Dark face of the Internet

Day one of the fabulous Ulearn conference kicked off today in sunny Christchurch, New Zealand. Ulearn is a prestigious event which this year has close to 2000 international delegates attending, and there is quite a buzz surrounding the event. There are far too many breakout sessions to shake a stick at, but with this many delegates to satisfy, it's essential there is a lot of choice. Lee Crockett's keynote from this morning is already well documented on the Ulearn conference website, and mine which followed at 4.20 in the afternoon will no doubt be summarised in the next 12 hours or so. But the session I would really like to report is the one presented by Brett Lee (pictured - no, not the Aussie fast bowler) on e-safety.

Brett, who represents the internet education safety company INESS was a policeman in Queensland for 15 years and during that time he was involved in detecting, identifying and prosecuting almost 100 internet predators. In a disturbing yet powerful presentation, he highlighted some of the dangers teens encounter when they venture into social network sites such as Facebook and MSN messenger. Brett asked the audience whether it would be acceptable for an adult to approach a child in the street and ask for their name, address, date of birth and photographs of them. Of course not, came the response, but many young people do just that by posting up information about themselves on Facebook, he said. He demonstrated how dangerous MSN could be, by showing a video of a conversation he had while posing as a 15 year old girl. In a very disturbing dialogue, he was contacted in a few seconds by a male, and within minutes was being asked questions of a sexual nature. Brett's advice is not to discourage young people from using the Internet to connect with their friends - instead he argues, they should be told of the dangers and educated in the ways to avoid the danger of the stranger online. A powerful presentation indeed, and one which certainly deserves a wider audience.

I enjoyed presenting my own keynote earlier today. It isn't often you get to engage an audience of over 1500 people for an hour, but I hope I was able to provide some interesting, entertaining and challenging content. I certainly received some very positive feedback verbally and via Twitter after the speech, and I am very pleased to have been able to contribute something in such a marvellous venue as the Christchurch Town Hall (see picture below).

On another note - this is an earthquake zone. Stephen Heppell is staying in the room next to me at the Crowne Plaza hotel, and during the night, I actually thought for one moment that he was trying to break through the wall! Sorry to take your name in vain, Stephen - you're a great neighbour!

It turned out to be yet another of those sudden, room lurching earth tremors Christchurch seems prone to these days. We suffered a magnitude 5.0 tremor on Monday evening at around 10.20 which made us all sit up and take notice for a minute or so. There is a lot of quake damage from the 7.1 quake on September 4th, and things are gradually being patched up. But it is slightly disconcerting when every so often throughout the day, you feel the vibrations and slight movement of the building around you. Ulearn is creating a stir in more ways than one, and it's certainly a moving experience.


Dark face of the Internet by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.