Anti-Bullying Week.

Over at Intuitive Media they have been busy looking at the problem of bullying. The difference is that the team have been working for many years to reduce the problem. Here Bob Hart reports on the success of IM’s safe social networking sites in creating a cyberspace where young people are less likely to experience the trauma of bullying.

In his piece, Extending Horizons: It’s Anti-Bullying Week – EVERY WEEK , Bob says:-

Recent research into bullying worryingly reveals that 70% of children suffer some form of bullying and that cyber bullying is dramatically increasing. Children are more likely than ever to suffer nasty or aggressive texts, emails, and messaging, as well as bullying in chat rooms.

However, a recent survey of 3,000 children aged 6 to 14 carried out by Intuitive Media reveals that members of its safe social learning networks are far less likely to be bullied than other children.

The survey asked members of SuperClubsPLUS.com and GoldStarCafe,net, aged 6 to 13 if they had suffered any bullying and found that less than 1 in 6 children had suffered any form of bullying. Half of these 500 children had experienced face-to-face verbal abuse, a quarter suffered physical abuse and a negligible proportion had experienced any cyber-bullying.

Quite an achievement and one that demonstrates the effectiveness of facilitated online communities.

Check the link above for more information.

Pangea Day: May 10th 2008

This is a great idea coming out from TED – if you haven’t looked at this site and listened to some of the talks then you’ve missed a lot!

Now Pangea Cinema Day, the day the world comes together through film, was called for by Jehane Noujaim – an interesting film maker who has a vision that film can be used to break down community, culture and national boundaries. Jehane outlined her vision for this day at the Ted Conference in July 2006 and now… it’s a reality. It’s going to happen on May 10th 2008.

Check out this YOUTUBE advert for the day:

Now a circular from TED tells me:-

The project is taking off, and its ambition level is spectacular. On May 10, 2008 – Pangea Day – Jehane’s wish will come to fruition as sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be video-conferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films – supplemented by visionary speakers, and global musicians. The purpose: to use the power of film to promote better understanding of our common humanity. A global audience will watch through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

A powerful advisory board has come together to support the project. It includes:
JJ Abrams
Lawrence Bender
Nancy Buirski
lan Cumming
Ami Dar
Cameron Diaz
Goldie Hawn
Vik Muniz
Clare Munn
Eboo Patel
Alexander Payne
Meg Ryan
Deborah Scranton
Jeff Skoll
Philippe Starck
Yossi Vardi
Kevin Wall
Will.i.am

If you’re interested learning more and/or helping out, please send an email to Pangea Day executive director Delia Cohen (delia@ted.com). More details are available at the project’s beautiful website created for us by Avenue A/Razorfish: www.pangeaday.org.

So ….. pretty powerful stuff for anyone interested in using film/video in a unique way. I, for one, plan to be involved…. let me know if you’re interested.

Oh… The website for full details is:  www.pangeaday.org

Illustration?

I’ve been writing another wee blog for a while – www.talkingni.org - and I

think the visitor pattern tells a wider story. Now since a picture is worth a thousand words…. here we go:-

Where is the rest of the world?

Where are we all going wrong?

Sugar…… I know I ain’t that popular but… hell’s bells someone in Africa and South America should have found me at this stage if they had any connectivity at all! Yes.. yes.. I know that would have been their ill luck if they had found me! But do you get the point?

But what does the graphic tell us about internet penetration?

Never mind the fabulous stats….. this is a real illustration.

PS… by the way – the BIG RED dots are multiple visitors!…. and I’ll enjoy having your visitor stats recorded!

Opera Mini

Anyone who knows me will tell you that my taste in music runs from Irish Traditional through Blues and stops somewhere around Rock ‘n’ Roll. I’m not renowned as an opera fan…. Until now that is!

I’ve been playing around with the Opera Mini Version 3 browser for a year or so and it is really very, very nice indeed. But …. (drum roll) now.. along comes the ..(drum roll)… Beta of Version 4. At 120kb it is packed with features… WOW is about the best thing to say here!

You can have a peek at the various features here before you download it to your mobile phone. Suffice to say I found the new version a really cool piece of kit! Fast.. fast …fast.

Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Broadband Growth

Richard Wray’s informative Guardian article- 14.6.07 , China overtaking US for fast internet access as Africa gets left behind, is a great piece of work outlining exactly where we have got to on the global broadband rollout.

And a pretty long way we have come in a short time but…..the biggest problems are still all about inclusion.

Richard points up in his piece:-

“There are more than 1.1 billion of the world’s estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million. The statistics, however, paint a picture of a divided digital world. While there are high levels of broadband penetration in western Europe, North America and hi-tech economies such as South Korea, usage in developing countries, and especially in Africa, is pitiful. Many of these emerging economies lack telephone services, let alone the sort of broadband internet access that has become available to every household in Europe.”

Again Africa is being left behind – what massive problems will that cause for the world in the future? We left much of Africa behind in the economic progress of the 20th Century and we’re still doing it with the telecommunications progress in the 21st century. Can’t we learn anything?

This handy map – courtesy of the Guardian – shows where we have got to and the massive task that is still left to be done. It’s well worth studying closely.

map_broadband_1406.jpg

I have another major concern here. Richard says:-

“Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube.”

Yip…. (those who know me are already running for cover )… here we have a world that is spending it’s time on the pointless pap that is the bulk of the content of YouTube. Okay..okay… so it’s not all pointless -and now and again some of it can be funny – but is this the best that we can do with a massively powerful resource like the internet? If filling the world’s bandwidth with videos of spotty teenagers posturing to popsongs of anorexic pop stars is the best that we can come up with in a world that needs health and wealth creation education delivered to a great number of the population – then we are doomed as a civilisation!

Perhaps it is time to organise the talented youth we have in developed countries with an electronic version of Voluntary Service Overseas? Our young people with their massively creative potential may be labouring under a heavy burden of stock examinations but, when they escape to their bedrooms and dive into their computer alternative spaces, can we not find a way to employ their potential, creativity and energy to educate the world? At the moment we leave a huge empty space which is then filled with the total inanity of much of the Myspace content or taken over by the morally corrupt peddling pornography.

It’s the 21st Century…. we can do better with the expanding internet than this. Can’t we?