnet Academy programme and local young people who joined the winners for a separate "stream" within the conference.
Here below is a report from the young people themselves who presented at the beginning and end of the conference on what it was that they wanted from the Internet. The report from the young people was written and designed by Samuel from Nigeria, one of the Childnet Academy 2005 winners. See his winning site at www.odofin.com/biotech
These are his own words and images.
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One of the major highlights of the Cable and Wireless
Childnet Academy week, was the staging of the " CHILDREN AND INTERNET :
RELEASING POTENTIAL, MINIMIZING RISKS" Conference, on Thursday 31st
March 2005 at the Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Youths were not left out of the proceedings as they played a major role in the making of the conference. The youths (which include talented young winners of this year Childnet awards and students from local Jamaican schools) were pulled out to form a parliament that would deliberate on the issues and what services and content was wanted and unwanted on the internet. This opportunity was given to the youths because it was believed that the youths are most active users of the internet and more so, the whole proceedings was on deliberations of how to make the best of effective usage of the internet, while highly the dangers and minimizing risks. The youths once again, displayed creativity, innovativeness and wisdom as they came to establish twenty important issues that they wanted to be addressed on the Internet. They intelligently matched each letter from the phrase "WHAT WE WANT FROM THE NET" to each of the 20 issues laid down. Below is a brief run through of issues that aroused and what have been done so far; You can skip to any letter or see the poster I created by using this navigation bar throughout the page below. |
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On contingent of careful examination of children's access to internet, the youths in children's parliament decided to put foremost on their wish list; "WE WANT BROADBAND FOR ALL", In an attempt to let kids from around the world have a feeling of the internet in a even more exciting way on broadband connections. |
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WE WANT BROADBAND FOR ALL
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Considering the number of children that access the internet from their homes (in Jamaica for example), the parliament found out that it was challenging for most children to access the net from internet cafes where connections are not usually fast. |
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HOME ACCESS FOR ALL|
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The parliament had a very careful examination of online file sharing system and the issue of music downloads services. The parliament agreed that as kids, we need access to entertainment and music in a legal atmosphere and accessible to young people who may not have credit cards. We need to be able to access legal music suitable for children which is quick, safe and secure to access, and is cheap without the threat of prosecution. |
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ALLOW LEGAL FILE SHARING|
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This was a directive from the children directly to the CABLE and WIRELESS company, as the giant internet provision company in the Caribbean and environ, children advised that they ought to educate their clients as to use of what they are buying, how to use it and every other thing internet users should know. |
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TRAIN YOUR CUSTOMERS|
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Some computers Labs. In Jamaican schools were still running on Windows® 95, as at the day of the conference ( in year 2005) , that was so obsolete to keep any school technologically on the track and even for it's students to have say in international technological issues, as such the parliament decides to request for advanced and up to date softwares for schools. |
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WE DEMAND MORE ADVANCED SOFTWARE FOR SCHOOLS|
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The Parliament also requested for training, seminars and workshops for teachers, careers, teachers and children on how to use advanced software and how to actively engage in integrating it to school learning. |
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EDUCATE TEACHERS, CAREERS, TEACHERS AND CHILDREN|
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This point was raised to place emphasis on lack of websites for most schools all over the world ( using Jamaica as a case study), even when a school has website it's usually insufficient to perform it's intended functions and with odd, bored and lengthy URLs usually hard to remember. We want free domains for all schools. |
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www.domainsforallschools.edu|
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To reduce the spread of pornographic and pictures that are unhealthy to children on the net, the parliament suggested that all access into adult sites must be paid for using credit cards that can only be in possession of adults. |
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ALL ADULT SITES TO BE PAID FOR|
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To reduce the level of unwanted and criminal emails in our Emails in children's mailbox, the parliament suggested a technology that actively filters such emails should be developed and freely deployed to kids worldwide. |
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NO MORE SPAMS|
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Children don't want pop-ups and web adverts that hangs and freezes our systems, for example, a could be surfing to get important information or download some essential file from a particular page from a website, if eventually a pop - up comes up (one or multiple) it might lead to closure or lose of essential pages that might be so hard to find again. |
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TERMINATE POP-UPS|
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Encouragement of usage of anti-virus software in schools, the parliament suggested the provision of free anti-virus software to protect computer systems for damages incurred from Stubborn computer viruses especially in schools. |
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FREE ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE|
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For Children's safety in online chartrooms and general eviction of bad people from the internet chat systems, the parliament suggest usage of comprehensive registrations systems for chatrooms before anyone can chat. More so, they decided that of children oriented chat systems should be encouraged. |
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One of the children in the parliament was once trying to get information on some subjects in chemistry, but to his greatest amazement , when he looked in for his problem in a search engine, he couldn't get any relevant information, and mostly what came out were sponsored links, in relation to this the parliament decided that they needed optimized filtering from search systems on the internet. |
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OPTIMIZED FILTERING|
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Most of the kid around, in the parliament couldn't remember when last they attended a conference like this, and for most this was the very first time of attending a conference, Bearing in mind the tremendous benefits of the conference, the parliaments encouraged setting up more youth oriented conferences like this! |
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MORE YOUTH ORIENTED CONFERENCES LIKE THIS!|
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One of the major problem figured out was that most children don't get to know computers of information technology at tender age, they only get to be introduced to it's fundamentals at more advanced age thereby losing some advantages to people who were familiar to it earlier. |
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TRAIN US YOUNG|
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As the children that uses the internet increases everyday, the parliament decided that it would be a great idea to bring about a strong all - purpose portals that will be mainly for children, which might be controlled be adults. |
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HAVE A SAFE PORTAL FOR CHILDREN|
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"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" almost 40 percent of youths access the internet for entertainment materials be it cartoons, standalone or network games, music and movie reviews, the parliament also requsted for an improvement in this sector |
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ENTERTAINMENT AND GAMES|
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Still on Issue of cyber crime and child safety on the Internet, the parliament requested for an effective web policing system to be in place, so as to fish out and prosecute Bad people on the internet. |
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NET POLICE PLEASE|
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WE WANT EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET TO BE AFFORDABLE !!!!, be it online library, online bookshops and so on, the parliament requested for an economical internet experience, no sabotage or hoarding of any product whatsoever on the internet. |
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ECONOMICAL|
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In making the internet a resource for research and knowledge acquisition, the parliament decided to demand for more sophisticated and flexible research tools especially for youths. |
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TOOLS FOR RESEARCH|
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