Over the last couple days I have had the privilege to be involved in the Cyber Savvy Summit 2014. This was the first official meeting of all schools involved in the Cyber Savvy Project which is
a world first study to support young people to make positive choices about their online behaviour, and in particular the use of images sent via mobile phones and the Internet. It is conducted by researchers at the Telethon Kids Institute and supported by the Telethon-New Children’s Hospital Research Fund 2012, Healthway and the Department of Education Western Australia.
In the weeks leading up I had to choose 4 year 9 students that would represent our College and also become “Cyber Savvy Ambassadors”. I think we were all a bit apprehensive as I had not taught the students before and we really had little idea about what the 2 days would entail. After the Summit we realised the importance of the “secretiveness”.
Both days involved me picking up the students from school and making the almost hour trip to the WA Basketball Centre (and yes we got to see the Wildcats train :) )
As always at these kinds of events we arrived on the first day trying to get our bearings. We were welcomed by the staff and given our name badges, which we noticed had numbers and different colours. We then found our tables, grabbed a drink (coffee for me) and then kinda stood together trying to figure out what would happen next.
At 9am we were asked to sit at our tables. We found our gift bags, which contained some neat stuff like USB drive, pen and best of all a pretty cool looking shirt. I was grouped on one of the 2 teacher tables that had been set up towards the back of the room. All tables also had volunteers that would be guiding us through the 2 days.
When we introduced ourselves I realised I was heavily outnumbered, as most of the teachers were from a Pastoral Care background and had joined the Project either by being told to by their principal or because they were dealing with so many negative issues due to social media. I, on the other hand, had joined because of how important I felt the issue was.
Throughout the first day the students and teachers began their journey into sharing their knowledge of social media and more particularly the use of images in social media.
Our MC for the 2 days (Steve Lacy) was excellent and he used many different strategies to help us feel comfortable with each other and be able to share and work together. We played many games that would make us think, laugh and feel like a team - which was so important. The Cyber Savvy Team describe him as the ‘translator’ to students.
At the end of the first day we had started to narrow down many ideas and began the process of designing an App. On my table I had come up with an idea that everyone really liked and it took plenty of effort from our team volunteer to keep us from jumping too far ahead in the design process.
The trip home on the first day was completely silent as we were all exhausted.
Day 2 saw us continue to design an app in our groups and produce a sales pitch for the app which would later be judged. We also found out that a $200 gift voucher would be given to every student involved on the winning group.
Before lunch we presented our app ideas and they were all great. Every app had at least one great idea that would be so beneficial if the app was made.
Unfortunately none of the students from my College were involved in the winning group, but they all did a fantastic job.
The winning app was called “Leash” and involved “pulling” or “retrieving” photos that have been shared on social media. The app could also show who had access to your shared photos.
Overall it was a fantastic learning experience for the students and teachers involved and I think we all came away excited for more to come.
A highlight for me was meeting Donna Cross and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that we had. A great memory.
Oh and what was my app idea?
It is an app that will look at everything that you post on all of your social media sites and then warn you when it detects a post that it believes could affect your reputation.
The home screen is a summary of how many post you have made over a period of time. It is broken into photos, likes, tags etc. Using simple and recognisable icons and a graph to show the number of posts it is simple and clear. If the graph line is green then the app has no issue with your post. If it is red the app has detected something wrong.
By clicking that section you can get more details and be able to then get further details by clicking on the offending post :)
The final part of the app is that all the hard work is done in the cloud so that the app never needs to be opened. If the server detects an issue, you will receive a push notification.
Now hopefully this is enough to call for prior art if someone makes this app - I want it.