CDEI Project Receives Funding from the EU!
FC submited a Grant Application Form in May 2010 for a proposal under the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme. The project proposal "Children, Data and Emerging Identities" concerns the development of an augmented reality game in which different sets of data, both active and passive, lead to different outcomes as symbolized by signs. These different signs will be printed by children as an outcome of a stage in the game and will shown to a computer camera. Then, on their computer screen, the augmented reality translation of the signs will be shown. This translation represents the identity that emerges from the data they have entered in the course of the game. By playing the game children will learn that not providing any data or providing only a small amount of data leads to either a complete lack of representation or a distorted representation while providing of too many validated data will lead to a truthful representation. The proposal involves 5 partners from 3 countries (The Netherlands, The U.K. and Cyprus).
On October 2010, the FRC announced the selection results for the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme under the Call for Proposals 2010. CDEI project (Project ID: JUST/2010/FRAC/AG/1107, Coordinator: Mijn Kind Online)was selected to receive funding.
Justification
Children are often in danger on the Internet because of not understanding the relevance of data. They either too freely provide their own data and thus run the risk of identity theft or of an unwanted third party being able to target them, or they too easily believe the actuality of data provided by others and thus could become targeted by a third party who is disguised by a false identity.
Children should learn to appreciate the relevance of data, both of the data they provide and the data they receive. They should learn how they can validate incoming data and how they can evaluate when to provide and when to validate outgoing data. Crucially, they should start to understand the relationship between validated data and identity. They should learn when loose data start being more than that - when they becoming the building blocks of an identity.
For children it is hard to grasp this relationship, for the identity emerges from ever more validated data. The emergent character of identity should be made clear to children to enable them to understand the importance of loose data. They should not just be taught what to do and what not to do but they should internalize the reasons why.
Augmented reality is an excellent way to demonstrate the essence of what it means for an identity to be emerging. In a purely visual way - that is a magnet to a child's attention - augmented reality leaps from a sign that is being shown to a camera to an animated 3D image that emerges out of the sign once the sign is being directed at the camera. Since the transformation only occurs on the screen that represents the camera image but not in reality, augmented reality beautifully illustrates the emergent interpretation of data that occurs in a third person's mind although in reality nothing seems to happen.
Desired Outcome
The goal is not to prevent children from using the Internet or specific sites, but to make them aware of the risks of sharing personal information online and to encourage them to control their online identity by thinking carefully about the consequences.
In the game children will learn how data lead to emerging identities. They will also learn how their truthful representation can be misused by a third person. As a result of the game they should be able to decide if a third person representation is truthful. Then they will learn how to deal with non-truthful and with truthful third person representations.
The game will teach children the value of data, how to represent themselves online, how to be careful with handing out data and how to interpret data they encounter on the Internet. The game should help them to protect themselves against theft of their identity and against contact with an unwanted third person. The children's attitudes and actions will be measured before the game and after to establish the impact of the game.
The augmented reality game will be introduced to children between the age of 8 and 14. The introduction will take place in schools and will be accompanied by a set of introduction and instruction videos.
Specific Objectives
The specific objectives are to:
- Elaborate on the core findings regarding children's and parents' experiences of online technologies, focused on comparisons of children's and parents' perceptions of and practices regarding online risk and safety.
- Identify patterns of risk and safety online following top-down hypothesis testing and bottom-up exploration of relationships among different variables, conducted on a cross-national basis.
- Contribute to evidence-based policy and research recommendations.
- Act as node of awareness network in NL, GB and CY.
Pilot
The pilot of the game introduction is to take place in the Netherlands. There a governmental program to create a validation structure is being prepared. The relevance of validation and of identity therefore is high on the political agenda.
Since the Netherlands also is a country in which the usage of Internet is among the most widespread and sophisticated in the world, children can be expected to be very open to the game. The pilot will be evaluated, after which an improved version of the game will be introduced to several other countries in the European Union.