Wednesday, 25 February 2009
How different was the Web in 2006?
In his article "Jurassic Web" Farhad Manjoo in the online magazine Slade talks about how unrecognizable the Web in 1996 was compared with the Web today. He concludes that despite early trends which predate blogging and user-generated content, it was all fluff and nonsense.
I beg to disagree. In 1996 I was one of the Web generation, ordinary people who were creating websites, discussing digital creativity and applying it to real world challenges. We were creating early blogs - only we called them metajournals in those days. My first was on a site called LitWeb, which has sadly now gone, but anyone who usesLiveJournal or other blog/social networks would have recognised it.
Community and collaboration were the words that drove us in the early days of the Web - and it feels like it has turned full circle having taken a more commercial turn around the turn of the century.
For Manjoo to say that Geocities was the forerunner of user-generated content is to miss the whole ethos of the Web back then. We were collaborating, sharing information, in a way that would be recognised by the open source community today and we created websites which users were invited to contribute to and collaborate in developing the content for. Look at a project like the Noon Quilt (OK it was two years' later in 1998 but a development of what we were doing at the trAce Online Writing Community from 1996-2006)...
Our children's writing website Kids on the Net was invented in 1996 with a website launched in 1997. From the start it was a place for children to publish their own writing, safely with full moderation. It is still online today and still publishing children's own writing. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of content generated by the children themselves.
Yes there was no Google, yes for a company to have a website was still unusual. But the Web wasn't all that strange compared with today, because those of us who experimented with the potential of the technology knew what it was going to become and created the forerunners for the modes and behaviours that characterise the Web today.Labels: 1996, collaboration, Kids on the Net, online community, trAce
posted by Helen Whitehead 2:44 PM
Monday, 15 December 2008
Adventure Island - creativity for young writers
Information about Adventure Island - the creative participatory game/story/digital mutimedia that's part of my young writers site Kids on the Net has been hitting the blogosphere this month, with Tom Barrett and Larry Ferlazzo talking about it. There have been qite a few requests for logins recently.
I'm thinking of creating a Camtasia video to show how the island plan works, I think some teachers find it a little awkward to get to grips with. Perhaps a Christmas activity? Then it would be ready for the rush of signups we usually get in the first half of the year.Labels: Adventure Island, children's writing, creative writing, Kids on the Net, literacy
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:37 PM
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
New government watchdog to keep kids safe on the net
Following the Byron report, the Government has founded The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), an internet watchdog that aims to help protect children from "harmful" web content, such as cyber-bullying and violent video games. There seem to be a lot of big organisations involved, but I hope they have a few independent individuals who actually know what they are talking about.
After ten years running a website full of user-generated by children I am well aware of the dangers and go to great lengths to ensure that children are safe on my site and on any others that they might go to. All content on Kids on the Net is pre-moderated and stripped of anything that could uniquely identify a child.
If the new organisation aims to teach children about web dangers, target harmful net content and establish a code of conduct for sites featuring material uploaded by users, I hope they incorporate some of the excellent materials and websites already out there and that the code of practice is sensible and practical.
Children's web watchdog launched from the BBC.
Labels: child safety online, childrenssafety, Kids on the Net, kidsonthenet.com, online identity, privacy, UKCCIS, watchdog
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:16 AM
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Fat Gourg on YouTube
Following on from Saturday's newspaper story about Fat Gourg, the 7-year-old's monster who become an internet craze in France, the story hit the local TV yesterday - and the French fans have already put it up on Youtube.
If they had shown the interview they did with me I would have been saying how wonderful it is to have a story that shows the positive side of the Internet.
All writing that is submitted to Kids on the Net is fully moderated and published so safely that it took 5 years, a newspaper, a TV station and thousands of French fans to find Luke.
It's wonderful that they were able to find Luke and interview him! Meanwhile, the current crop of children at his old school, Oakthorpe Primary, have submitted their own monsters who reside on the Monster Motel website in Fat Gourg's Friends annex.Labels: children's writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:39 PM
Saturday, 5 July 2008
I never thought I'd be part of an internet cult!
My project Kids on the Net features today in the Leicester Mercury - and it's all down to a monster ("Fat Gourg") created by seven-year-old Luke, during a writing workshop I held in a Leicestershire primary school in March 1999. Starting as one of our many writing ideas for kids the monster has since become something of a cult figure for a group of young French artists and cartoonists. writing ideas for kids
In 2003, the drawing was discovered on the website by famous French online cartoonist Pierre Primen. The 25-year-old raved about Fat Gourg on Primsworld, his website dedicated to funny cartoons and drawings, which gets 50,000 visitors a day, sparking instant adulation. Apparently there's even, on August 8 - the "eight" symbolising his fat body - a Fat Gourg Day!
He has a Friends Reunited profile, where he is listed as single and retired, and a Facebook profileand there is a Facebook group dedicated to finding him.Now the hunt is on to find Luke. His French fans "would like to know if Luke remembers drawing this monster. If he does, I guess we have to thank him for all the fun Fat Gourg has brought to us, and we have millions of questions to ask him about this character. We also have to offer him a statue to pay tribute to his oeuvre!"
I hope Luke is amused and not embarrassed by all this. But imagine being able to say you launched an internet cult at the age of 7? I find the whole story most heartwarming, and I remember Luke's classmates and school with affection - they had the best school dinners I've ever had!
Fat Gourg can be found in the Monster Motel on the Kids on the Net website. The project is still going and invites children worldwide to contribute their own monsters - a great topic for kids' writing activities. Children's own writing is featured throughout Kids on the Net and there are many different writing activities for kids.
Labels: children's writing, digital writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net, online projects for kids
posted by Helen Whitehead 3:02 PM
Monday, 23 July 2007
Plagiarism and Kids on the Net
I was discussing plagiarism software with some colleagues. One said that "one of the most successful techniques is simply to input a whole suspicious sentence into Google in quotes and see what comes up."
I quite agreee. I do this when I am suspicious about submissions to Kids on the Net. On New Year's Day I wrote to a young American girl to say that I wouldn't be publishing her poem because it was a straight copy. I'm usually quite gentle because I sometimes think that teachers give children models and aren't specific enough about how to use the models to create their own poems (plus I think sometimes children remember by heart more than they realise). So I just suggested she try to write her own along the same lines.
Cue an irate and offensive email from child's father saying he "saw her write it". Followed by an embarrassed climbdown when I sent him the URL of the poet's site where it was clearly available to see.
And I still feel guilty because I probably got that child into trouble on what should have been a happy family day!
I've had two girls (American again) fighting over the rights to a poem and I was able to prove that one of them had submitted it to Kids on the Net much earlier than the other even knew about. One of them was about to fail at graduating from high school because she insisted it was her poem. Both had dedicated teachers willing to swear their pupil would never lie. Such a disappointment for the one on the losing side :(Labels: Kids on the Net, plagiarism, poems, poetry, young writers
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:40 AM
