7 July, 2011 | Volume 1, Issue 1

SWEET AS SOCIAL MEDIA

Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

Firstly, let me just say a massive thank you! I have so many “thank you”s, so many in

fact, that well, I just won't force you to have to read my long endless rants here at least! So

to you, the person who is reading what I write on this page at least, I want to say to you es-

pecially, thank you.

Thank you for not only taking the time to consider looking or exploring this "idea",

(and that's what it really is) aka online magazine any further than the front page! I'm glad,

that with the help of the best 27 years of learning I can directly attribute to my father in

some degree, I have been able at least to do that. I take comfort in the fact, I was at least

able to do that for him.

My dad, Grahame Maher, was what some might possibly call a "dreamer". He was a

leader and a visionary – he had a certain kind of charisma, the kind that let him get away

with what was, to be honest, at times some stupid shit. Stupid at times maybe, irresponsible

some may have said, reckless even – but for every nay-sayer, there are 10 "converts".

Today would have been Dad’s 52nd birthday and I have been struggling the past few

weeks especially to move this “concept” into a plan and

make this event a reality! And as much as it sounds “like a bit

of a line” Dad lived the later years of his life at least, with

what he sincerely believed to be his life's purpose at the first

and foremost in his line of sight. You see my father was the

"son of a preacher man" as he song goes...But I must also

state, he would in saying that, never have called himself a reli-

gious man by any means!

If you have ever designed a website you will know what

I mean when I say that as "users" in an online sense at least,

from an outsider's perspective we must appear selfish, impa-

tient and easily distracted. To raise the next generation and

those following them with the values required by this tech-

nology, is a challenge we must all face.

"I dare you while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession."

- William Danforth .

7th of

7th

7th of

7th

At s

unset

At sunset

7th of

7th

7th of

7th

At s

unset

At sunset

6

Technological Approach

“In this day and age, it is not enough for parents to ignore or avoid conversations

about behaviour online when it comes to their kids.. We need to remember this

is not about proxies or devices, its more than technology itself – really it boils

down to be just being yet another medium for people to communicate.” Jess Maher (2011)

Exploring the focus of this issue

Technology & the digital lives of youth has com-

pletely changed things but it is much like many other things in life- its a matter of balance. We hope to build awareness and get people talking in a number of ways. The “YoutTube Booth” & viral campaigns on YouTube and helps to overcome the online, offline

cross over & pass msg.

What the #Be_Kind_Online campaign script really

extends to is a summary of the research & various sources of guidance and advice relating to managing online behavior and protecting children from the dan-

gers commonly faced online…

Cyberbullying & antisocial behavior online is one of the most prevalent of the risks youth face online. And scarily, this kind of bullying tends to lead to higher rates of suicide in youth as well.

NetHui 2011 was a conference bringing together everyone involved with Internet is-sues in New Zealand, held over three days from 29 June – 1 July 2011 in Auckland, with the theme for the 2011 conference being “Shaping our Future Together”.

htttp://www.twitter.com/#/SweetAsSocial

“We’re failing our kids at the moment. We’re call-

ing the kids “Digital Natives” and expecting them

to be doing it themselves, but we’re not providing

a good environment for them to be good “digital

citizens”.

MP Gareth Hughes, Green Party

“If we’re going to have something cross party

then we’ve got to look at all of these is-

sues...part of the future as politicians is under-

standing the different mediums and who is

contributing to various policy ideas.”

MP Nikki Kaye, National

"Nikki [Kaye, National MP] , I agree with you, the social media

stuff has got to be a good thing- if its making politicians be more

accountable and honest, that can't be a bad thing. I do worry

about that, in the last three days though, we've talked a lot

about the power of social media...24,000 people voting for cer-

tain things on Facebook – I'm looking at bullying, and cyberbully-

ing with youth, and I think its interesting that we don't really talk

about the fact that on Facebook in particular, a lot of the people

that are voting on those things, aren't 18. They're not voters in

the political debates. And on Twitter for example, I mean, I have

7 handles—so you can have as many as you like and say what-

ever you like; in terms of influencing the conversation in an

online sense." - Jess Maher, AssistNZ Ltd

"I think its an incredibly good point you made about whether

we're at risk of descending into “Facebook fascism”, and whether

or not people with commercial or political interests can in fact

warp what we might naively think is a pretty clear expression of

the public's attitude on something." - Sean Plunket, MC

By James Williamson

NetHui had a number of streams,

with major areas of focus being

how to bring the advantages of

high-speed internet access to every

New Zealander who wants it, the

many legal challenges posed by

new technologies and how best to

formulate policy for newly emerg-

ing issues.

Online rights and digital citizenship

were discussed both in terms of the

right to internet access, and how to

uphold individual rights of access,

privacy and free expression in the

privately owned public space of the

internet, as well as what responsi-

bilities accompany these rights.

Education covered not only issues

of not only how to use the internet

in schools, but just as importantly

how to spread digital literacy

through the community as a whole.

Wireless internet access and a con-

stant stream of twitter discussion

provided for an ongoing sharing of

ideas throughout, with the result

that key themes were debated

from many different viewpoints

and contexts, with agreement on

many issues by people from a

broad range of backgrounds and

political affiliations.

The struggle between freedom and anonymity online versus tracking and monitoring to enforce ex-isting laws, is perhaps most obvious with the issue of copyright in the digital age. There was an excellent presentation by Professor Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of Creative Commons. In this he dealt with both copyright issues and also more generally with the deep cultural changes that have come with the growth of the internet. The fact that being able to instantly connect with other people with similar inter-ests all over the world, lends itself naturally to shar-ing and collaboration and should not be limited by inflexible and outdated laws.

Reports for Sweet As Social Media on

the NetHui event combine the many di-

verse views expressed by those present,

with our personal reflections and dis-

cussion of the issues raised.

NetHui 2011 brought together around 400 partici-pants from a hugely varied range of backgrounds, united by a common interest in the future of the internet in New Zealand, and how to ensure that we as a coun-try and people are able to make the most of the oppor-tunities offered by the new technologies and not be left behind.

At the same time there was of course much discus-sion of the potential risks and unexpected conse-quences of the new digital age, and the need to recog-nise a range of fundamental rights in the online world, including the right not to take part if people choose not to. It was encouraging to see broad agreement across the political spectrum on a wide range of important is-sues; what was less reassuring was the consensus that many of the problems raised did not yet have adequate solutions, and the best ways to approach them still needed to be worked out.

Several themes came up repeatedly in the discus-sion, relating to different aspects of rights on and offline. While in theory all of the same legal rights apply online, there are many complicating factors which make it dif-ferent from the familiar everyday world. The internet is a privately owned public space, which often makes it diffi-cult to establish who is responsible for particular parts, and there is no ultimate authority to appeal to or watch over the system.

The internet has two conflicting facets which con-stantly struggle for balance. On the one hand, the founding principles of the internet, championed by many of its early pioneers, have a strong focus on free ex-change of information, freedom of expression, and free-dom from centralised authority.

Many of the features of the internet that have

provided it with the greatest value and opportunity, de-rive from this freedom from the constraints of the every-day world. However this lack of regulation or oversight has also led to many risks and issues which were per-haps not anticipated.

Key Note Speaker:

Professor Lawrence Lessig

Creative Commons Founder

http://nethui.org.nz/nethui-discussions-and-coverage

Lessig emphasised how the underlying structure of

the internet is designed for collaboration and sharing, and

gives every user an entitlement to connect with information

and other users, and contribute information themselves.

There is also a basis of equality built into the network,

which from the start has given a voice to people who had

been outsiders or felt somehow marginalised by main-

stream society. The online community has promoted a

"rewriteable" culture where recreating and remixing content

and sharing it with friends is an ongoing process – a con-

trast from the one-way "read-only" culture of the 20th cen-

tury, and a move from passive consumerism to a culture

where consumers create and share content themselves.

This being the case, it was natural that a network

designed for the sharing of content, would be used for shar-

ing content. Lessig explained how the first music sharing

network, Napster, quickly amassed the largest library of mu-

sic ever collected in human history – and was quickly tar-

geted with lawsuits by the music industry for breach of copy-

right. Napster offered $1 billion as a settlement, but this was

refused and Napster was eventually closed down due to

court rulings – spawning an entire generation of replace-

ments, and an increase in piracy overall. In retrospect it was

inevitable this would happen given the nature of the internet

– but governments continued formulating policy as if nothing

had changed.

A similar situation occurred with wikileaks, where

they asked the US government what information out of the

huge amount that they had been leaked, was particularly

sensitive and should not be revealed publicly. The US gov-

ernment response was that none of it should be revealed,

and followed this by trying to close down wikileaks and ar-

rest the founder Julian Assange. Consequently almost all of

the information was made public by wikileaks, and while the

ongoing efforts by governments may result in wikileaks be-

ing closed down, it too has spawned a generation of re-

placements – some launched by hackers and aiming to re-

veal the most sensitive information possible.

He states that these developments are natural con-

sequences of the nature of the internet, and the best re-

sponse should be to change policy and law to suit the new

circumstances, instead of trying to pretend that nothing has

changed. Copyright is an essential part of the creative indus-

tries and the creative culture, but sharing is also inevitable,

so a new model is needed to compensate artists for their

work – though at least in terms of the big record labels the

extent of loss is unclear, and a leaked internal report re-

ferred to piracy as "better described as a global pricing prob-

lem", despite the claims of serious losses made publicly.

Another key theme was the concept of open access

to the internet, that not just should everyone have a right to

access the technology, but indeed that everyone online

should be connected by high speed broadband so they can

take full advantage of the internet's capabilities. He explains

that in the US, internet access is monopolised by a few large

companies who limit free access to some extent, and criti-

cises New Zealand for allowing data caps, while acknowl-

edging the greater technical hurdles to be overcome here

due to our remoteness.

He also discussed the heavy influence on US poli-

tics by financial interests, with 30-70% of a congressman's

time spent trying to raise money for re-election campaigns,

and contrasted this with New Zealand’s embracing of the

new technologies as shown by the government's adoption of

Creative Commons licenses for government publications

and policy of open access to government data.—even pro-

viding a website to allow the public to post official informa-

tion act requests online.

By James Williamson

"...that ability to engage with community, and the whole concept of an online commu-nity that are linked together in a distributed way, I think that has fundamentally changed the game, as much for commerce as for gov-ernment." - Mike O' Donnell, TradeMe.

A general theme that emerged from the dis-cussion was a perception that New Zealand has often been poorly served by overseas media com-panies, and a general feeling of injustice about the imposition of copyright standards on the rest of the world by the US government, largely at the prompting of US corporate interests. There was also a perception that copyright law has not so much lost its relevance in the internet age, but rather it is just in need of major reform, which has been actively resisted mainly by a relatively small group of very large companies who own the rights to much of the popular media produced, and re-main committed to old-fashioned business models.

One example was given that the iPod range of mp3 music players was put on sale in New Zealand a long time before the iTunes service for legally buying digital music online was made available to New Zealanders, and at a time while few equiva-lent "legal downloading" services existed, and the range of tracks available was very limited – so a product was legally marketed here, for which the only purpose was storing and playing music con-tent that could not at the time be obtained except by downloading content in breach of copyright (or by "ripping" it from CDs bought legally – but at the time there was ongoing debate whether this also constituted a breach of copyright or not, and me-dia companies argued that this too was illegal, until the argument was rejected by courts in the USA).

A similar issue raised was that many US televi-sion series and even some major movies, are never released in New Zealand, or are released only many

months after they have been played overseas. Many of these are not made available for download from legiti-

mate sites, and can only be legally obtained, if at all, by buying them on DVD from third-party web-sites for a price which is vastly more expensive than consumers in most other western countries have to pay, especially once currency conversion, transaction fees and shipping costs are factored in.

The question was raised of whether it is fair or accurate for overseas media companies to claim that downloads of copyrighted content represent an actual loss of potential profits to them, when the content downloaded is never made available for sale in New Zealand at all, and so no profits would be made from sales of that content in this country whether there was downloading or not. For copyright holders to sue consumers to recover supposed losses from downloading of this content would represent a windfall profit to the rights holder with all costs (if any) of reproduction and distribution of the content paid for by other parties – largely the consumer themselves through their internet bill.

To use threats of legal action as a business model for recovering profits from copied content, without the rights holder having to bother spend-ing anything on marketing or making the content legally available to consumers, seems an entirely inappropriate use of the justice system. That such methods are resorted to by rights holders, seems more a sign that the system is flawed, than that thousands of otherwise law-abiding New Zealand-ers who wish to consume content that is not mar-keted here or is sold at an unrealistic and inflated price, should be considered to be criminals and po-tentially face large fines and even disconnection from the internet. Indeed the MPs who partici-pated at NetHui were quite ready to acknowledge the inadequacy of the new file-sharing law, and ad-mitted that it seemed likely to be reviewed again before long.

Much criticism was levelled at the way that large media corporations in the USA have success-

Copyright

fully lobbied the US government over many years, to not only expand the length, breadth and dura-tion of copyright until it is now far stricter than originally envisioned, but also to use political pres-sure and trade deals to coerce other countries into bringing their copyright law in to line with the USA, even targeting individual countries one by one af-ter they were unable to press through their desired changes at the United Nations level.

The point was raised that New Zealand does not have a general "fair use" exception to 0copy-right as in the USA, but instead a narrower "fair dealing" exception which covers only certain types of use, and does not include parody and satire for instance – so our copyright law in general should be less strict than that of the USA, to balance the reduced scope of exceptions available.

The history of copyright was briefly outlined, ex-plaining how copyright was originally introduced in the UK with the 1709 Statute of Anne, but was not adopted by the USA or most European countries for more than 50 years after this. The original intent was to protect the rights of authors of books, from unregu-lated publishing companies reprinting their works for profit without paying royalties to the author. Since copyright is a type of monopoly, which are generally discouraged by law, it was held to be very important that the term of exclusivity was strictly limited, and the first copyright acts all have copyright terms of around 14 years, which was held to be a long enough time for the author to be able to make a reasonable return from their work – and this in an age when print-ing was a laborious process capable of producing only a few books per day, and distribution to consumers was by horse and cart and sailing ship.

The concept that copyright terms could be ex-tended to as much as 120 years (or the lifetime of the author plus 70 years after their death, which can po-tentially be even longer), would consequently have been unthinkable at the time that copyright laws were introduced. One speaker quoted a famous speech by British MP Thomas Macaulay about how extending copyright terms excessively would bring the very con-cept of copyright into disrepute and cause the general public not to take it seriously – and this in 1841, when

copyright terms were still considerably shorter than they are now. Especially inconsistent with the original concept of copyright as a means of adequately com-pensating content creators for their work, is the fact that the main beneficiaries from this vastly extended copyright term are usually the immortal corporations to whom the author has licensed the rights – which seems especially inequitable when modern licensing deals often mean the author receives only 10% or less of the profits made from their work.

The conclusion that seemed to be reached by many was that existing copyright law is simply out-dated and needs to be completely revised to stay relevant in the age of the internet, "the world's larg-est copying machine". There was a strong sense that New Zealand intellectual property law needs to place a higher priority on protecting the rights of New Zealand authors, artists, inventors and other content creators, rather than primarily protecting the profits of overseas media corporations, often at the expense of ordinary consumers. Along these lines, it was questioned why amendments to the Patents Act aimed at providing better protection to New Zealand inventors, have sat on Parliament's schedule for debate for 9 months with little pro-gress, yet the controversial bill aimed at prohibiting online file sharing, which was seen by many as be-ing largely for the benefit of overseas corporations, was rushed through under urgency conditions that were supposed to be for passing laws relating to recovery from the Christchurch earthquake.

By James Williamson

“There are a lot of thorny issues that we as politicians have not thought through....not that many of us politicians are really up to speed with these issues, we have to become more up to speed...we need your input on that, and to push us politicians to be considering those issues.”

- MP Clare Curran, Labour

Internet filtering

Freedom of expression is of course an impor-tant right to be protected, but some people choose to express themselves in ways that are very adult, controversial or objectionable in nature, which might be acceptable in the right context among other adults with similar interests, but would be entirely inappropriate to be viewed by children. Other con-tent is of course illegal in nature and is not allowed to be viewed by anyone, yet the lack of any central authority online makes it a constant struggle for po-lice forces worldwide to try to control this.

One controversial solution which has been sug-gested is the possibility of internet filtering. This was almost universally rejected by the participants of NetHui on several grounds, firstly that filtering avail-able content was seen as too much like state cen-sorship of the media and was not consistent with the principles of freedom and openness on which the internet was founded, especially the right to freedom of expression. The second objection is that internet filtering simply does not work, as there are many technological work around that allow knowledgeable persons to bypass any kind of filtering – as shown by dissidents in countries like China and Iran, where the internet is heavily filtered yet unpopular political opinions still manage to be spread and exchanged online.

Another aspect of this is the denial of innocent content to ordinary people who lack the skills to by-pass the filter, as all strict internet filtering systems so far trialled around the world have always been found to produce some "false positive" blocks of websites containing no content that is remotely un-suitable – one anecdote was told of women being unable to search for information about breast cancer because searches containing the word "breast" had been blocked as pornography.

The point was raised that New Zealand already filters its internet to some extent, with access blocked to a small list of websites positively identi-fied as containing illegal child pornography. There was little objection to blocking this kind of content specifically, especially as the list of sites is provided to the Department of Internal Affairs by Interpol so represents a list of sites that are banned internation-ally, containing content that is unacceptable every-where.

However many concerns were raised that even this limited filtering was a slippery slope and created the potent ia l f o r " scope c reep" , where future governments might decide to censor all sorts of content by adding it to the blocked list – the ex-ample was raised of how, when the Australian gov-ernment's much more extensive list of blocked web-sites was posted on the whistle-blowing site wikileaks, the official response was to add wikileaks to the blocked list so that Australians could not see what content was being blocked. This kind of ap-proach was generally agreed to be broadly inconsis-tent with the basic democratic rights and values we have in New Zealand, despite the Australian govern-ment's undoubtedly good intentions at the start, of blocking content perceived to be harmful or illegal. Schools in New Zealand also routinely filter internet content, with around 90% of schools having strict internet filters, but this was seen as being generally much more acceptable given the vulnerable nature of the users of school networks and their legal re-sponsibility to protect students. Teaching children netiquette and how to be good digital citizens is not part of the curriculum however, and many schools fail to take advantage of many of the capabilities of-fered by the internet, often because of a lack of con-fidence with the technology by the teachers them-selves.

Even without filtering by government or schools, there are still other forms of filtering online – in the case of certain content which is legal but would be deemed objectionable to most people, it is possible for it to still be accessible but search engines can remove it from their indexing, so internet searches will not find it, but it can still be reached by following the correct link. There are potential merits to this as a way of "hiding" unsavoury content without forcing it to be removed from the internet and thereby infringing the rights of people with legal but extremist views and beliefs, but Google's own policy is that the vast majority of content should be available so long as it is generally legal. And of course, any sort of filter or restriction that is intended to limit access by tech-savvy youth will merely be a challenge to be beaten, as demonstrated by the on-going arms race between computer game program-mers and their legions of teenage fans, some of whom will always quickly figure out how to "crack" a new game so it can be shared illegally, no matter how ingenious the copy protection built in by the de-signers.

“We don’t have a digital strategy, and we need one.” MP Clare Curran, Labour

Privacy & digital

c i t i z e n s h i p

The very existence of internet filtering reminds us that everything viewed online, every page accessed or file downloaded, can in the-ory be traced back to the computer that ac-cessed it – though as always this kind of detec-tion can be avoided by people who are suffi-ciently technically skilled. A great amount of concern was expressed about the routine moni-toring and recording of online activity by both governments and private companies. While there was general approval of police tracking down online criminals like child pornographers and malicious hackers, there was a strong feel-ing that seasoned cyber-criminals would most likely evade attempts at detection. It was an un-comfortable compromise, to try and catch out the illegal acts of a small minority, despite the principle that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear".

This increasing erosion of traditional notions of privacy is a growing concern to many. Social media sites such as Facebook are often criticized for the vari-ous inventive ways they find to re-use and data mine the personal information users upload, for their own commercial profit. But at the end of the day users agree to this when they sign up to the site and volun-tarily hand over their data. Since there are no estab-lished boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not in terms of online privacy and re-use of personal information, there is always a temptation to keep pushing further – and at least Facebook have been somewhat responsive to user concerns when they have pushed it too far.

Given this lack of established boundaries for pri-vacy online, and the permanent archiving of most data that is uploaded, it is important for all internet users to consider where their personal boundaries of privacy should be drawn, and think before you post or upload anything. whether it could potentially be something that you wouldn't want to be made public, or might re-gret later on. This is a particularly important topic for parents to discuss with children, given that young peo-ple are both among the heaviest users of social net-working sites, online discussion forums and other online mediums for sharing and exchanging content,. They are also more likely than adults to impulsively post or upload content in the heat of the moment,

Because it is now so easy for personal informa-tion to be uploaded, and the fact that once uploaded, you have effectively lost control of the data, there needs to be much more thought given to what infor-mation is uploaded in the first place. Discussion of online rights turned to the concept of a "right to disap-pear" from the internet – the idea that sites providing people with the ability to host personal profiles and express personal opinions through posting text, pic-tures, video etc, should also give people the opportu-nity to delete this content from the site at a later date. While some services already provide this option, many of the largest sites like Facebook retain legal rights to user content under their terms of service, and "deletion" of content often means that it is merely hid-den, and can potentially reappear later on quite unex-pectedly.

The ease of reproducing information online is an-other factor that makes uploading personal data po-tentially risky, especially sensitive information like home addresses and phone numbers, or personally identifiable photographs or video. Even if sites do al-low user data to be deleted later on, there is no way of knowing who has viewed it while it was online – and anything that is viewed can be copied and uploaded somewhere else, without the knowledge of the original uploaded. This is why it is so important for both chil-dren and adults to be familiar with the privacy settings of websites they use, and make sure that they only upload content to publicly accessible websites if they are comfortable with the possibility of it being shown to everyone they know. Another thing to be aware of is that some sites "reset" the privacy settings to default every time they are updated – and the default setting is often that everything is public.

A related issue to privacy online is the small but not insignificant percentage of people who choose not to use the internet at all. Official planning almost in-variably talks about people who are not connected to the internet in terms of the "digital divide", and how to enable people to access the internet who are not able to do so because of not owning a computer, or lacking the required digital literacy. However this tends to ig-nore the fact that as more of the population goes online, an increasing proportion of people who are still not involved, is made up of people who simply do not want or need to use the internet, for any of a number of reasons. This "right to refuse" was also generally agreed to be important, especially with the slow but steady introduction of e-government services which for instance may require everyone to have a profile on the IRD web service in order to pay their taxes. There was broad agreement that it would be unfair to force peo-ple to have to go online against their will, and offline ways of accessing government services and paying tax must remain available for them. By James Williamson

4 July, 2011

Cyber-bullying

One area where many of the difficult issues

around internet and modern communication

technologies come together, is in cyber-

bullying. Youth today make little distinction

between bullying online or off; the online

world is such an integrated part of their daily

lives that cyber-bullying is just an expected

part of bullying when it occurs. But for

adults who did not grow up with these tech-

nologies, many aspects of

bullying today can be quite

unfamiliar, and its impacts

can often be underesti-

mated.

The reasons for bullying remain the

same as they always have been, but the instantane-

ous and constantly connected nature of communi-

cation today change the way that it happens. To-

day's youth seem inseparable from their cellphones,

and to be cut off from their online social networks is

like being placed in solitary confinement. Yet while

this means that in theory they should always be

able to reach out to someone for help, in

practice victims of bullying are often reluc-

tant to admit to adults that it is happening,

and similarly do not want to let their friends

know that it is bothering them. While in past

times bullying would largely stop at the

school gate, these days it is more

likely to intensify once kids get

home from school and log onto

their accounts online.

Bullying is also made much

easier online, and has broadened

the scope of who is likely

to bully others. Traditional

schoolyard bullying often

involves some degree of

physical intimidation, but

on the internet this ele-

ment is absent, and old

stereotypes of who is

likely to be a bully can

prove quite misleading. Children who are victims of

old-fashioned bullying at school, may take revenge

through vicious cyber-bullying attacks once they get

home, and what would once have been minor dis-

putes quickly forgotten about, are now broadcast to

their entire social circle, and archived online forever

to be dragged out again at some future time.

The anonymity and emotional distance that the

internet provides can also worsen bullying behav-

iours. Without cues from context and body language

(and especially when limited to 140 characters by

Twitter or text message constraints), statements

posted online can be much more ambiguous and

open to different interpretations than what was in-

tended, often leading to people taking offence at

comments meant innocently. Without the feedback

of seeing the reaction of the other person, cyber-

bullying may also be carried out by people who

would never bully someone in the offline world. The

lack of social cues has been shown to make people

generally less civil and have less empathy for others

online than in everyday life, and it is easy for some-

one to speak their mind in a way that is much more

blunt and offensive than they would say it in person.

The online world has also brought many new

ways of bullying that did not exist in the past. While

problems such as name-calling and harassment,

spreading rumours and malicious gossip, and exclu-

sion from groups or activities have always existed,

“Then let’s have that conversation about we’re up to

as a country. Because youth are literally killing them-

selves and I’m sure these issues, that we can’t even be-

gin to understand, they’re not ever going to be helping!

“Lets just admit that they “get” this, better than we do for a

second. They learn quicker than us, its just logical that they will

always be one step ahead. Really, we HAVE to engage them if

we want to help them, its not a matter of if we should or not.”

“Instead of telling them the rules, we should try explaining why the

rules are there, what's the reasons they should care, show them

what's possible with this stuff. Then lets get them what you need to

watch out for, drop the tech talk for a sec and bring it back to the hu-

man level. Its about people and relationships not proxies and devices.”

Jess Maher, Nethui (29 June, 2011)

some cyber-bullying issues are quite new. The ability to share media

instantly around the world, creates an environment in which embarrass-

ing photographs or videos, often stolen from the victim through hacked

accounts or recorded against their will during physical bullying incidents

offline, can be uploaded and shared with everyone the victim knows in

an instant. Fights or other bullying incidents may be staged specifically

so they can be videoed and uploaded to YouTube.

Hacking and identity theft add extra complications, as the boundary between public and private content

may be breached unexpectedly if an email or social media profile account is hacked – with the only certain

way of avoiding this risk being not to post too much sensitive content online in the first place, even if you

think that it is somewhere private. Identity theft can also be a very serious and damaging type of cyber-

bullying, allowing malicious rumours about someone to seem to originate from their own posts. However with

these kind of behaviours at least, they are clearly illegal in most countries and websites will also usually take

immediate action to help stop them once notified, which helps make it easier to combat these serious types

of cyber-bullying once they have

been identified.

The modern culture that to-

day's youth grow up in, often

also tends to encourage the

posting of inappropriate material that may be regretted later on. Role models in the media like Paris Hilton

and Jackass normalise exhibitionism, often characterised by precocious sexual behaviour and a casual atti-

tude towards violence and risk-taking, to an extent never previously experienced by older generations – and

the easy and instant ability to post it online tempts many young people to seek their 15 minutes of fame im-

pulsively, without thinking have been identified.

The modern culture that today's youth grow up in, often also tends to encourage the posting of inappropri-

ate material that may be regretted later on. Role models in the media like Paris Hilton and Jackass normalise

exhibitionism, often characterised by precocious sexual behaviour and a casual attitude towards violence and

risk-taking, to an extent never previously experienced by older generations – and the easy and instant ability

to post it online tempts many young people to seek their 15 minutes of fame

impulsively, without thinking about whether or not they might regret posting

it later.

Explicit photos sent privately to a high school boyfriend may be shared

with the whole school after the relationship ends, potentially posing serious

legal issues as well as bullying concerns if the pictures depict an underage

subject and are therefore considered to be child pornography under the law.

Young people are often also much more ready to add people as "friends" on

social networking sites without ever having met them, or even knowing who

they are – and when privacy settings are set to make content viewable to

"friends of friends", just one person adding a random stranger to their friends

list, can reveal the private posts and photo-

graphs of an entire social group.

Let’s try trusting these kids for a sec eh? At least it might engage them in life if nothing else!

Lets get them to answer these questions and help us work out how to make shareable content

that explains this to the world. Then lets have that much needed discussion again with youth,

creative's and other ethnicities in the room & ASK the community what “New Zealand's” val-

ues really are instead of guessing.

Jess Maher, Nethui (29 June, 2011)

By James Williamson

4 July, 2011

One theme which attracted some discussion was the

impact on education of the modern communication tech-

nologies and instant access to unlimited information the

internet provides. Several different factors combine to make

this a challenge for teachers today, though also with great

opportunities. Much of the discussion at NetHui focused on

the infrastructure needed to provide high-speed broadband

to schools, and the challenge of integrating the new tech-

nologies into teaching so that they actually make learning

more effective, as well as how best to teach the teachers to

make effective use of the new technologies – in the face of

students who frequently understand them better than the

teacher, and are increasingly turned to by teachers for ad-

vice.

We heard about how while New Zealand is a nation of

heavy internet users, the majority use it for only relatively

simple tasks like email, paying bills and online shopping,

and a more effective way is needed to spread better digital

literacy throughout the community as a whole. Teachers in

particular need to be convinced of the value of the new

technology and how it can be used to make learning more

effective, especially when they have well established and

effective teaching methods already in use.

The increasing problem of the digital divide was also

raised, both in terms of access to the physical hardware,

and also the required digital literacy and confidence needed

to make proper use of it. In terms of internet access itself,

the government speakers emphasized their commitment to

spreading high-speed broadband to all corners of even rural

New Zealand as soon as reasonably affordable, and the

great progress they have made towards this. However with-

out knowing how to integrate this capability effectively into

teaching, there is a risk that it could just mean easier dis-

traction with faster YouTube! The resources available also

influence how the technology can best be used – there is a

big difference between a school with fast broadband access

to its single “computer lab”, and one where every student

has a laptop on their desk with its own wireless internet

access via the school network, but national strategies need

to be able to cater for both ends of the spectrum.

Since many teachers already effectively use online tools as

teaching aids, it was discussed what the best way would be

to share advice and experience with other teachers around

New Zealand and worldwide, and how online learning com-

munities could be used to allow students to access school

teaching resources from home, and to share content be-

tween schools – while balancing this with tricky issues like

c o p y -

right.

Another

key issue is the huge excess of knowledge available in-

stantly to anyone, meaning students can look up the an-

swers to almost any question asked, without having to refer

to their notes or think about it so much – but at the same

time so much information is available about some topics

that both students and teachers can be overwhelmed. In-

deed the role of teachers has to adapt to some extent, fil-

tering relevant content from online sources and integrating

it with traditional sources such as textbooks. Student learn-

ing is often much more self-directed in today’s world, and

teachers can find themselves having to answer questions

about recent developments in the relevant topic that have

been reported online, but the teacher may not yet have

heard about themselves. Students need to understand the

value of collating sources into their own original content, in

an age when pre-written essays on almost any topic can be

downloaded in minutes.

To take the best advantage of these changes, teaching

too has to adapt, encouraging students to research topics

on the internet themselves, to read beyond the content in

the textbook and find out about new developments, in

more of a two-way exchange of knowledge rather than the

old fashioned “top-down” teaching approaches. Students

need to be taught how to distinguish between reliable and

unreliable sources of information online, and how to search

more deeply to find appropriate academic content rather

than just searching Google or Wikipedia for the first rele-

vant answer they can find. Teachers now have a vast range

of tools at their disposal for making interactive and engag-

ing lessons, and libraries of online educational resources

such as the Khan Academy to draw on, providing new ways

to engage with students and encourage them to explore

topics further on their own.

Education and the digital divide

NetHui was held in Auckland last week over three days, and I attended representing They Don’t Teach You This In School. I thought it would be a good conference, but like a lot of other people, I was surprised by just how good it was. NetHui managed to get a good cross-section of New Zealand society to attend – people from all ages and all backgrounds came. It was a full-on three days, and here I’d like to briefly touch on three of the most interesting and important parts as I see them.

1.The Internet is a human right.

NetHui was divided into different “streams” for the first two days, meaning you had to decide which topics you wanted to discuss and see people talk on. Streams included topics like “Digital Citizenship”, and “Access and Diver-sity” (which I spoke on a panel for on the Friday). I attended a mix of the different streams, seeing all of the five or so streams at least one. And what really struck me was how interconnected a lot of the topics in each of the different streams were. The issue that came up in every stream? Whether the Internet can be considered a human right.

There was the strong and obvious view that the Internet is most definitely a human right. Most people felt this way, and reasons for it were numerous. People generally felt that access to information and freedom of expression and human rights, and so access to the Internet should be one too as it facilitates both of these. This led to a discussion over whether it should be incorporated into an interna-tional bill of human rights.

As Judge David Harvey pointed out, it isn’t actually nec-essary that we legislate to create the Internet as a formal human right. The human right of freedom of expression actually states that it holds into the future across different platforms. This clearly includes the Internet.

2. Digital literacy is important, and there are different

views on a solution.

One of the topics in the Access and Diversity stream was digital literacy. In general it’s talking about making sure people understand how to use computers and the Internet. A lot of people felt that the best way to give eve-ryone in society a good level of digital literacy is to provide workshops to up-skill them. I personally strongly disagree with this, and I talked about it in the panel discussion I was

a part of on the Friday. Why do I disagree with it? I see workshops as a very

short-term solution. A workshop will teach people how to use current technologies. But we all know how fast tech-nology moves – the workshop will only be useful for maybe a maximum of two years into the future before a new tech-nology replaces the old, and people are not digitally literate once again. So, how do we have a long-term solution to giving people digital literacy?

My view is that we should focus on design. Digital liter-acy, in my opinion, is a producer problem, not a consumer problem. If you look at why more and more people have adopted computers and the Internet over the past ten years, it’s for a few reasons. Firstly, the cost of computers and their power has decreased. But secondly, the design of computers and websites has become much better, and therefore they are much more simple to use. This has al-lowed more people in society to start to use these tech-nologies without workshops. Let’s focus on design to en-sure that computers and websites/apps are as simple as they possibly can be, so that everyone in society can intui-tively use them. I feel this is easily possible, and producers just need to pay more attention to design.

3. “Blended Learning” needs to be considered more by

schools.

One of the streams I found most interesting was the one on education. The discussion centered around “blended learning”, which refers to education done both in a physical school environment and online. I’m going to do another post just on “blended learning” because it’s a big topic that I’d like to discuss further. But for those of you reading this interested in my stance, I generally feel that no school in New Zealand is doing enough with blended learn-ing. It’s obvious that it’s the future of education, yet all schools are waiting for another school to take the first step. The schools who are using elements of blended learning simply aren’t doing enough with it – and I think that’s very sad. Look out here in the next few days for another post on blended learning. Overall NetHui was a really interesting conference. Great people, great discussion, and some ex-cellent points to think about. I hope you’ll share your thoughts, whether you attended or not. http://mmoorejones.com/2011/07/03/nethui-conference-2011-my-thoughts-and-views/

I'm Michael Moore-Jones - a 16 year old New Zealander passionate about tech-nology and business. I'm the founder of They Don't Teach You This In School.

NetHui Conference 2011 - My Thoughts and Views by Michael Moore-Jones (Youngest NetHui 2011 Panellist)

This week I took my PLN building offline. Initially I was just go-ing to Internet NZ’s NetHui, however when @fionagrant offered up a seat to the Tai Tokerau Educamp, I got up at stupid o’clock on a Saturday to make the journey up to Whangarei to see what these camps are all about. The week was hugely rewarding not only be-cause I meet so many people, but also because I met people I had interacted with on twitter. Nevertheless four days of back to back conferencing, means I’m pretty tired, but the conferences were unlike any I have attended in the past. NetHui was a multi-stakeholder conference initiated by Inter-net NZ community organisations. The first two days of the con-ference were more participatory discussions on different aspects of the internet such as cyber citizenship and overall internet gov-ernance while the third day bought the discussions into a panel format. The last day I spent in a corner with my laptop (laptop battery is currently dying a painful death) quite happily tweeting while listening to keynote speeches and report-backs from pan-els. Unsurprisingly for a conference full of internet junkies the #nethui twitter stream was highly active which bought in further conversations and learning from people in different cities and even countries!

Towards the end of the day I tweeted that I wished my univer-sity education was like the conference. However reflecting on this further I’ve realized that my learning is like NetHui. I’m well accustomed to having facebook and chats via text with other students in my course about the week’s bulletin board/upcoming assignment/teaching experience. I’ve proclaimed my love of twit-ter and obviously reflective blogging is aiding in my practice. So perhaps what I want to do as a teacher is facilitate an environ-ment for my students’ learning to resemble a conference like Nethui.

This could be done by Starting the day with an interesting key-note speaker (the @lessigspeech from NetHui was brilliant as was Rod Oram’s) perhaps a child like Adora Svitak.

Encourage students to blog/tweet about their ideas, open-ing up their learning to people outside the classroom.

Offer students workshops to choose from, information booths to browse between sessions and spaces to have break-out conversations.

Ask students to present their own sessions, scaffolding where necessary.

Have students interacting with different people then they would normally encounter, experts, students from other classes, other schools, other countries.

One of the key issues that came out of the last day was the digi-tal literacy of New Zealanders or lack there of. We have a high level of internet usage but in general we use the internet to shop and pay bills but is there more we could be doing. Are we only to be a nation of shoppers? How do we learn to unleash the poten-tial of ultrafast broadband?

The general consensus from hui was that learning

was something ‘done’ to them. A lot of speakers from the floor were concerned by the idea that we are currently developing digital literacy with people learning from each other. But really isn’t one person acquiring the knowledge and then sharing it with others, who then share it with more people go to the very core of what education is all about? It’s like a virus, software or otherwise.

Which is where unconferences like educamp come in. Educamp is basically a group of educators, some people have things to learn others have things to teach, and we learn from each other. I found the experience highly stimulating, especially during the smackdown session at the start of educamp where lots of cool ideas and apps were floated from the floor. What was also rewarding is that I was able to help others learn how to create a google doc and what the docs can do, the basics of twit-ter (I consider myself by no means an expert on twitter). I also managed to actually put into action what one astute NetHui at-tendee had remarked, don’t let a geek touch your device!

Speaking as a geek, it is to just take the device away and do whatever it is that the user wants do for them issuing long ram-bly instructions as I go. I know from last semester (and my own experience as a learner) that this sort of teaching is not very ef-fective. It is little wonder that tech remains a great mystery to large sections of the population. So for anyone who happens to reading this blog who has some techphobia my advice is be open to learning from geeks, but keep your hands on your working device at all times! What did I take away from this week?

To be digitally literate means that you need to commit to be a life-long learner yourself. You need be open to pulling out ideas and tools learning with them, playing with them, and then pass-ing on your knowledge to someone else.

The importance of collaboration in learning. At educamp a not yet graduated teacher was helping out teachers with decades of experience to get to grips with new tools which benefited both parties. The real teachers were learning about new tools they can use in their practice while I had an opportunity to explain how tools work without taking over and doing it all by myself meant that I was also learning too.

Be open to learning from anyone, experts come in different forms. Effective organisations take a bit of expertise from one person and add it to someone else’s expertise and share, some-thing I need to think about when I’m looking for a school to work in next year.

But perhaps the most important thing from this week is that I have a vision of what I think a classroom might look like, sound like and feel like for students. Now I’ve got to learn how to effec-tively implement that vision into my teaching practice. I expect that might take some time, certainly a lot longer than the 6 months I’ve got left in my diploma.

Teacher Trainee (3 June, 2011)

Weekly Reflection: If you want learn, don’t let the geek touch your device!

Most New Zealand schools are dealing with incidents of bullying or harassment online and in particular via mobile phone text messaging. Prelimi57 results of research suggest 2 out of 10 students have experienced text bullying and 1 out of 10, cyberbullying.

Schools will already have bullying/harassment policies in place so can make a comprehensive response appropri-ate to both perpetrator and victim. There are some distinctions to consider and serious implications when bullying goes online.

Bullying has always been around. What is different?

The 24/7 impact of cyberbullying can be greater than face to face bullying. Children cannot get away from cy-berbullying like they can with face to face bullying.

Anonymous threats are more worrying and intimidating, even though statistically they are usually coming from someone known to the victim.

Posting information on the Net means potentially having global distribution of that material, which can inten-sify the humiliation and hurt of having such information made public.

Some harassment seems minor. What forms of harassment and bullying are actually occurring in our schools? Bullying messages can range from the mild, ("You're the ugliest boy in class...") to the criminal;

Photos of individuals being posted on the Net in a negative context without permission (sometimes the pho-tos are of an intimate nature and/or were taken surreptitiously).

Websites set up about an individual with nasty (or sometimes even defamatory) content that often reveals personal details about the victim.

Messages placed on message boards and passed on in chatrooms that contain false information about the victim (sometimes defamatory) and the victim's contact details.

How should the school respond to such a wide range of incidents?

Serious threats received by students or staff should be reported immediately to the police.

Raise school community awareness of the issue and get the message across to "tell someone". (A British sur-vey by NCH found one in four young people reported being bullied via email or text messaging. Yet 29% didn't tell anyone about the harassment.) All staff need to be ready to respond appropriately.

Encourage parents to keep an open communication with their child and to not immediately respond to a wor-rying incident by removing access to the technology. Anecdotal information suggests young people may be encouraged to "tell someone" if they know there will be a calm response. Fear of losing their technology or making the bullying worse are main reasons for not telling an adult.

Netsage is the closest thing we have to the internet police in New Zealand

Cyberbullying infor-mation and advice for young people The information in this guide appears online at http://www.cyberbullying.org.nz/youngpeople/

What is cyberbullying? Cyberbullying is bullying. It's using the internet, a mobile phone or other technology like a cam-era to hurt somebody or embarrass them.

What does cyberbullying look like? Bullying on the internet or mobiles can include many things, like being sent anonymous text messages to your phone, posting nasty or threatening comments on your Bebo or Face-book page or sending mean or embarrassing photos or videos of you to other people. Cyberbullying can involve people spreading rumours about you and scaring you. Some-times people may try to stop you from commu-nicating with others or they may hack and steal passwords for your online accounts.

Is cyberbullying a big deal? No one likes to be bullied or harassed. Cyber-bullying takes many forms and some of these may be harder to deal with than others. De-pending on the situation, some young people are able to sort it out quickly, or simply shrug it off. Other situations may be more serious. About 1 in 5 NZ high school students say they have been cyberbullied and many say it makes them feel scared, depressed, angry or ashamed. If you get sent nasty messages outside of school time sometimes it can feel hard to escape the bullying. Some people say it’s worse if you can't tell who the bullying mes-sages are coming from. Posting mean or nasty pictures or videos of people online can embar-rass them in front of their school and spread quickly out of control. If you post altered pic-tures of people online these can exist long after you delete them and can also be used as evidence by teachers and police.

What can I do to pre-vent cyberbullying?

Be careful who you give your mobile number to and don't pass on

friends' numbers without asking them first.

Don’t respond to texts from people you don’t know. These can often be sent ran-

domly to find people to bully.

If you witness cyberbullying try to help the victim. You can offer them support, or report

the bullying anonymously if that feels safer.

Don't post revealing pictures of yourself or others online - they may get sent on and

used to bully you or other people.

Keep your online identity safe - create strong passwords with a mix of lower and upper case letters and numbers. Pick diffi-cult answers for your “secret question” on your accounts that people who know you

wouldn’t easily guess.

Don't share your password with anyone -

even your friends.

How is cyberbullying dif-ferent to other forms of bullying? Cyberbullying is bullying. But where face-to-face bullying ended when the target got home from school or work, cyberbullies can use the internet or their mobile to continue attacks on victims at any time of the day or night. Young people are growing up with access to more and more technology, often using the internet and mobiles as the main way to reach friends. If threats continue outside of school it may make the target feel like there’s no es-cape. If messages are sent anonymously this can make the bullying feel more intimidating. And if the bullying occurs online the harassment can be intensified, especially if public hate pages or embarrassing videos are passed around the school community.

23

Netsafe Cyberbullying Support & Information Site

Managing Cyberbullying from 3

sides youth, parents & teachers

Basic Online Security Tips

Young Kids, Digital Citizenship

Netsafe Cyberbullying Support & Information Site

What can I do to help someone being cyberbul-lied? If a friend comes to you for help reassure them that they've done the right thing by talking with someone. Tell them not to reply to mean or nasty messages. Make sure they save the bullying messages on their phone and/or take screenshots of website and chat abuse. This is important so that proof of the bullying is recorded and can be used as evidence later on. If you see that someone is being cyberbullied, contact them and let them know that you support them. This can help them feel less isolated. Re-porting the cyberbullying to someone who can help, like an adult you trust or to the website where the bullying is happening. You can do that anonymously if you want to protect your identity.

Cyberbullying on mobile phones If they are receiving bullying text mes-sages or calls they should tell their mobile phone company. If they already have evidence of bullying texts the company should be able to take action. Report the abuse and ask them to take action.

Cyberbullying at school Does the bullying involve people at

school? If you think so tell the Principal or

Deputy Principal as soon as possible.

Schools in New Zealand want all students

to be safe and teachers want to help stop

bullying.

Cyberbullying on your fa-vourite websites Report internet cyberbullying to the website where the bullying took place - usually there is a “Report Abuse” button or "Safety" link.

Cyberbullying on IM If you can, block the bullying messages com-ing through. Take screenshots of any nasty messages sent to you and save them as evidence.

What if I'm scared about

getting involved? If you witness any form of cyberbullying but

are worried about helping you can still do the

following:

• If you see cyberbullying online then report

the problem anonymously to the website

where bullying takes place.

You can also try to talk to the target of bul-

lying away from an audience. Bystanders

who support people being bullied can make

that person feel less isolated.

What can I do to prevent cyberbullying amongst my students? Cyberbullying is bullying. Apply school policy on bullying to cyberbullying.

‘Cyberbullying and the law Cyberbullying can be a criminal offence under a range of different laws, including sections 249-252 of the Crimes Act. The age of crimi-nal responsibility in New Zealand is 10 years. If young people commit an offence they may face warnings, police diversions, or a Family Group Conference. Young people over 16 who commit an of-fence are treated as adults by the courts. Education Law in New Zealand (Education Act 1998) includes the National Administra-

tive Guideline 5, which says that schools

are to provide a “safe physical and emotional environment for students”. This includes addressing behaviours (such as cyberbullying) that occur outside school but which have implications for student’s well-being while at school.

At a Distance’ – standing up to cyberbullying Watch the New Zealand made short film about cyberbullying at http://www.cyberbullying.org.nz/at-a-distance-film/

Reporting Crimes

Online (The Orb)

Parents Guide to cyber safety

Automated ICT User Agreements

When to call the

police If any cyberbullying threatens

harm ‐ like hurting or fighting ‐ this

breaks the law. Save the evidence

and contact the Police.

Bystanders need to realize: They ARE a part of the problem that per-

petuates the bullying cycle.

They CAN do something to make the

lives of those bully victims better.

They SHOULD speak up when they see

or hear something they think is wrong.

They HAVE THE POWER to make

changes for the better in their school.

The Bystander Pledge

From this day on I pledge my word

My voice, once silent, will now be heard.

When kids gets bullied I won’t look to the floor

I will SPEAK UP; a BYSTANDER no more.

http://www.bystander.us/blog/

Are 'bystanders' important? Bystanders are people who do not start a bullying situation

but see it happening.

Bystanders can help or hinder bullying situations.

75% of peer (bystander) actions in a UK study (O’Connell,

Pepler, & Craig, 1999) were successful in stopping bullying.

The 4 types of bystander There are four types of bystanders (Salmivalli, 1999):

Assistants: join in on bullying and help the bully

Reinforcers: laugh and encourage the bully but don’t

personally attack the target

Outsiders: don’t get “involved”, but see it happen

Defenders: Try to stop the bullying on behalf of the target

How bystanders can help Defenders can be very effective in addressing cyberbullying

situations. Cyberbullying de-fenders can avoid the physical

dangers of intervening in face-to-face bullying situations.

Bystanders can intervene anonymously – by telling someone/

reporting abuse – and secretly – by talking directly to the tar-

get without an audience.

Bystanders to a cyberbullying situation help the person being

bullied by letting them know that they support them.

Bystanders can save the evidence of the bullying and report

the bullying to someone who can help (e.g., a principal at

school, a parent or caregiver, etc.).

www.sweetasparents.tumblr.com

We celebrated our launch on the 27th May 2011 alongside Youth Week “Celebrate Technology”

event & the showcase of our “YouTube Booth” at Massey Community House in Don Buck Rd

Your information – but is it really yours?

Do young people have control of their personal information, do they care about it and are they are aware of the privacy issues? The Privacy Commissioner began a project to find out.

Fifteen secondary school students from the greater Welling-ton and Wairarapa area came together for the first time in Sep-tember 2009. With support from two university students, the group discussed the issues about their personal information. The group quickly came to the conclusion that they do care about privacy and the best people to give privacy messages to young people are other young people. The group came up with three areas for action:

to raise awareness about consent and appropriate use of personal information

to create a privacy presentation pack for schools

to work towards privacy discussions being included on the school curriculum.

Under the umbrella of "safety", the group developed materials using three key ideas: awareness, consent and appropriate use of information. The materials that form part of the youth privacy kit include:

a poster with the concept of personal information dis-appearing into a black hole

a wallet-sized brochure, filled with lots of ways to think about your personal information – your rights, how to safeguard it, and what to do if you think something has gone amiss.

The kit also includes a short film, guidance notes for presenters, privacy stories, activities and a quiz. It is available to secondary schools and youth outlets. And kits can be ordered of the web-site. For more about the project see: http://privacy.org.nz/private-word-issue-75-september-201/#youth

29

Uploading it to YouTube we also set up

a website with Tumblr and bought the

domain www.sweetassocialmedia.com

and uploaded the script asking for oth-

ers to read it and record it and also

upload their versions…

In the Booth, we asked people to help

us share the message by reading the

whole or part of our campaign script,

with a prize pack up for grabs for the

top video of the week/event. With each

of the script sections recorded by differ-

ent individuals, we have been able to

mix and edit the videos already obtained

into a complied video mash which repre-

sents the script outlined for the cam-

paign.

The result of which we hope will be a

series of 45 sec mixed edits of this script

which we intend on trying to create air-

time for on mainstream media channels

and another, more impressive youth

week event focusing on celebrating the

opportunities and possibilities that the

internet brings youth such as the one

we attempted this year without any

funding or financial assistance and

passed off purely on "social currency"

alone. The result so far can be seen in

our first "Mash Up Edit" here which ac-

tually features Minister Paula Bennett-

http://youtu.be/o7CQARqlqT4

“YouTube Booth” &

Taking the Campaign

Script to the streets…

“YOUTUBE BOOTH” LAUNCH &

YOUTH WEEK EVENT 27 MAY 2011

AT MASSEY COMMUNITY HOUSE

All the other camera footage from our booth, and I mean ALL, can be found on

our YouTube channel (user name: sweetassocial). We have included the

screenshots from videos used in this compilation which have been included to

the side here, or you can check out our latest video on our YouTube channel

(http://www.youtube.com/users/sweetassocial)

SWEET AS SOCIAL MEDIA CHARITABLE TRUST WAS ESTABLISHED WITH THE PURPOSE OF

BUILDING AWARENESS OF THE RELEVANCE & SIGNIFICANECE OF ISSUES THAT “DIGITIAL

NATIVES ” ARE ALREADY FACING, SUCH AS CYBERBULLYING & ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

ONLINE AMOUNG MANY YOUTH IN KIWI SCHOOLS.....

YOUTUBE BOOTH AT REVELRY20ELEVEN

AT ZEAL WEST AUCKLAND

We wrote a campaign script that

touched on the primary pieces of

advice we found throughout the ma-

terial on preventing or managing cy-

berbullying from all over the world

and the kind of "common sense" fac-

tors that perhaps due to generational

differences and the "virtual realities"

of kids today, require us to once

again consider readdressing.

Having written it up, we went to a

friends house and got their gorgeous

six year old, Shizandra Bowden, who

had told us she had now decided she

wanted to be an actor, and asked her

to read the script on camera for us.

She did amazingly well, especially

when you consider that was her first

read through! We have since set up

a charitable trust, held a youth week

event and celebrated our launch and

showcase of the "YouTube Booth"

and announced what we hope to be

a six month or year long campaign...

#Be Kind Online focuses on building awareness of the significance & rele-vance of the “cyber” aspect to bullying in Kiwi schools. Cyberbullying & antisocial behavior online is one of the most prevalent of the risks youth face online.

We know from first hand experi-ence how the internet and tech-nology can open doors and give you access to opportunities s that otherwise would be unattainable

We get to go to some cool events

and run the booth, but we need

more hands! Its fun work really,

and you guys are our target market

so if its not a gig you don’t want to

be at, chance are there is no point in

us being there!

AND TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE’RE INTERACTING… BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY… ITS STILL, JUST ABOUT TALKING.”

31

Does it matter, why & what does it mean to Youth in particular?

We have been asking youth that same question and intend on continuing to do so. This is partly because we are interested to know what gets them excited. Plus we think they will also find it easier than us at least to and we feel relevance to the industry and commercial consid-erations and issues we find in the ICT industry need to be highlighted and considered more thoroughly. However we also want to build awareness among the general public of the signifi-

cance & relevance of this change in societies.

“THE INTERNET MADE THE WORLD DIFFERENT. “

The online world is largely unmoni-tored and outside the bounds of traditional legal models. With the likes of the Natalia Burgess (aka Facebook stalker) talking candidly and nonchalantly on national TV about going for young naive boys as her targets "because they're easier to trick". Yet at least in this particular case, the local police and community rushed to work out how it could be stopped and what she could potentially be charged with. And all this after only four of her victims came forward, out of an estimated 40 or more in total. And while social networking sites often play to the more sinister side of human nature, it is the near en-couragement of this kind of anti-

social behaviour from some sites that has shocked us. And whilst we talk about bullying, we seem to overlook the difference it really makes to not be able to leave the bullies at the school gate anymore. We believe a large part of these problems has to do with the fact that we don't address the "cyber" aspect of this issue, an aspect that the kids experiencing it, take for granted. After dealing with the teenagers who have encountered these problems, we where shocked to find in most cases the schools had been informed, had not informed the parents (even though in one of these case the material constituted child pornog-raphy) nor had they offered any kind of actionable remedy or solu-tion for these kids.

Be honest with your kids—they understand the technology better

than we ever could, and we can learn from them here. On the flipside,

parents understand life a lot better than their kids—so there has to be a

two way exchange of knowledge. Youth intuitively find it hard to grasp the

idea that while everything you say at 17 is cool, when you are 30 you are

not going to want a public, permanent written record of everything you

said back then—if this was the case, you might have acted very differ-

ently! Tell them why the rules are there, rather than just telling them

more rules without explaining why they are needed. Today’s youth live in

a world where anything you hear or read may or may not actually be the

truth. In this context , they have to question every fact brought to them.

This realistically creates a generation whose very nature is engrained in

being inquisitive, pushing the boundaries and resisting authority—so ex-

plain why you put rules in place, not just what they are.

“Social media is the platforms and technology that enable a public conversation while creating a wide variety of user-generated content. At the core of these com-munications is the ability to build social relationships by listening and actively participating. As social media continues to evolve, marketers must be involved and use these tools to support customers interactions.” -Virtual Social Media Social Me-dia Defined in 12 Points - http://url.assistnz.com/12SM

The distinctive features of “social media” , lie in the principles of Web 2.0 & User generated content. In other words, before now, our emphasis was on the relevance of the traditional, mainstream, one way and controlled sources of information being exchanged. transfer having been decentralised and distributed to each of us, giving us all a voice.

"Information and Communication Technologies" is the industry we are talking about in this context, surely the name alone is an indication of the true essence of what we are talking about here, and that is just a whole raft of new ways for us to communicate with one another, which we can now do without the limits of physical time or location binding us any more.

“SOCIAL MEDIA”

“In 2008, 1 in 3 Kiwi High School Students reported to being cyber bullied” - NZ Herald WHAT IS CYBERBULLYING? Cyberbullying is not unlike normal bullying, yet instead of occurring just in person, technologies & websites can now facili-tate bullying from a distance for some kids. Technology now means that bullying not only occurs in the playground but after school and can even follow kids home. With this medium largely unmonitored, bullying online can be hidden even more than traditional bullying and this causes a serious sense of isolate in a large number of cases. In other countries, the talk of suicides in child who were victimised in such ways has been far and wide, we don’t think we need to wait for a Kiwi kid to take their own life before the general public will talk about this issue.

WHAT MAKES CYBERBULLYING ANY DIFFERENT? There are a number of reasons which seem to make the nature & occurrence of Cyberbullying significantly more concerning than even traditional constructs of bullying in many cases. Cyberbullying can be extremely hard to escape. It can also be anonymous & impersonal and those acting as “bullies” don't have to directly experience the pain inflicted on their victim. The virtual invasion of the home and spread of the targeting that these tech-nologies allow is also significantly concerning. Often outside of legal bounds & difficult for the schools to manage, the ubiquitous nature of these medias means that the refuge of ones bedroom even, is no longer safe for kids today. While PM John Key emphasised the duty of care carried out & upheld by schools to provide a safe environment for kids, fact is- bullying is a NZ wide issue and this kind of behaviour is rarely limited just to the playground. Most commonly reported concern by many remains the apparent obliviousness of the parents to these issues.

Today's youth do not seem to make any distinction between talking to others online or off. Nor do they make any distinction when it comes to bully-ing, which is understandable considering the idea of a world without the internet is an abstract and unfamiliar idea to modern youth.

With bullying again a newsworthy issue for mainstream media. We were surprised when Tori McAuley, the 13 year old student who had the opportu-nity to speak with John Key on the matter, was interviewed on Close Up, no mention was made of the fact that these issues are "digital" now. Despite Tori clearly being wise beyond her years, we suspect she would not be able to remember what the Y2K Bug was!

Schools are finding it increasingly more difficult to overcome these ongo-ing and prevalent issues for Kiwi youth. Yet this should be no surprise to a government that has for years, been stating their intentions to outpace and exceed the UK in becoming an e-democracy after e-government is set to launch in 2020. John Key has been making statements reminding schools of their "duty of care" to provide children with a safe environment – while meanwhile he has a thirteen year old advising him on what, as a country and a society, we should do to address the bullying issue in Kiwi schools. The ma-jority of Kiwi parent appear to have as yet overlooked the significance of this social change, and still don't appear confident to extent their parenting in to the "online arena".

NZ youth suicide rates continue to be among the worst in the world, with three suicides linked to cyber-bullying in NZ reported since 2002. Kids world-wide continue to get to the point where they feel taking their lives is the only solution. Yet with Kiwi youth silently suffering from digital ills such as cyber-bullying, no one seems to be making the importance of this factor apparent to those in a position to have influence over the issue.

More than anything, we would ask you to compel other parents not to "take away the toys" so to speak when it comes to having problems online, all this is doing is driving the issue downward. The fear of parents removing access is the number one reason kids are not telling an adult when stuff like this happens online.

MEDIA AWARENESS NETWORK ON CYBERBULLYING

“As its name implies, cyberbullying is

bullying through an electronic me-

dium, such as a computer or cell

phone. The Internet’s reach and per-

ceived anonymity means that children

who might not otherwise initiate bully-

ing may initiate this sort of behaviour,

and an unlimited number of young

people may become bystanders who

perpetuate the victimization as they

read and forward harassing messages

and/or images.“

SUGGESTIONS FOR PARENTS:

“As a large portion of cyberbullying occurs

in the home, you must get better informed

about your children’s online activities. Get

involved and talk to your child about be-

having ethically online.

It can be difficult for a young person to

come forward when being bullied; even to

mum or dad. To foster a climate of trust,

do not overreact. Do not forbid your child

to use the Internet in the hope of eliminat-

ing the source of the problem: for your

child, this is the equivalent of social death

and will leave her or him feeling even more

victimized (not to mention the fact that an

extreme reaction such as this will probably

cause your child to avoid confiding in you

again when feeling threatened). “

http://url.assistnz.com/MEDIAAWARENESS

Understanding A Youth Perspective

AT LEAST 3 KIWI KIDS HAVE

TAKEN THIER OWN LIVES

SINCE 2002 ALONE AFTER BE-

ING THE TARGETS OF CYBER-

BULLYING INCIDENTS...

“SOCIAL MEDIA”

What do you need for a “YouTube

Booth”, technical requirements

(current short-ages) & extras?

Where can I find more??

#BeNiceOnline Campaign Script

SOCIAL MEDIA…IT’S <INSERT YOUR VIEW HERE>

THE INTERNET MADE THE WORLD DIFFERENT. AND TECH-NOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE’RE INTERACTING… BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY… ITS STILL, JUST ABOUT TALK-ING. SO WHETHER IT’S ONLINE OR OFF, SPEAK TO PEO-PLE WITH RESPECT, DON’T SAY THINGS YOU DON’T MEAN AND TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE TREATED. WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE GETTING PICKED ON, HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY SOMETHING… IF THERES SOMETHING ONLINE THAT YOU DON’T THINK SHOULD BE THERE, REPORT IT TO THE WEB-SITE. AND REMEMBER, IN THE ONLINE WORLD… THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS AS THEY SEEM. SO… STOP AND THINK… CAUSE ONCE YOU CLICK, YOU LOSE CONTROL.

34

There are vast numbers of ways you can assist us depending on what

you are willing to do or capable of offering... We would love for your

support and following on our content online, so please check out the

website where one can register for email updates, “like” us on Facebook

( http://www.facebook.com/SweetAsSocial ) and/or “Follow” us on

Twitter (), you can also subscribe to us on YouTube ( http://

www.youtube.com/user/sweetassocial )

Requires one hour preparation time to

do required trial runs etc. The booth in

this set up at a standard event requires

4 booth operators.

EQUIPMENT REQUIRED FOR SETUP:

3x White Rice Paper Blinds (Velcro be-tween the adjoining edges)

1x Round Carpet Diameter 1.5m

2x Laptops (1 for recording, 1 for project-ing, editing titles etc)

Power boards/extensions

Projector, Screen & Stand

Webcam, Microphone & rec light

UV Barrell Blacklight

Camera Tripod & remote

Posters (set of 5 make up set)

Callout cards, copies of script

Info sheets, waiver sign in book

2 x Flip cameras or camera phone

YouTube Booth shirts & lanyards

Pens, Youth Privacy brochures, Spot Prizes & giveaways & “I went in the You-Tube Booth” stickers

We have now had the “YouTube Booth” run-

ning at two events now and both have pro-

vided us some pretty key learning's. However

both have also provided us some key oppor-

tunities to engage with the general public,

both those who were and weren’t willing to

get in front of the camera.

Really they are Canadians, they

“just really like the bird”

From the perspective of “parents”, highest concerns revolve around the following common

concerns:

“Stranger danger”, fear of predators or sex offenders, coming in from the “outside” and hurting our

youth—evokes instinctive fear of the unknown.

How much personal information are youth revealing about themselves online—valid and justified con-

cern, we refer to it as your “digital footprint”, and this should be a concern for all users. We all need to

think about this more.

Little overtly concern from parents about issues of cyber bullying or sexting—until the issue comes up in real

life as a concern that relates to them directly. Cyberbullying is more prevalent than we realise, experienced by

up to 90% of kids. And Facebook is often slow to react or non responsive, but new measures let you notify a

friend when reporting bullying incidents online. What statistics show is that the issues that are most prevalent

and distressing for youth online, are considerably different from what their parents believe to be the main prob-

lems. If we don’t understand this world, how can we even begin to find solutions that will actually help without

involving youth—we can’t! Why not start by getting them to paint us the picture instead.

"...if we're not intentional about what we're communicating with the

children, our systems will communicate values, and the value that he's

getting is, here's how to be a better hacker than you were before, as

opposed to here’s how to engage positively."

Shaun (@shaunfish) Public librarian

Cyber safety concerns:

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE A TARGET OF A CYBER BULLYING INCIDENT, REGARDLESS OF AGE:

Both a technological and social approach is needed. It is understandable that youth often

don’t want to tell their parents—so talk to another adult you trust, and be clear how you do

or don’t want things to be handled.

Ask for people offline to show you support in an online sense.

Ask the person who uploaded the offensive content to delete it or take it down them-

selves, and make it clear you will report it otherwise.

Keep evidence of interaction—take a screen shot right away in case the content is

changed or deleted.

Make the most of Facebook’s own tools and support services—use status update to an-

nounce if your account has been hijacked so people know it wasn’t you posting.

Step in when you see hate online, even if you don’t feel safe speaking out, you can always

send a private message of support to the target.

10 Simple Ways to Show Kindness Online by BRETT BORDERS on MAY 5, 2009

Being in front of a computer all day can feel quite isolating. Being kind costs nothing, it’s easier to do online than in real life, and it’ll score you major bonus points:

1. Say it With a Smile

(use emoticons) 2. Praise and Show Affection 3. Use Terms of Endearment 4. Respond to Everyone 5. Express Your Appreciation & Thanks 6. Agree With People 7. Make Other People Look Good 8. Help Other People “Get It” 9. Avoid Negativity, Hostility, Criticism and Snark 10. Keep Your Promises

http://copybrighter.com/10-simple-ways-to-show-kindness-online

For those of us who can actually fathom a world that wasn't globally connected and integrated, technology and ICTs es-pecially have had fundamental roles in changing the way we "live, work, receive information and even where we choose to live". (TUANZ 2009).

Digital Safety & Security Contrary to popular opinion, as much as youth really need to have emphasised to them the nature and

risk of the self managed system that facilitates social media interactions—many parents, I personally believe,

have no way to really grasp the concept of a system having no defined governance or control. I feel by explain-

ing and emphasising these “lessons”, I may actually have many more questions and queries from parents, on

what I expect many “digital natives” inherently take for granted. And whilst I always would welcome queries or

comments from any readers particularly concerned, I would also make sure that you initiate these kind of con-

versations at your own dinner table.

As Giazowski (2008) so eloquently put it in their article “Cyberbullying will stop when adults level with

their kids”, when describing the permanence of information online, “the problem is that graffiti is particularly

hard to erase on the Web.” Even more disconcerting for any parents of teenagers in this context unfortunately,

is that cyberbullying is “difficult to prevent, spreads very quickly, and leaves a permanent online trail that can

have devastating long term consequences for both the bully and target.” (Safety Web Blog, 2010). The perva-

siveness and socially acceptable nature of these technologies only appear to emphasise this hurt and the speed

at which it is experienced.

The internet was meant to be the “great leveller of society”, in that we have empowered innovation;

entrepreneurs are currently ruling the world in a sense. And consider what it takes to define an entrepre-

neur. The economist and sociologist Schumpeter differentiated in a way that made him an innovator him-

self; when all his peers said an entrepreneur was the person who took “capital risk” , he suggested it was the

breaking from the traditional, this action he called “innovation”, that made entrepreneurs different to those

who were just acting as the manager of a small business. And innovation, in its very essence, is an act of re-

bellion.

"the thing I loved the most about post Soviet poets was their depression because they said when we lived in the Soviet Union we

could be creative because we had all these rules that we had. But now we live in a world of freedom, and how can you be creative

in a world of freedom where you can say whatever you want?" - Professor Lawrence Lessig

For the record, while we all seem to appreciate and in fact widely quote Schumpeter when we talk

about business and the economy today, in true short sighted nature, we miss the lesson he so passionately

tried to emphasise while he was alive—and which he wrote about in his first book in English, published in

1911—yet while I can’t be the only one who now owns that book, most seem to overlook what Schumpeter

himself was most repetitive and vocal about in his time. He tried to explain that in the previous century, we

used to call all “businesses”, family business. All businesses at that time were in fact family businesses, so

much that it seemed silly to call them that, and the “family” part was dropped as redundant. And while it was

so obviously assumed by one generation, it was completely overlooked by another—who took for granted

that “family” and “business” were separate and distinctly different.

Schumpeter wrote about this in German for years before writing it in English for the first time in 1911 in

a book widely quoted in our society today, by economists especially. But Schumpeter died frustrated, not

feeling like he had got his message across—ironically he was just ahead of his time. So far ahead of his time

indeed that it had not been until the time I started my academic career almost a century later, that academ-

ics have really started to re-examine the other aspects of his work. And because he is now dead and has no

voice, he cannot tell us off when we selectively quote from his work over and over again, without ever grasp-

ing the fundamental and underlying truth that we were meant to get from the start.

There is a whole raft of models which I could tell you about or provide links to, but rather than do that, we

thought it best to keep things simple. (I would not claim to have made up this particular model but have taken

liberties with its adaptations, and apologise for not having a direct attributable reference). We have set this as

though it is applied to cyber-safety and interpreted slightly differently, depending on which perspective you may

hold. Being that if it were me, I would have got sick of reading by now, I think its pretty safe to assume that ex-

plaining it from the perspectives of parents in this context is probably the best bet.

The three E’s are Engage, from a parents perspective this is pretty obvious, but from a youth perspective

learn about how you can positively and proactively use this stuff to create the reality that you so desire.*; Edu-

cate, this means learn more about the topic obviously; Empower, again obvious from the parent’s perspective

maybe, but for youth if you guys are getting the respect that you deserve from your parents, don’t shit on it! It

takes a lot to admit you’re wrong or you don’t know everything, and their humility is something you could learn

from.

Engage- with your kids. Set up a regular time for you to get “lessons” from your kids about what

sites and services they are using—by allowing them to play the role of the teacher, this creates opportunities

for understanding, and will make them more comfortable about you being part of their online life.

NB: even the most “techie” among us, taught ourselves how to use this stuff at the end of the day, so the lack of

confidence reported by parents is unexplained and slightly confusing. If you are going to get your kids to be

TEACHING you, this is very different to SHOWING you! One good rule we’ve heard is “Don’t let the “geek” touch

the technology”. If you’ve ever had a 5 year old and an iPad and your trying to help them play a game , and you

do it by completing the action for them, they will likely find it rather annoying and they will also probably at some

point or another, ask you to do it again (its not how we learn really, broadly speaking, as people) — you have to

do it yourself, they just have to tell you how to.

Educate—everyone in your household should have set up a “Alert” for your name and handle.

Services we like include Google Alerts and Social Mention but there are plenty out there. Set it up with your

kids and share the alert notifications, so Mum gets little Johnny’s updates, but he also gets Mum’s. Alert sys-

tems like this work on a varied basis but generally if you had all your privacy settings set to closed and are not

making blog posts that are getting highly trafficked, then its safe to say nobody will be getting any alerts.

Check out our Facebook page if you’re not sure how to do this!

NB: These sites and services work slightly different depending on the service, but Learn about privacy settings, if

they are correct, you shouldn’t get many alerts. Not sure how to do this? Ask your kids to tell you how. Get them

to be an effective and compassionate teacher, its one of the best skills you can give them.

Empower—make these lesson times a priority, its important for your kids to feel like you care

about these issues and them, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the answers—your kids have accepted the

fact they know that no one has all the answers!

NB: I can use a number of different analogues here, but I’ll do a service to the rest of those who were also fortu-

nate enough to see @lessig speak at NetHui recently and suggest that anyone and everyone should watch this

video - http://youtu.be/C1Pz5bTHy7k - Like ANYONE reading this! Now!

Seriously, it could be the best way that anyone could spend the next ten minutes following reading this, unless

maybe you felt the need to read this sentence for some reason while you where, say, like about to jump from

the plane door while you were sky diving or something– I think then I would probably give you a pass then I

guess..maybe. ;) Although in saying that I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe half the initial draw card to the

Kiwi audience at least was partly the fact that he starts a conference, in Auckland to an audience of politicians,

tech leaders, teachers, random & us—so like “all sorts”, whom raved about it afterwards across the board

(myself included obviously) using the following line; “I’d like you to think about an alcoholic, and I’m don’t mean

a drop dead drunk alcoholic or even about I’m thinking about just a regular alcoholic and I don’t mean a drop

dead alcohol, or even someone who has even recovered with alcoholics anonymous , I’m talking about just your

regular alcoholic who works hard to control the addiction he has....”

But back to cyberbullying again... While there is a vast amount of resources out there, I’m not being narcis-

sistic in thinking I can create better, in fact far from it, I need help myself with these technologies., even if people

call me an expert sometimes! Like the surfer who rides the kick ass waves, I acknowledge and respect the power

of the ocean that I’m riding , and don’t for a second fool myself into thinking I can control it. I am just perplexed

especially after going to a conference where I had the opportunity to ask those people who are meant to have

the answers to my questions, well, they said I —and for the record, they don’t. Then why has nobody considered

admitting maybe we fucked up. Maybe we don’t know everything, and maybe we’re not even sure for a second

why we thought we did.

But the one thing I can claim to knowing a bit about, especially after reading Keith Newman’s Connecting

the Clouds (which thanks to Internet NZ and all the other sponsors at NetHui I scored myself a free copy of—

cheers again btw!) is the ICT industry in New Zealand at least. However I am reminded not to sell myself short I

have done a couple of degrees in this shit after all ! :) On watching the first text campaigns Vodafone did in New

Zealand again just recently, I was reminded of the argument I remember having with my dad all those years ago

about the very first development of “text language”. He thought “the future” of text language used y as the ab-

breviation for u, and I told him he was stupid! (check out this for a laugh, I should be clear this is not my video, its

one care of a user called “tiki32” *props tiki ;) whoever you are+—http://youtu.be/GrNMrCFzGzI) But after all I

was 16 at the time and can now tell you, although I didn’t believe it then, that I knew everything.

Cheers for taking the time to check this out and hopefully we may have provided some insight as we our-

selves continue taking on this self appointed mission to “change the nature of the world” with hopefully your

approval and at some stage no doubt I expect possibly, even your assistance. Check out our great many websites

and profiles online– or to make things simple, just “like” us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/

SweetAsSocial) so we can keep ya in the loop!! (and big ups to the 166 of you out there who already have– I feel

so “liked-up” that it makes me just wana go round “liking” things!! Hehe—

Till next time...! Jess

* If you don’t know how to do that, let me know, as I may know something that could

help you, and you may know thing or two that could help me. If you don’t know what

sort of reality you want to create, even more reason to email me, I’m doing some pretty

cool shit and I always need some help!

www

Be Nice Online Project Organiser—Jess Maher - 022 671 4060

Sweet As Social Media | PO Box 79042, Royal Heights, Waitakere City 0656

www.sweetasyouth.tumblr.com | www.youtube.com/user/sweetassocial