Project Getting Involved is closing down

Since the fall of 2002, Department of Computer Science, Nesna University College, has been working with a project called “Getting involved”. The project was a part of the undergraduate course in Computer Science, and the course Social Informatics. The main focus of the project was to try to fight the constant sexual abuse of children on the Internet with information and awareness projects directed both towards the computer students of Nesna University College and towards the local computer industry and local primary, secondary and upper secondary level schools.

Project Getting Involved was done in collaboration with Save the Children Norway. Also the Norwegian police unit Kripos took an active interest in the project, and this was the only national project of this kind that they involved themselves in, among other things by sending one or two officers as speakers at the yearly national Getting Involved seminars.

Unfortunately it has not been possible to keep the project going and it is therefore discontinued

Mo i Rana, 26.10.2009
Per A. Godejord
Dean, Nesna University College
Norway

Social Informatics Wiki

Social Informatics Resources is a wiki managed by me. It aims to provide a guide to research resources and teaching materials for lecturers and students in social informatics and includes video lectures, sound lectures, slideshare lectures, text based lectures, relevant search pages from Google, suggestions for curriculum and a guide to lecture SI. A forum, and a student page has been established for thoughts, comments and resources contributed by students and others who wish to participate. The references are mainly in Norwegian. There are links to other social informatics wikis.

Meet Andrew Vachss live!

Those of you, who have followed Project Getting Involved from the start, will remember that the New York based lawyer and author Andrew Vachss participated shortly in the project.

At the 24th of September 2003 our department hosted a small conference with speakers from the police, lawyers, Save the Children Norway, Telenor, University of Umeå and our third year Bachelor students. The title of the conference was “Internet – a hiding ground for paedophiles?” With this conference as a backdrop we hosted two online discussion sessions between our students and Andrew Vachss.

These two sessions was meant to be an experimental example on how to teach ethical topics to computer students using Moodle as a communication tool, and was a part of our “Project Getting Involved”

Read more about it here: Online seminar with Andrew Vachss (2003).

It is therefore with pleasure that I further the information that on Wednesday, January the 14th, it will be possible to engage in dialogue with Andrew online, in regard to his last book in the Burke series. Read more about this event at his web site, and register for the meeting here.

Blogging as a tool for learning

Might we say that blogging is a tool for “Social Mind Mapping”?

Dr. Beata Godejord claims so, in her posting Blogging – “Social Mind Mapping” (EduMed).

What do you think?

Beata Godejord, PhD.

What is Social Informatics?

Is the expression “Social Informatics” (Norwegian: Samfunnsinformatikk) something that best can be used in describing a specific course in Computer Science, or is it also a widely accepted term describing a scientific taxonomy?

I recommend every one interested in Social Informatics to take a look at “Information Society: From Theory to Political Practice” (editor: Róbert Pintér).

Do we need to re-define the term “Social Informatics”?

The importance of didactics

Social Informatics is not the most profiled course within the Computer Science or Information Science studies in Norway. It seems to me that it`s not only students that consider social issues of computing boring and unimportant, but that many lecturers also view Social Informatics as a nuisance.

For those lecturers who understand the importance of social issues of computing, there are three things to consider:

Didactics

Didactics

Didactics

Engage your students, grab their hearts and minds, and you may throw the text books away and enjoy Social Informatics together with your students.

Educational Consequences of Media Development

For those who missed the 6th National Conference on sexual abuse of children in digital media, it is now possible to view all the contributions on our Tv Web.

For those of you out there who does not understand Norwegian, the conference had one presentation in English: “Educational Consequences of Media Development”, by Beata Godejord, PhD. This contribution takes a critical look at some of the negative aspects of the Media world of our kids, and what Teacher Education can do about it.

A bit of this and that

The Internet is filled with resources one should know about, especially if you are in the field of distance education. For a nice and comprehensive list of Web 20 applications, take a look at my good friend Tom Erik Holteng`s blog.

Some links I have come across today is VSide, a 3D world calling itself the Facebook of Virtual Worlds. For those already exploring Second Life, this might be a place worth checking out. Worlds in Motion wants to build an Online World Atlas, and that might be useful for those of us who want to keep track of the various virtual worlds and online multiplayer games on the Net. For those who want an overview of Distance Education resources, the Distance-Educator.com is the place to start. Also check out the BlogTalk Radio and the eLearning Technology Talk.

OpenID

The ability to identify people online is an old topic, and within the field of preventing sexual abuse of kids in digital media it`s quite important. One group of Social Informatics students at Nesna University College showed the participants of the 6th National Getting Involved conference how easy it is to create false Norwegian National Identification Numbers, and thus create an online fake identity that are trusted both by those who operate online services and the users of these services.

Thomas Bogevold, Jonas Tindvik Furu, with Camilla Falch in the background,
at the 6th National Getting Involved Conference, 16th of April 2008. Topic: ID on Internet.

Another way of identifying people is the concept of OpenID.

OpenID is described as “an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.” (Source: ifacethoughts)

As a Social Informatics this is a fascinating concept, not the least because it begs the question; Does a set of URL`s constitute a real and true ID or just a collection of carefully prepared “data” to build a false ID?

Take a look at the OpenID service called ClaimID. How would YOUR OpenID look like?

Per Arne Godejord

Welcome to the 2nd day of the conference

Welcome to day 2 of the 6th Getting Involved Conference!

The opening of the second day of the conference is at Wednesday the 16th of April, 09:15 hour, and the last of that day`s speakers will appear at 14:45. For those of you out there who does not understand Norwegian, we have one presentation in English and that is at 11:15 – 12:00; “Educational Consequences of Media Development”, by Beata Godejord, PhD.

Follow the live feed of the conference at the conference WebTV page.