The Byron Review unveiled: better information for parents

  Tanya Byron 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger

Parents need to be better informed about the net, accompanying their children more online, and the gaming industry needs to make its content ratings clearer. Tanya Byron's report for the Prime Minister on children, the net and gaming holds few surprises for any teacher that has worked with either gaming or the social web in the classroom, and might just initiate the kind of support parents need to make in-school projects more 'acceptable' in their eyes.

The report will recognise the excitement, learning and skills that are learned by using these technologies, and its author does not want children to be stifled in their surfing, their self-discovery on the net; it's about finding that 'collaborative relationship' between parent and child, knowing when to start easing off the accompaniment. It's about trying to replicate the releasing of control and accompaniment that happens in meatspace as children get older.

When Al Upton's class blogs got shut down after parental intervention, the frustration was not down to parent choice but parent ignorance. Trying to use any form of recent technology in the classroom needs to start with parental 'education' if it is to be sustainable in the longer term, and if the students are to have the beginnings of an authentic and appreciative audience for their work.

So while Byron's desire to see a national information campaign on the potential dangers of the net could be seen as a campaign against the net, I don't think that's the spirit of it at all. I hope we'll see more informed parents (a good thing) wanting to understand more (good thing) and seeking that information from such a national campaign, a national internet agency but, more likely, from their local school (yet another good thing).

In terms of gaming, she requests an additional 12+ rating for games. I doubt that any of those we've found useful at the Consolarium for that transition age will fall on the wrong side of that for any one group.

Read some of the reactions, see her interview and news report from this morning's BBC Breakfast and examine some of the potential for misuse of the report.

Comments

[Scott O'Raw]

Hi Ewan,

"it's about finding that 'collaborative relationship' between parent and child, knowing when to start easing off the accompaniment. It's about trying to replicate the releasing of control and accompaniment that happens in meatspace as children get older."

I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. I was saying recently that, at home and school, we teach responsibility to our kids in the real world - why is it so surprising that it needs to be re-iterated in the virtual world.