Safer Internet Day

 Safer Internet Day 2013. On-line Rights and Responsibilities

NetSafe Inc. are delighted to be supporting this 10th Annual Safer Internet Day, with its focus this year on Rights and Responsibilities online. Greetings from New Zealand. The First SID committee to welcome in the 5th of February (Geographically Speaking)

Like many places in the world that are geographically isolated, we have seen first hand the unique transformative nature of technology as it "disrupts" our way of life, and extends opportunities to many of our citizens that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. However, as an organisation that provides help and support to those citizens through every aspect of their on-line lives we also see the darker side of peoples interactions with each other on-line.
The idea of rights and responsibilities is something that has guided our work here at NetSafe for many years now. The concepts of Digital Citizenship have dramatically influenced our work in schools and are beginning to take root in other parts of our work. The balance between the two usually familiar concepts is a powerful one for most people to explore, and the trade off between your rights to belong and participate against your responsibility to ensure that the environment and those around you are treated with care and respect normally stimulates interesting conversations and great ideas about how such a model can be extended / is derived from beyond the internet to our own terretorial citizenships.

NetSafe is actively working to support educators to foster a culture of digital citizenship in young people throughout New Zealand. Both the myLGP website, and more recently the 4th generation NetSafe Kit for Schools have been developed to bring together our understanding of digital citizenship, with best practice classroom activity and a forum for educators, researchers and administrators to talk about how best to promote a culture of rights and responsibilities inside our schools and beyond into our wider communities

We wish all Safer Internet Day 2013 participents the best of luck in all of their collective endeavours across the day, and look forward to seeing and hearing what a great success it has been.

Sean Lyons
Chief Technology Officer
NetSafe.
www.netsafe.org.nz