• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Australian government gets digital advice from kids

March 22, 2013 By Anne Leave a Comment

Doesn’t it just make sense? That government programs aimed at educating youth actually consult youth about what works for them? The Australian federal government is doing just that in what I hope becomes a model for other governments. “The Youth Advisory Group (YAG) on Cybersafety program for 2013 has been launched [this week] with the first online discussion forum taking place with primary school students in the Northern Territory, South Australia and West Australia,” ComputerWorld reported. A government’s practicing digital citizenship! Students aged 8-17 discuss what comes up in their online experiences in “live, secure and moderated online discussion forums with other students, moderators and [this week] the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy.” These are discussion forums open for set periods of time, for example one with high school students in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. And the consultations will include the face-to-face element we human beings need too – with a “Cybersafety Summit” that’ll happen in Melbourne in August.

I hope the discussion is as much about what digital safety and literacy education actually works for kids and kids feel they can be candid. This isn’t rigorous research, and the format and methodology have their limitations; whether or not these are “only” self-selected or teacher-appointed students (the article doesn’t mention demographic or socio-economic representation), there’s certainly broad geographic representation. But most important, what a message to send young people, that their government wants their input? Seems to me, this government is modeling citizenship as well as digital citizenship for the youth among its citizens!

Share Button

Filed Under: Law & Policy, Risk & Safety, students, teens, Youth Tagged With: Australian government, Canberra, cybersafety, online safety, YAG, Youth Advisory Group

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
  • New clarity on child sexual exploitation online
  • Game-changer: Child rights-by-design
  • Why I struggle mightily with the new Utah law
  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.