Views & Opinion YouTube and ensuring safe content
– Education’s balancing act Comment by Charles Sweeney, CEO, Bloxx
Charles Sweeney, CEO, Bloxx argues that Google’s child-friendly YouTube application may not be fail safe solution that it first appears, but rather a small piece of the overall education security puzzle.
For the last couple of years, companies such as Google have been under huge pressure by both parents and governments to do more to protect children from inappropriate content when they’re online. This is a tough ask. However, the recent launch of YouTube kids can certainly been seen as a positive step in the right direction, especially for teachers and schools who have long tried to balance the potential of YouTube’s videos as a learning resource whilst still safeguarding pupils from inappropriate content.
Pre-filtered content
YouTube Kids works by actively monitoring videos, including those linked in the right hand sidebar (previous YouTube filters’ perennial weakness), content deemed inappropriate is barred from the platform, and kept out of the grasp of inquisitive pupils. The app enforces a two-step process where new content uploaded to
the video-sharing site is pre-filtered, before it is cleared or barred from appearing through the YouTube Kids interface.
So far so good, and certainly any concerns I have with the app, aren’t to do with its technical merit. To my mind YouTube Kids, and the subsequently announced Vine kids, are indicative of a wider industry trend that should be embraced. However, education establishments can’t afford to be lulled into a false sense of security as child-friendly services by no means represent a ticked box for safeguarding.
Early-literacy age
Children are curious and tech-savvy, so creating a walled garden of video content will work extremely well for the students Google are calling the ‘early-literacy’ age. But with the advanced technological know-how of children even at primary school level, their first instinct will be to try and knock the wall down. If that’s the case, then the key question is how we continue to adequately equip young people to effectively deal with when not if they view inappropriate content. It would be foolhardy at best to think otherwise.
Despite the good intentions of stopping children accessing material that isn’t suitable for them, YouTube Kids needs to be supported in its deployment with an emphasis on openness, in order to help children when they inevitably view inappropriate content. Schools, along with parents and the wider industry – have a duty of care to ensure that the right support structure is in place to help them understand what they have seen through open communication. This approach is critical in ensuring that students become responsible e-citizens.
Using the internet safely
YouTube Kids is a welcome beginning, but it cannot solve the issue alone and does not solve the wider issues at hand. More than ever, the mantra of bringing people, process and technology together is key to protecting children online. Rather than battle technological problems with more and more infrastructure, it is people and the way they interact with the online world that needs to be focused on in regards to safer use of the internet in schools. In plainer terms, it seems technology alone can’t solve these problems, but education can.
Master the basics: Learn your times
tables and everything will be ok! Comment by Pat Mainprize, Education Lead, EducationCity
Stop a number of adults in the streets of most towns and cities and ask them what seven times eight is or what nine times six is and the chances are that you may get either a wrong or very hesitant answer. That old cherry of learn your tables and mathematics will become easy seems to have raised its head again, and not for the first time in my 43 years in the education arena.
Advantage Nobody would dispute that knowing your times tables can be an advantage, but learning them by rote without a proper understanding can only lead to problems in the future; I am personally a testament to that fact. I learnt all of my tables at an early age and, yes I probably laughed at those peers who were ridiculed because they couldn’t remember them. Having excelled in mathematics at primary school and learnt all the tricks I then went on to Grammar School where I eventually came unstuck with mathematics because I didn’t have a real understanding of what multiplication, division and many other areas of maths were all about. I had been
taught to get the right answers without a solid understanding of how I got them. Needless to say, I failed ‘O’ level mathematics at the first attempt. As a pass in ‘O’ level mathematics was important I was told I would have to re-sit it which filled me with trepidation.
How maths works
Then my saviour appeared, a teacher called Mr Gordon Wilde, ‘Oscar’ to us boys! He thankfully understood what had happened and also realised that a full grasp of the concepts and a full understanding of what you were doing in mathematics was of paramount importance. He spent time with us explaining how things are worked out and not just asking for answers. Any mathematician would, I’m sure, be in agreement with this. It worked and I duly passed on the second attempt, not with the grade 6 minimum pass level, but with a grade 3. More importantly, with fun card games, I actually began to enjoy mathematics again. Some would say that for a teacher in the sixties he was a visionary, but strangely he wasn’t even a full time mathematics teacher,
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www.education-today.co.uk
he was Head of the Physics. Maybe he really understood the meaning of cause and effect! Now, here we are in 2015 and we face the possibility of separate tests for times tables that children will need to pass or have to re-sit until they do pass; and what of those that don’t pass? Will they be thrown onto the education scrap heap like so many of my peers were in the late fifties and sixties? I hope that children will find their ‘Oscar Wilde’ who will realise the importance of full understanding and not just teach in order to get the right answers to pass the tests. At least let our primary age children enjoy their learning before they are sent on the exam merry-go-round.
Engaging activity
EducationCity, like many other digital resource providers, produces engaging activities, such as a full range of times tables songs, to help primary age children learn their times tables.
Patrick Mainprize, a former Head Teacher and LA Advisor, is Education Lead at
EducationCity.com, leaders in online educational content for 3-12 year olds.
March 2015
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