New Media Awards 2007 Atos Origin

Childnet International

http://www.childnet-int.org

Nominated in Education award category.

Childnet International is a registered charity, (no 1080173) set up in 1995 - with the mission to work in partnership with others around the world to help make the internet a great and safe place for children. The organisation seeks to take a balanced view of the issues of children and the internet and is active in seeking to promote the positive ways in which the internet can be used by children for social benefit. Childnet is also involved in responding to the negative aspects of children’s use of new media and has produced award-winning education and awareness programmes such as its www.kidsmart.org.uk for schools.

1 nomination from readers

  • Childnet’s latest educational CD-ROM Know IT All for Parents is a multimedia approach to helping parents better support their children’s positive and safe use of the internet. Originally Commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills as part of the Government’s Computers for Pupils initiative, it was made available to 100,000 of England’s most deprived families. However following demand from schools the DFES decided to make it available free of charge to all state maintained schools in England. Schools ordered 50,000 copies on the first day it became available. PC WORLD are the first company to commit to making the CD-ROM available to its customers free of charge. Know IT All for Parents will be made available in the stores and preloaded on computers aimed at families.

    In producing the interactive CD-ROM Childnet consulted with a wide range of parents who said that their preferred way of receiving internet safety information was by people or TV rather than websites. This is why the CD-ROM makes extensive and innovative use of video, a number of presenters deliver the information and explain how to navigate around.

    The content is organised by themes which relate to family life; for example shopping, finding things out, staying in touch and includes material produced by young people themselves, and an Activity Centre with quizzes which encourages parents and children to work together. To make the content as accessible as possible, the Quick overview section has been translated into Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Polish, Mandarin, Punjabi, Urdu and British Sign Language.

    Although the material includes video, there is a full text-only version for viewers for people who use a text reader. The entire content of the resource available online at www.childnet-int.org/kia.

    Parmjit Dhanda, MP, Minister for Children, Young People and Families, welcomed the launch of Know IT All for Parents by saying, "I am delighted with this new resource.

    Nominated by Stephen Carrick-Davies, 29 May 2007

1 comment from readers

  • We have now had over 120,000 orders from schools in the first 2 weeks and requests from other countries to link to the language sections.

    Submitted by Stephen Carrick-Davies, 01 June 2007