IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
17 SEPTEMBER 10
SESSION 134
1130
CHILD ON-LINE PROTECTION IN NORTHERN EUROPE DIFFERENT NATIONAL APPROACHES
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Welcome to this workshop. My name is Anna Lauttamus-Kauppila. I come from Finland, telecom regulator. During this session, we will hear and see a lot of things we are doing in order to enhance the awareness of children, parents and teachers in the usage and, safe usage of the Internet.
But, to set the mood, we will see the first film. We have a lot of films, and they illustrate the good, bad, good sides and bad sides of the Internet.
And now we will show the first one.
(Showing of film)
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Sorry for the lack of sound, but I think we will fix it until we see the next film.
However, I will introduce the five Nordic countries that are Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, all present here.
These are the organisations that have been organising the workshop.
>> Anna, can you please talk very close to the microphone?
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Okay, sorry, yes, thank you. You can see the organisers of the workshop. They are Telecom regulators, operator, media councils and other such organisations in our respective countries.
The objectives of this workshop, they are to present in brief our national awareness campaigns on child online protection and show some concrete best practices, good examples from the campaigns, also show how cooperation is essential, what are the advantages of doing all the work in large corporation. We are also here to tell about some challenges and everything doesn't go well, so there are lessons to be learned.
We will come back to the methods and approaches. We have many things in common in the Nordic countries, and give you the overall picture.
Here are some of the logos of our campaigns in the Nordic countries. Then some statistics. This is just to show you in brief that we are technologically quite advanced countries. We are heavy users of the Internet. But we won't go through the figures, because you will find more detailed information on the Web sites of each participant and organiser. Also our children are very active on the net. Children tend to be in all other countries nowadays. We also recognize the need to inform them and raise their awareness, although they are technically very skillful. Some campaign pictures.
We will hear representative from each country from northern Europe. We will start with Sweden. And (off microphone) he will introduce our Surfalugnt campaign.
>> PATRICK: Thank you, Mrs. Chairman. I represent the leading Telecom operator in the northern and Baltic countries. Surfalugnt is a project in Sweden which is a unique collaboration between companies, authorities and nonprofit organisations. It is also supported by the Swedish government. You can see the logos on the slide. Next slide, please.
What will the future bring? Don't we all want to go down the bridge further on this bridge here, barefoot as we did as children? Almost always, almost always there will be a sunny beach, good friends, and a nice swim.
Next picture, please. What do we know about the future? First we know that there is a shift in generations. Did you ever as a parent get the question from your child at home: What was your favorite home page when you were a child? This is how quick this is changing.
Also there is a shift in how we regard the life which includes both on and off line. So we would not as a parent go out to the soccer court and ask the child to finish the game, the soccer game in the middle of the second round, to come home for dinner. Nor should we do the same when there is an online soccer game going on. We talk about online immigrants that use one service or device at the time. That's us, grown-ups, and about online natives, the children and youth which are now also growing up using fixed mobile chat as a mass media, TV, radio, Web, etcetera at the very same time and not using online services instead of.
Therefore, the word IRL that I use in this slide is wrong because IRL is not the good word. Real life is both online and off line at the same time. Next slide, please.
What is the Swedish joint initiative Surfalugnt? It functions as a hub for various national initiatives on young people security on the Internet. It aims to get parents involved, to get parents involved and educate them and other adults to help them understand children and young people's daily Internet news.
Next slide, please. Surfalugnt brings together the country's experts, and disseminates examples of best practice. Surfalugnt coordinates information for adults, children and young people. It creates online meeting place where adults can increase their knowledge to handle these issues.
Next slide. What are the messages that Surfalugnt delivers? The message is not about the parents should control. The message is not about the parents should forbid. It is about getting involved in your child's daily Internet use, to ask children and young people about the Internet habits. It is about responsible adults that those are needed online as well as off-line.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows the objectives of Surfalugnt. Our objectives are that a third of Sweden parents should be aware of Surfalugnt by the January of next year. That is 65 percent of parents should have discussed integrity issues, privacy issues, with the children, that is currently 35 percent in Sweden. And also the Web site Surfalugnt should be regarded as a national source of information regarding children's daily Internet use.
What are our experiences so far? It is important to fully recognize that positive aspects of young people's Internet usage. While at the same time offering adults the tools to deal with the pitfalls.
There is a value of bringing together authorities, companies and nonprofit organisations in joint project. It brings an excellent potential of getting messages across. It is important to involve teenagers, while I would say it's crucial to involve teenagers. We will hear more about that during the seminar.
Surfalugnt is also about partnership. All these authorities, companies, others, profit from participating. And a partnership is about sharing expertise, sharing costs, sharing visibility, gaining mutual expectations, mutual, having a mutual benefit. And also of course step by step, having a joint evaluation of planning of future events.
Much like today's seminar, a joint arena for the benefit of children. This is just a slide showing the footprint of my company.
Next slide, please. Some works on how the company is addressing these issues. We see as the first picture, I show that online brings enormous opportunities, communications, social development, media, freedom of expression, very important, online banking, etcetera, etcetera. But we do want to recognize and address that there are harmful issues as well. We strive to contribute through such as awareness building, involvement in different organisations and we also have specific services, blocking child sexual abuse images on the Internet. And of course, very important, our involvement in Surfalugnt.
Thank you very much.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you, Patrick. We will move on to the next Swedish representative. She is Ann Katrin Ageback from Swedish Media Council. The floor is yours.
>> ANN KATRIN AGEBACK: The film we saw in the beginning, I would like to give some introduction to that even though you couldn't hear it.
It was project we had called digital (off microphone) we are asking young people to make the film about their online life, good and bad experiences, and then made a story they wrote themselves. Then they illustrated their story by animating or by taking photos that they have the right to publish, to post.
There is a whole bank of stories available. Some of them are also in English.
Then a few words about the Swedish Media Council. We are governmental organisation, connected to the minister of culture. The aim of our work is to empower and protect children in the media landscape. We are very much for empowering, because we think that empowering is the best way to protect.
The work covers all movie images, and we started 20 years ago, then mainly dealing with video violence, and today most of our work is connected to video games and the Internet. The Media Council is also part of the European network for safe Internet centres. We are cofounded by the European Commission for safe Internet programme.
The work we are doing in Sweden we did together with a NGO called children's rights in society, which is a very well-established help line for children, where they can turn by telephone or by E-mail or by chat nowadays. We get a lot of useful information from that contact with children.
But here and today I'm going to talk about the very special project that we have made, unique to us and very unique in many ways, because usually when we go out with campaigns, we use adults as a target group. Of course, children and young people are the end target group. But adults are the receiver groups for our messages.
We go through parents and through teachers, through social workers. At this time we decided to go straight to children. The idea came up for producing a play for schools. That is what I'm going to tell you about.
First of all, the first step was that we had to find the theater group, as a public institution we had to make agenda, complicated procedure. We had some special requirements for this theater group. They should be experienced in playing for children. They should be used to play in schools, and they should have well-established network in different regions of Sweden.
We made a call for tender and we were lucky to get the group. We had 35 years of experiences playing for children. We started the production. This was done together with the theater group, the Media Council, and children in the age of 9 to 12.
The first thing was of course to write the script. It was really fun to involve the receivers so to say, the children in this process.
It is called where is the undo button? It is a 45-minute long play, made for the classroom. It is an interactive play. It is about different problems or situations that might occur when using the Internet, like bullying, uploading of photos or hate and revenge.
In focus of this play are two avatars. They are called Vida and Veba. In the beginning of the play, they are in the computer. Then they jump out of the computer in front of the children and ask them to help them, because it's such a mess on the Internet.
The children are very willing to help and assist. It is a fantastic communication between children and the actors. Now this play has been out for three, four months, playing for 3,500 children in the age 9 to 12.
They have been all over Sweden. Now it's continuing. But without our economical support. We paid for the first 60 performances. Now it stands on its own legs. All the performances are fully booked.
Included in this theater package is also a teacher's guide, that has been sent out to the teachers before the theater group come to the school, including different rules they can use before the play and afterwards to discuss with the children.
What kind of lessons have we learned from this? First of all a play is an excellent message to reach children and teachers, because teachers love the old-fashioned form of a school play. And children love the school play about the Internet. This is perfect. We saw also interactive form like theater was excellent for communicating, because children can give their advice and opinions without talking about themselves.
They are talking about Vida and Veba to help them out in difficult situations. This material was sent out to the teachers, also very important, because teachers need very effective hands-on material. They don't feel self-assured to talk about the Internet without very practical materials.
I can also say that it was -- I know that time is out, I'm almost finished -- it was also very good to engage the theater group doing the dissemination, because they had an impact that we could never have done without them. It was good value for money. I will not talk about the less positive experiences. One is that it was very complicated to (off microphone)
(lost audio, standing by for audio.)
This was a very good way to handle youth panel, because we got so much information from the kids. All I can wish is that we had been able to be out in every classroom and listen to them. It was amazing to hear their opinions and solutions. Thank you. For those of you who want some material from Media Council, you can find it over there. Thank you.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you very much. What a fascinating project you had in Sweden. Now for the third Swedish representative, Maria Soares Lindberg, and about cooperating with the youth.
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: We are going to watch a film before I start my presentation.
(Showing of film)
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: My name is Maria Soares Lindberg and I represent a Swedish site, Surfalugnt, Swedish youth NGO. We have several different projects. One of them which I manage is Web coaches. (Off microphone) our main goal is meet children and young people where they are in the sense of the word. We are not so much online as Forum for children to meet adults and to talk about everything they want to talk about. It can be about their pets or their girlfriends or boyfriends or questions regarding puberty. We are working with different social media for children, different commercial Web sites.
We have employees that are present at these Web sites, at daytime and nighttime. The children can interact with us as they interact with their friends. But of course we are adults. We listen as friends but act as adults. You can say that is our slogan.
There is a big need for this kind of adult presence on the experience net we have seen. But what we also see is that it's, there is children, they miss contact with other adults, with sensible adults anyway, not only on the Internet but in their every day life.
They talk to us as well as they talk to us about every day things. They also of course, on the help line we get a lot of serious problems they share with us as well. That can be about everything, everything from severe cyber bullying to child prostitutions, and molestations, and abusive parents. We are not psychiatrists. We are just listeners, even though we have got education, we are not prepared to give therapy online.
Therefore, we also have network of the community workers all over Sweden. 600 persons are connected in this network, so we can get the contact with them, when we see something or meet a child who needs more help than we can provide.
This project has been very successful. We meet hundreds of children every day. I will stop there, and you can ask me questions later when we are open for questions.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you.
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: No, I'm sorry. I have the remote panel. Sorry. I want to present them. You will be able to ask them questions later. I will do this low tech way. I will show you, here you can see Sarah, Cecilia and Amanda from school in Sweden. They are 18 years old and listening and commenting very eagerly to this session. Thank you.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you. On to Norway. And Line Ugland Nyseth is going to talk about Norwegian awareness campaign nettvett.
>> LINE UGLAND NYSETH: In Norway child online protection has a high focus. For example, the Ministry of Justice and police has introduced the red button that makes it easier for children to report abuse or unwanted behavior on the Internet. The Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority which I represent are responsible for the Web portal. Here you will find information, advice and guidance about using the Internet in a secure way.
This Web portal is part of the Norwegian Government information security strategy on awareness raising, targeting Norwegian consumers.
Public organisations like MPT, Data Inspectorate, Norwegian Media Authority and private organisations like ChildMinder and different ISPs, cooperate in several projects all aiming to put child online protection on the agenda. In our opinion, to get children and young people safe on the Internet, we need to reach parents and teachers.
There is a digital gap between children and adults and this gap often makes it difficult for parents and teachers to get involved in the daily Internet life of their children. We encourage parents to talk to their children about what they do online, but many parents feel they don't have the right knowledge about how computers, about computers or the online world.
In an attempt to reduce this gap, we have a special purpose for parents and teachers. The way we do this is quite simple. We attend parent/teachers, teacher meetings where we meet parents face-to-face.
We show them what kids do online; for instance, what games they play, which social medias they interact with, and how they communicate with friends. We also give them knowledge about Internet security in general, such as virus, phishing, spy ware, identity theft, privacy, how to behave on line, guidance about what pictures to publish and so on.
And very important, we give them the opportunity to ask all the stupid questions that they want to.
So, in sum, we try to make parents more secure, so that they are better equipped to guide their own children online. One of our main messages is that we need dialogue instead of setting physical limitations for the children. We talk about the human firewall, and by that we mean that we can have as many physical filters as we like on our computers at school and at home. But the real filter is in our minds.
What we have learned from this project so far is that it is time-consuming and difficult to meet as many parents and teachers as we would like to. One of the things that we have also experienced is that we sometimes have to convince especially parents about the threats and down sides of using the Internet and why it is important to be aware of this.
For the future, we will continue with our work, reaching out to as many parents and schools as possible. We think this is the right use of our resources at this time. We see that parents and teachers really appreciate our visits, and that it gives them valuable knowledge.
Together with the University of Agder we are currently developing books and curriculum for the students who are to become teachers. Hopefully, this will raise the competence and expertise of the new teachers. And hopefully, they will be better equipped when facing the challenges starting their careers in the schools. So this was a short introduction to one of our projects on child online protection in Norway.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thanks a lot, Line. Then, to Denmark, and for the Danish Media Council and their projects, which is, which are presented by Susanne Boe.
>> SUSANNE BOE: We will start with a film as well. It is started. It is called in Danish (speaking Danish.) In English, Think Before You Post.
(Showing of film.)
>> Breaking news from Denmark, a teenager has declared his friend Peter is a moron.
>> SUSANNE BOE: Thank you. I can tell you that this film is a collaboration between the Danish and the Icelandic Awareness Centre, and that script, the concept has been created by youth. But again, hello. My name is Susanne Boe, and I'm the head of Secretariat of the Media Council for children and young people in Denmark, and also project manager in the Danish Awareness Centre.
The Danish Awareness Centre have two partners, Cyberhus which is our help line and our partner which is our hot line.
Being awareness centre, we are part of the Insafe network, which presently consists of 27 national awareness centres. On a national level, we have established a strong network of national players within the industry, academia and public and private organisations. Today, our stakeholder group count 37 members.
Next, thank you. As awareness raisers within the digital media, one of our most important tasks is to equip the teachers. The Media Council cooperate with the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the Danish IT Centre for Education and Research, on producing inspiring and pedagogical educational materials which deals with some of the challenges the new online technologies brings along.
More specific materials which include online technologies in the education all inform about the possibility and challenges of the new media. The effort is a joint initiative under EMU which is the common portal for the educational world in Denmark. EMU is short for Educational Meeting Universe. The portal is a unique constellation of virtual universes targeted at specific user groups.
So far, they are universes for teachers and pupils of the primary school sector, upper secondary schools, institutions for vocational training and the teacher training colleges. EMU is initiated by the Danish Ministry of Education.
The materials are posted for free on the online portal for all teachers in Denmark. That means that anyone have access to a variety of subjects, such as cyber bullying, Web ethics, online marketing, surveillance, media literacy. I give you here concrete example of a joint effort project, called you decide for yourself, which also was posted on the EMU. In collaboration with the Danish Board of Technology, our help line Cyberhus and the Danish Data Protection Agency, the Media Council develop the campaign, you decide for yourself, to promote education in IT and protection of privacy online.
The campaign running from 2009 to 2011 consists of a dynamic online magazine that teachers and students from the upper grades may use to focus on privacy issues in the digital media. The magazine deals with subjects such as digital footprints, cyber bullying, privacy, data protection, and copyrights, and provides possibilities for working with journalistic practices, story writing, and societal reflections.
It is also an illustration on our common Nordic approach and best practices exchange within the Insafe network, as the original idea was developed and carried out in Norway.
Next, please. Well, the political background is that there is a substantial funding from the Government to ICT in the Danish school world. But as such, we don't have in the curricula a separate subject covering this. However, what we do have is a stipulation in Danish, in the Danish school act that states that ICT must be integrated in all of the schools, subjects where it's relevant.
Next, please. Obstacles and solutions. As you can hear, there is political interests and also focus, and the tools are there. But how do we make the teachers use them? Generally, we have in Denmark a positive atmosphere around using digital media, and the big question is, and the general approach is, to use digital media, rather than ban it.
But, as awareness-raisers, what we often are dealing with in this respect is both matters on the amount of time to disposal. As the youth of ICT is not an obligatory part of the curriculum, it tends to be down played on behalf of the obligatory curriculum demands.
Also, some teachers do not feel fully equipped in the youth and possibilities of the new media, and they are aware that the students often know more about this than themselves.
Further, some do not see the relevance at all, as they consider the new technologies to be more a mass of entertainment than actually educational achievement. But how do we deal with this?
Well, we have a plan. Well, we start with create material which takes its starting point in a subject on the curriculum, and then apply the use of the digital technologies into this educational material.
Also, make an effort to point out that children need to have the critical and ethical skills which is exactly what the teachers can apply. At last, digital media is not a part of the teacher's education by now, this is a case we will work very hardly on.
Next, please. The way forward. The way forward is still filled with challenges and we have constantly to seek to renew our work and reflect on how we can do better.
Here we have four bullet points, cooperating across organisations and across borders, building confidence in the teachers to move them in the right direction, manifest general positive understanding of the Internet and new technologies, and understanding the conditions, meaning, we need to ask the children, meet them where they are, get information from them, and get them involved in producing the safety tools themselves.
Thank you. Maybe next, maybe you can have inspiration of looking of the Danish portal EMU. Thank you so much for attention.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you, Susanne. Now to the very north, to Iceland, and Guoni Olgeirsson from the Ministry of Education. The floor is yours.
(Showing of film.)
>> GUONI OLGEIRSSON: Yes, this is an advertisement that was used in a campaign recently in Iceland to increase awareness of parent, so that they could know what their children were doing online at nights or in evening when the parents were not knowing where they were.
This was a very successful campaign. But I am Guoni Olgeirsson. I work at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Iceland and am part of the programme committee of SAFT in Iceland. But we in Iceland, we don't have any so-called central media centres. But the Home and School Association in Iceland is responsible for the safe introductions in Iceland.
I want to show you here briefly because I'm from the ministry that we have a new law in Iceland for all the school levels, and we are now planning the new curriculum for all these levels. And our minister has put forward five core or key elements, factors that should be focusing on teacher education in the curriculum development, and then in the local development of its school and that means from kindergarten and through to upper secondary.
That is one of the point is that we don't look at these as individual subjects. But these are, should be included as key elements in every subject and subject area. Literacy is the first one. It is supposed to be explained or in more wider way than before; for example, media literacy and digital literacy. But we don't consider this yet in our previous curriculum as important factors. But now we are focusing on this. Also democracy is the fact that we focus on, and we have had a lot of programmes where the citizenship education in Iceland, and now we are more focusing on the digital citizenship.
But I think as shown previously, that there is perhaps not the most important thing to divide or separate the things, because digital citizenship and citizenship in general is more or less the same thing and should be applied to every aspect of the society.
The real world, or the online world, it's the same world in fact. We also have this equality and creativity and sustain ability.
Next slide, please. We in Iceland as I said, we don't have a Media Council yet. But the Ministries of Education, Science and Culture has been responsible for creating this awareness campaign, and from the beginning, the National Parent Association has been active in doing that, and in the beginning, it was the ministry itself that was responsible for applying to the European Insafe project but slowly the home and school took more or less over this awareness note activity and responsibility. Now they have the responsibility, but still we have a lot of stakeholders in the project management committee of the SAFT programme, and it is very important we think that we have the Ministry of Education there, and all the active participants, and we focus also on the youth panel from the ministry to the youth.
Next slide. Here is just an example of campaign that was very successful. It was a film that was shown from Denmark, in Danish, it was originally an Icelandic, and it was a part of this campaign, think before you post. These are the five net ethics that were trying to be implemented, and the aware campaign in all the country. It was published, lot of things. We use the media, the Internet, and also the youth panel, and there was a great success we think in this particular project. The youth, they were extremely efficient in creating this atmosphere of their own, because they had the responsibility to carry it on in the schools. Okay? Next slide.
Here finally we have just some examples of what we call good and bad practice. We could say that there is an ongoing book, publishing some books about online literacy that we think is very promising. But I think we have to focus also on what has not been very successful, and that is a poster or a leaflet that was published, and given to every single student in our schools, to every student.
But actually, it was a leaflet, no parents even noticed this. This was a campaign to control downloading and file sharing. It was definitely of no use to send the leaflet at home because the children throw it in the garbage. We have to use other methods. But in the end, I have to say the final point that we are now in the beginning of a new campaign concerning bullying. We have together online bullying or digital bullying and just bullying in the normal world.
And it has been a successful beginning and the Ministry of Education and the minister opened it a few days ago. We have followed it from here. It is a successful beginning.
We hope that this will be one of the most successful campaigns we have. We have a very active participation of the youth panel in this, that they perform plays in every community and a lot of communities in Iceland, and after this we will try to call that what are the main concerns concerning bullying, both online and in the real world, and work it out in the future together with this campaign.
Thank you.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you, Guoni. Finally, to my home country, to Finland, Heli Alanko, the coordinator of our project, Safe on the Internet, please.
>> HELI ALANKO: Hello. I'm going to, yes, I work for Ficora, Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority. My duty is to coordinate the awareness centre in my organisation, which is cofounded also by the commission, as many of the projects are presented here.
I'm going to present to you a very practical example on how to reach children, teachers and parents with our message. My example has many similarities to the Norwegian model that we just heard about.
Next slide, please. So, it's Internet safety expert service which is one of the many services that we provide for schools and parents. Yes. It was established in 2004. It is an online booking system, which you can find on OnlineSafetySchool.fi. That is our campaign Web site.
So it gives almost all comprehensive schools in Finland the possibility to book an online safety expert to speak for pupils, teachers and parents. The experts come from our partner organisations. We have more than 30 partners with our campaign. That's a lot. It is working very well.
Next slide, please. I have a screen shot about the online booking system. It is a very simple online Forum, where you choose your region, your city or smaller town. You choose the language you wish to have. We have two official languages in Finland, Finnish and Swedish, and you can also book an English presentation.
Then you choose roughly the subject you want to hear specifically about, and then you click "find" and you get a list of experts. Then when you click the name of the expert, you will be able to fill another form which goes to the experts' E-mail address. Then you can correspond with the expert. That is if you are teacher or parent.
Next slide, please. I want to present to you one of our experts. This man is chief security advisor in Microsoft Finland. He was awarded for advancing the information society in the spring of 2010 by the ministry of transport and communication. This was a very big thing for us. We are very happy to receive this award for one of our experts.
As you can't probably see the text, I will quickly read it to you. I have been volunteering as an online safety expert for schools for about five years now, and I usually spend about five days a year talking about security at schools. I have given classes to school kids of all ages, and also to parents and teachers.
This work is a way to fulfill our citizenship targets, and for me it is a very refreshing trend to my normal every day work. It is a good insight on what is the newest and coolest on the Internet and in kids' minds, and also how parents should act and behave to guide their kids, and also gives us as a company valuable feedback on functionality and guidance that we should provide.
The best thing is talking to the kids. They can never prepare for a class. The kids actually ask you anything. And I think this is very well put, what this is all about.
Next slide, please. Here we have some photos of him doing a presentation, just a quick -- notice that we usually, there is only one class at a time with pupils to ensure discussion. This is all about communication. We have already made presentations for the experts, to ensure that the message is the same in all the presentations. We also give training to the experts.
Next slide, please. Well, is it working? Yes, it is. We get very much positive feedback from the schools. We have around 250 school visits each year. We have had some challenges in having experts in all parts of the country. But in most of the country, we have experts. Thank you.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: I think now it's time for the Finnish film. And then after that, we will move on to other things. Wait and see.
(Pause)
(showing of film.)
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Okay. Now we have the panel. I think the speakers will all be the panellists, and we will also have the young people in Stockholm. I think we will start with a question that is presented to every panelist, and the answer should be brief, short and snappy. And after that, I'm expecting to have questions from the audience, or from the list I have, I will put them forward to some of the panellists.
But now, let's begin with the first question, to everybody. Could you tell in a few words the very best experiences that you have had during the last few years concerning the impact of your work? Patrick, would you like to start?
>> PATRICK: Thank you very much. I think as we have heard from the presentations today, that what is successful is multistakeholder initiatives, to work together and not to work in silos, but to have companies, authorities and to work together. Of course, as we have also heard today, always involve the youth themselves in the forming these campaigns. Thank you.
>> I would also like to say that the stakeholder cooperation is one of the success points of our campaign. Also, the school cooperation has been very good. We are reaching more and more teachers and schools by every year.
>> At the risk of repeating what the former presenters have said, I agree. Multistakeholder cooperation but also important to find ways of dissemination that is possible, not too time-consuming for the staff of small companies, small organisations. I think that is an important clue. Dissemination, value for money and time.
>> I think we have had a variety of subjects at this session so far. So I should like to address your attention at the campaigns, because that has been a very very good way to reach out for the schools, and also for the media, because through events during these campaigns, we have been able to catch the attention from the television parties, the public broadcasters, and that had proved very valuable.
>> I think I would like to emphasize the experience that we have had this year with going on location, so to speak. Of course, as I said earlier it's time-consuming, but still it has given us so much more back talking directly to children, parents or teachers.
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: Yes, I will take the opportunity to comment, to give you the comments of the youth panel. They think this example that we talked about with the play is a very good example for making an impact. But it need of course to be age appropriate, even for older children.
And then they also say that this so-called experts, they don't see them as expert because they don't have their perspective. They talk about online activities that the young people don't recognize in their every day life.
>> GUONI OLGEIRSSON: Perhaps there is nothing so much to be said about this. Everything else has been here very clear. It is very important to have all the stakeholders inside such a project or campaign. I think that is the most important thing. And for example, in our country, the media campaigns has been very successful. It is rather easy to reach all the nation so to speak. We have noticed that the media coverage is very important to get discussions at every home. We cannot reach everybody during meetings.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you all. As you put forward the multistakeholder perspective and broad cooperation in the society, which I personally also think is of vital importance because otherwise the impact is not what it should be.
But we have experienced in Finland that sometimes it's hard to keep up the interest of the stakeholders, that they are still with us after many many years. Now I'd like to ask Ann Katrin beside me what is the method that you use to keep going?
>> ANN KATRIN AGEBACK: That is a very good question. I don't know if I have the answer to it. I think today one problem is that so many organisations, so many actors are involved in this area. If you go back, for example ten years ago, we were very very alone in our work.
Now everybody is more or less concerned by these issues. Like Surfalugnt is a campaign where we try to work together. It is very important that, to have a common Forum, so there are not 25 different organisations working with the same kind of campaigns, without knowing about each other. So that is really a huge job and it's a growing job. It is really a challenge.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Could I also have a comment on the same subject from Line?
>> LINE UGLAND NYSETH: I agree with Ann Katrin. In Norway there are different organisations working with these issues. Of course, it is a challenge to try to cooperate all the time and try to be aware of what everyone is doing. I think that for us, that is a challenge and that is something that maybe we could look more into what you have done in Sweden with Surfalugnt project.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thanks. Any questions from the audience at this point? Yes, please.
>> AUDIENCE: I would like to ask the school children in Sweden, how do they feel about for example Internet filtering? Is it good thing? Bad thing? Don't care? Know how to circumvent it?
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: I will ask them whether they heard the question.
They are answering. I ask you to be quite brief. I see them typing.
Well, it may be a very good thing. But it depends on how it is carried out. What do you mean by that, Amanda?
Screening is not good. Censoring is not good.
But warning for bad sites can be. Why is not censoring good, Amanda?
I lost her. I will come back to you.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, my name is Camilla. I'm from the Danish Media Council. I'm working on the EU project Insafe, where many of us is from. Taking into consideration the IGF and this particular child online workshop, having heard some really interesting and insightful presentations and comments on how to include the voice of youth in IG issues, I think the question and challenge for us working with child online protection is in what way should we relate or combine it with IG messages?
Before we answer that question, maybe we need to debate why we should implement the IG messages in child online protection. One reflection I have in this regard is that it is our experience that we need to involve the children and young people in order to catch their interest. In this sense, we might benefit from moving the focus from their perspective of how technology mess with children to how children can mess with technology. In this way, sort of doing Internet safety through IG approaches.
Do you have any reflections in the panel, some comments on that?
>> It's too difficult (chuckles) can say a little bit more. In our work, we often experience that when we catch the attention of the children, it is when we kind of engage them in how they can effect these matters regarding the Internet and youth of the Internet. For example, this campaign which we mentioned before which is, You Decide for Yourself, which is about digital footprints, privacy, surveillance issues, and when we engage children in this debates and these matters, they actually get very engaged. They think it's very interesting. And often they haven't really reflected on, for example, digital footprints, how many footprints they set on the Internet, when they are behaving there.
I think in relation to this, I think the Internet Governance debates and issues are very close to these perspectives, and maybe we can engage the children even more if we sort of introduce to them these matters, and also show them that they actually have a voice in this.
I think this giving them a voice is very important to catch their interest. So it is more in that kind of sense of the Internet Governance perspectives I was thinking.
>> GUONI OLGEIRSSON: Perhaps this is a very complicated question of course. But I remember we have not so much in Iceland I think discussed the Internet Governance at all in the country, or not even generally, definitely not with children.
But the children and youth panel we have, they are more, much more responsible than we think, because they know that people, that children or young people have been involved in the youth panel, they know of all this what you are mentioning, the footprints and what can be the censors. They are afraid we adults are not thinking too much about this and that we are perhaps more thinking about other things to educate in IT or the technical world to create jobs by using technology. But not in this, what I call the dark side of the Internet. And if we listen more to their voices they could be I think the leaders in our countries to be online or what you call digital citizens, because I mean, in schools, it is not that a general, it is not the first thing that the teacher does, is to teach digital censorship. Perhaps they are teaching normal courtesy, manners and all that kind of things.
It's very easy if you try to involve the students with their own world, with their own reflections, because otherwise this youth will be afraid of the Internet will be more closed. Everything will be filtered and more filtered than is needed to be filtered. And even they are put to jail if they break the law for the Internet so to say.
So I think if you can create this thinking among the youth, then it could be effected to the grown-ups. I think it's my reflection.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Okay. Now we have Patrick and then Ann Katrin.
>> PATRICK: A short reflection. While the Internet Governance Forum here where we participate in the room, and remote, is all about awareness building, and empowerment. So we could have hope maybe to see more youth on the spot here, I hope there are many youth at least online listening to these discussions.
I think it's more than, rather to have censorship and sticks and saying no and don't use, it's about empowerment and discussions and awareness building with the youth. So that there is a dialogue, and together with the youth finding a way forward to solve and build awareness around the questions. Thank you.
>> ANN KATRIN AGEBACK: I think the work with youth panels have changed. Originally when we started, it was very important to have young people talking about what they are doing online, how many times they spend, which Web sites they go to, why it is so popular and so on.
And that can still be valid if you have, for example, teachers in front of you, everybody know what I mean. But in a Forum like this with IGF I think it is important to take the youth panels a step forward to make them involved in the political process, and even in industrial process, because they have a lot of things to give, that is not about values, but the future but I think there are different Forum for this, teachers compared to this Forum here is I think very different. But they are ready to be here for sure.
>> Yes, before I give the speaker's role to you, I'd like to ask the same question from the young people in Stockholm. They can answer while you are talking, Susanne. But my question is how would you as young people like to be involved? Because there are adults discussing here youth involvement. But now Susanne.
>> SUSANNE BOE: I would just put a question because we had a very successful national IGF with a youth panel, and maybe you could give us very shortly what happened in Copenhagen and what was the results.
>> I would be gladly doing that here in this Forum. Well, what we did, you can see afterwards, there is some results from the whole thing we did in Copenhagen over here, but what we did was to coordinate the youth participation part of our national IGF which was held by the ministry of science in Denmark here in August, and the way we did it was that we had actually online questionnaires about different IGF core issues, such as security rights, access, openness and the future of the Internet.
We placed these online questionnaires on different social networking sites in Denmark and also in the EMU, that Susanne was talking about before, together with educational material. And the result was actually overwhelming which was also a sign of this thing that youth really wants to participate in these processes.
We had over 4,000 input of children and youth between 13 and 16 participating and answering with critical and insightful answers. As I said before, you can see some of the answers here. But you can also see it on the youth IGF.dk Web site. We also had in connection with this, we had seven youth participating in the national IGF discussing with five IT spokespersons from the major political parties in Denmark and discussing these issues from their viewpoint.
So far, I've actually heard the feedback that we got was that the youth were actually almost more competent than the IT spokespersons.
So this is a really really good sign of the thing that we can really get valid information from youth and we can use it and if we listen and look at them as stakeholders in the Internet governance debate, it's actually very valid information. So thank you.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Maria, any answers from Sarah, Amanda or Cecilia?
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: I will give the mic to you, Amanda. How would you like to be involved? Now you are not chatting anymore.
>> (Off microphone) have opinions about Internet (off microphone).
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: You would like to be part of this as well, you are the expert, is that also what you are saying?
>> (Off microphone).
>> I will put you on the speaker here.
(Pause)
>> Yes, it's that one. Just a moment, Amanda. Now you are on speaker. Loud speakers. Can you repeat your answer?
>> Okay. Yeah. Repeat the answer. Okay. Well, the thing is, I'm not saying that we are experts, because...(off microphone) on the Internet should have an opinion about it, because the Internet is about everybody is involved. And, yeah, everybody in it. So if it should change anything, everybody should be involved.
>> The fact is that we spend more time on the Internet than adults do. If a youth don't have a say on the Internet, why should the adults stop (off microphone) the youth need to have a say in order to improve the Internet.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: I'd like to add one question to the young people, is that, yes, they want to have a say if matters concerning the Internet, because they are so much there, which is true of course. But how does that, having the say, differ from the real world? Do they feel that they have enough decision power, influence in the real world? Or how does it differ from the Internet?
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: Did you get that?
>> No, they didn't hear that.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: You can maybe send the message.
>> I will do that.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: We can ask them later. All right. Then our audience.
>> I think the SAFT programme in Iceland, the project manager would like to talk about this a little bit.
>> Actually, I wanted to engage in a little conversation with Norway. I'm Johnson from the Icelandic Internet centre and we are currently working on updating our report of red button, I should call it. We want to update it, and give it more features. We are currently working on it. We want to try to launch it with fireworks sometime this fall.
So I have a few questions for you. Who receives and analyze the reports? What can you tell us about the design of the button? How are different reports processed? What is your general experience now, both positive and negative? How did you introduce it to the public? Finally, have you done some studies on this? Who is reporting? What is reported? Etcetera.
>> Well, actually it is the ministry of justice and police that has introduced this button. I cannot answer you on most of the questions that you ask me.
But I can say that it has, what I've heard is that it is a huge success in Norway, and it is the Ministry of Justice and the police that is handling the response.
>> AUDIENCE: Studies about the content that is being reported to you, or who is reporting?
>> No, I really can't say so much about that.
>> AUDIENCE: Any of the others, countries that have any experience in this area that could be shared?
>> Yes, we have a similar button that has been introduced in Norway, in Finland too. It has been working since March this year. So far I haven't heard any reports on that. But it is a new thing in Finland.
>> It is more or less the same. We are aware of that button. But we are not involved ourselves. It is a thing between a hot line and it is, we are catching up. But for the time being, no answers.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Okay. Then I would like to ask about setting the goals for your campaigns and for your work in general. We heard Patrick telling us that in Surfalugnt, you have the objective to reach at least 65 percent of parents. Now you have the figure of 35.
What are the measures, and how do you know that you have reached the goal in the end?
>> PATRICK: Well, as I said in my presentation, it is very important when you have multi-staker partnerships and work together, that every now and then you sit down, periodically, and evaluate. That needs to be done also as to Surfalugnt. That has not been done yet, broad evaluation of the success.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Yes, this is what I feel is essential also. Heli, like to add something from Finland or later on?
>> HELI ALANKO: Yes. We do each year teacher survey which consists very much feedback from the schools. We are able to send it to all the comprehensive schools in Finland, which is a very good thing of course. We get almost 1,000 feedbacks every year.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Any others? Guoni?
>> GUONI OLGEIRSSON: Yes, I could at least mention it and could happens be more accurate about it. But the campaign that I was talking about, think before you post, what was a national campaign with all, a lot of stakeholders, media coverage, and over 70 percent of the population was aware of it afterwards. And that I think is very successful.
Those who, I think 99 percent of those who answered the questionnaire about what they thought about this campaign, they were very positive, and they said this made me think about the Internet. But we don't know actually afterwards, does it change the behavior. That is a bigger question. It is just like smoking. You know in school that it's dangerous to smoke. And here you are very good writing essays about that and answering questions. But if you smoke, then there is no use. This is a useless campaign, if you don't change the behavior.
That is the same in every prevention campaign, that you have to -- you cannot -- you have to measure the results much later, and I think, but we can also measure as I mentioned the campaign that was unsuccessful, that there was no change at all in downloading or file sharing in Iceland before and after that campaign. So it was totally useless.
>> ANN KATRIN AGEBACK: I fully agree with Guoni. Raising awareness is a long-term project. You will never be able to measure the result in figures. I mean, you can as you say, you can count the numbers who have seen a certain campaign. But you will never know how it has changed attitudes in the right direction.
I think though that we have a very good opportunity at the moment, because we can see in all statistics that younger and younger children are starting to use the Internet. This is a fantastic opportunity, because parents do talk, and they do spend time with small children.
So they can start this awareness working in the family much much earlier. When the child is 3 years old he or she is still very fond of sitting next to Mama or Papa and getting advices and talking about what is happening on the Internet.
I think this is a very very good opportunity for more impact and awareness-raising.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Anyone else? Susanne?
>> SUSANNE BOE: I fully agree with Ann Katrin. The tendency is that we should move to the lower ages, and we have a dream of producing my first step on the Internet, together with Danish public service station, Denmark, for children from the age of 2, and that will be amazing, because they have really many reviewers. And it will be a project which if we succeed will be ready for the next 2011.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Maria, any answers from the young youngs?
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: It was the question about Internet versus what we call real life, or what we shouldn't call real life. Sarah answers, these concepts are very different. We are very involved in Internet issues, young people may not be as involved as in, for example, politics. We may know a lot more about what is happening on the Internet, and be more interested about it.
The Internet has come into politics as well, the Swedish pirate party for instance. They raise questions that have proven to be very important to young people, not that politics don't matter. But we have more insight about the Internet than politics sometimes. The Internet is a great part of politics, and a part of what we know a lot about.
And the Internet may well be used for politician to reach us. It has begun to. We would like to be reached through the Internet. It's a very good way of discussing, but not only. We need to be informed and contacted in real life as well.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Very fine answer. I'd like to continue with the question to the young people. So, yes, they want to be involved, and they should be involved, that's great. But what is the role of the parent, of the adult?
>> (Chuckles).
>> MARIA SOARES LINDBERG: What is the role of the parent?
>> The parents are not as important when it comes to the older children, when it comes to our age, to teenagers. I think we have a better idea of what is going on, on the Internet, and what we can do to be safe and feel safe on the Internet than our parents actually do.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: We should reach out to you firstly, not to the parents?
>> Younger children (off microphone) need to be informed. But...(off microphone)
(pause)
>> Now we can't hear you. For the young children we should go to the parent. But older children, young adults, we should go directly to you? Is that correct?
>> Yes. Yes.
>> Thanks a lot, Stockholm.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Now we are coming to the end of this workshop in ten minutes or so. I think there is time for one question from the audience before we move on to the common message.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Martin from New Zealand. I think New Zealand may be as far as you can get from northern Europe geographically. But I'd like to thank the panellists, because in all of the times I've talked to people about online safety this is the first time I've felt kindred spirits, certainly your approach is very similar to ours.
I want to ask, pick up on something that started to be talked about, what was the idea of reaching younger and younger children. What are the ideas does the panel have in terms of growing the campaigns? What are your views for the immediate future for each of your organisations?
>> We are working at that very intensely at the moment. We have done the research that gives us factor base asking 2,000 parents who have children between 2 and 9. We have got a lot of information about how they online is and what they are doing.
What we can see is that of course small children's Internet use differs from the older ones, because they can still not write or read. What they are doing is that they are pressing buttons. They play simple games. They look at video clips, for example on the YouTube, things that happens when they press one button, very exciting.
So we will probably have to approach this use more than the communication aspects that we do with older children. We also intend to work towards the teachers in the preschools in Sweden, because most, almost every child in Sweden is at a preschool from very young age. This is a group that we would like to contact and to educate about the Internet use. But it is a good question. When I come back, this will be in focus for our work, how to reach them.
>> As I said for the time being, we have our focus on the little ones, and that will be a very large project.
But I know that our partner from the hot line, it is called save the children, they have tools for the preschool children. But they have focused mainly on cyber bullying. That's okay. But we have a much broader aspect, and that is not the way we are going to address the children.
But that was only to say that in Denmark, there won't be some tools all ready for the minors but not from the Media Council as such.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Okay. I think the panel has been -- just one comment. Guoni?
>> GUONI OLGEIRSSON: One comment. I think what I would like to see is to get all the teachers and educational staff more involved with this. We are involving the youth. I think the next step is to have this as a mainstream topic in every school. That is perhaps one important issue to focus on in the near future.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: The discussion wants to go on. Ann Katrin.
>> ANN KATRIN AGEBACK: I want to add one thing about small children. They also very much are a target group for commercial forces. For example, what do you call it, product placement? That is hidden in, for example, games for small children.
And this is something I know that at least parents are not very happy about. So that could be another focus on a campaign.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Finally, Line.
>> LINE UGLAND NYSETH: Yes, as we all know, younger people get to know the Internet much earlier than they have been. In Norway 24 percent of all 5-year-olds use the Internet. That is why we in the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority will focus on parents and teachers, because especially for the young children, parents need to be involved.
>> ANNA LAUTTAMUS-KAUPPILA: Thank you, all panellists. Thank you, young ladies, Sarah, Amanda, Cecilia, in Stockholm. I think now it is time for the common knowledge messages. So could I have the final slide, please?
Common messages are, we have heard great examples of things, fantastic things that have been done. But the baseline is that we have a positive approach. So we think Web is beautiful. And it's very useful. And it's fun.
So, we start from there. Then as it came out also very clearly, the multistakeholder, public-private initiative approach is also very important to make a real impact.
Then we want to say to children and parents, yes, you can! Not quoting Obama here. And you should, because we will have different skills and different kind of knowledge concerning the Internet, concerning technology, but in essence, concerning life. So as a parent, even if you are not so skillful on the net, then you are the parent and you know about life, and you know how to raise your child.
And what is important is that we really don't separate the Web life and the real life, as, Maria pointed out. Good citizenship is of course our goal, as parents, I hope, as young people too. So that doesn't differ that much here and on the Web.
So media literacy is our starting point, not warnings and threats, and not to limit that much. So to put it as clumsy slogan, less restrictions, more engagement, means more awareness and better skills. Thank you.
(Applause)
(end of session)
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