Internet Safety News

Online Youth Activists

by Anne Collier

As you read this, young people around the world are using the Internet to

teach and learn animation
reach out from the confines of a hospital and support those there
celebrate good literature
protect the environment
learn a foreign language in a fun way
make their peace-activist voices heard
develop online businesses together

Some of these many incredible achievements are celebrated by this year's Cable & Wireless Childnet Awards.¹ The winners, selected from among this year's finalists, will be announced in April at a ceremony in London.

"Use anticipation to make animation exciting, as in comedy." This is one of the basic rules finalist 16-year-old Australian Andrew Fei offers in the animation tutorials on his web site, Kidzdom.com. He taught himself, then wanted to share what he learned with everybody both his own very animated characters, including the slightly mischievous skateboarder "kid," and his process that includes tips for both drawing and animating using flip-books. The Childnet judges commend this site because its "simple, nonverbal cartoons communicate beyond language and culture."

Twelve-year-old Briton Sarah Bowler didn't create her web site, Cool Kids for a Cool Climate,² that just tells us in a kid-friendly way how our car and air travels contribute to global warming, she offers solutions. For one, the planting of trees to "help nature soak up that extra carbon-dioxide pollution" we're sending into the earth's atmosphere. But she didn't stop there. She teamed up with the South Yorkshire Forest Project to help plant trees in her own community and promote the practice worldwide.

Another site picked for the finalist list is the Daily Prophet.³ This is a Harry Potter fan site created by then 15-year-old (now 17), home-schooled Heather Lawver of the United States. The site now has more than 100 children worldwide writing for it as columnists, and all of their work is edited and posted by Heather herself. Any Harry Potter fan would enjoy checking out their very readable "biographies,"⁴ and Heather's own blog,⁵ or online journal, lets you inside her slightly irreverent teenager's head, with her reaction on hearing she was a Childnet Awards finalist. The Daily Prophet illustrates the power of both the Internet and Harry Potter. Childnet's judges tell us that when, in 2000 and 2001, Warner Bros. threatened a number of Harry Potter fan sites, "The Daily Prophet led a boycott and became the first fan organization to take on a major multinational corporation and win."

Two other remarkable finalists are YouthNOISE.com and Bonjour.org.uk.

YouthNOISE.com, also based in the United States, is about "maximum volume. It's about the racket a bunch of young people can generate when they get together to make their voices heard." What the Childnet judges like about YouthNOISE is, "the site 'feels' like it belongs to the people who write for it." So it really does give young activists a voice. They come to the site, contribute, and are respected, even empowered there. Topics they cover include war and peace, politics, celebrity, self-abuse, children's rights, youth activism, child exploitation, gun violence, AIDS, and intolerance. Action is encouraged and solutions are offered. The site is an initiative of Save the Children Federation, Inc., a "nonpartisan, nonsectarian, nonprofit organization" with a presence in more than 46 countries."

Don't miss Bonjour.org.uk, winner of this year's Special Individual Teacher Award. Now with German⁶ and Spanish⁷ versions, it was developed by Stephane Derone, a technology and French teacher based in the United Kingdom. The site is "a real labour of love from one individual teacher who has responded to a need to produce language resources in an accessible, fun, and relevant way," Childnet's judges say. Stephane's sites, now being used by thousands of schools around the world, include games, quizzes, and exercises in their respective languages. Derone includes an English-language information page about the project.⁸

¹2003 Cable & Wireless Childnet Awards, http://www.childnetawards.org.
²Cool Kids for a Cool Climate, http://uk.geocities.com/coolkidsforacoolclimate/.
³Daily Prophet, http://www.dprophet.com.
⁴Daily Prophet's Columnists, http://www.dprophet.com/columnists.html.
⁵Heather's Blog, http://www.dprophet.com/meggers.
⁶Http://www.Hallo.org.uk.
⁷Http://www.hola.org.uk.
⁸Http://www.bonjour.org.uk/information/default.htm.

Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.