Tim Dobson's Blog

I recently spotted a message to the BECTA Safetynet Mailing list from Miles Berry and Terry Freedman.
The message mentioned how they are doing a presentation at BETTS conference in January (apparently some big education conference thingy!) and since they are doing it on

What are your kids learning when you're not looking?

where they explore things young people learn using computers and IT outside the formal education sphere and activities widely recognised as being educationally beneficial.

To get some hard figures on this they set up a questionnaire for young people to fill asking them of their experiences of how they could and do use computer facilities at home and in educational establishments.

Due to my work with DFEY, I couldn't help but see the funny side of this, so I wrote these satiric HOWTOs:

A few days ago I went to the Geekup Manchester meetup. For those who don't know Geekup describes itself as

a community of web designers, web developers, and other tech-minded folk from the UK. It's a grassroots knowledge sharing and networking social for folks involved or interested in the web and technology industry.

I generally don't find time/money to go to 'Geekups' what with my other commitments but the idea had been to meet up with a few people from DFEY as I had been told some other people whom I thought might be interested in the things we are interested might be coming along... In the end those plans fell through but I went along anyway for some fun.

To mark the upcoming October 19th meeting of DFEY-NW I have written a short essay about what I think DFEY exists for and why it came into being.

DFEY stands for "Digital Freedom in Education and Youth" - what that actually means in practise I'll get to in a second.

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When you think of the word "freedom", the first thing you probably think of is freedom of speech - the freedom to say what you want to say, when you want to say it, where you want to say it.

There are various groups and non-profit organisations commited to preserving various aspects of freedom in a digital world;

• The Free Software Foundation campaigns to keep software free of restrictions which prevent the user adapting the software to their own purpose as opposed to business models that rely on restrictive licences to curtail the user's freedom to adapt the software.
• The Open Rights Group campaigns to keep data and content free, and in the hands of the the end users - as opposed to those who are likely to abuse it.
• Open Street Map is a project to create a detailed digital map of the United Kingdom through individuals mapping their local areas using their own handheld GPS devices.

These are just some examples of the many organisations who advocate and explore the concept of using freedom to create 'cool' things in the digital world.

Please show this to any other organisations or people who you think might be interested.

DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West) is a group focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world, based in the Northwest of England at the moment.

In Brief

WHERE: Meet near KFC, Upstairs, Piccadilly Station, Manchester

VENUE: Marbella Cafe, above Sunshine Studios, 52 Newton Street

WHEN: Sunday 19th October, 12pm -> ~4pm

SIGN UP: http://dfey-nw.eventwax.com/admin/dfey-nw-october-meeting

CONTACT EMAIL: team at dfey dot freedomdreams dot net

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MAILING LIST: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dfey-nw-discuss

WEBSITE: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk

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Notes from the August meeting: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk/wiki/August_Meeting/Notes

Please show this to any other organisations or people who you think might be interested.

DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West) is a group focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world, based in the Northwest of England at the moment.

In Brief

WHERE: Meet near KFC, Upstairs, Piccadilly Station, Manchester

WHEN: 12:30pm -> ~4pm

SIGN UP: http://is.gd/1ITm

CONTACT: Email - td at tdobson dot net

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MAILING LIST: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dfey-nw-discuss

WEBSITE: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk

An Update has been posted!

Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West (DFEY-NW), the North West of England's first group focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world is looking forward to it's first meeting EVER in August.

What is DFEY-NW

DFEY-NW is a group formed in response from a growing need in the Northwest of England for a Group to encourage and promote young people's involvement with the free software community by creating a social space to make it more comfortable for young people to get involved with GLUGs and FSUGs.