Conference „How are you, Estonian Child? Children in the changing digital world“
The annual conference of the Estonian Union for Child Welfare
Hestia Hotel Europa Conference Centre (located at Paadi 5, Tallinn)
The conference is organised in cooperation between Estonian Safer Internet Centre partners:
Estonian Union for Child Welfare, Information Technology Foundation for Education,
Social Insurance Board and Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.
09.45 Registration and welcoming coffee
10.30 Opening of the Conference
Birgy Lorenz, moderator of the Conference, Tallinn University of Technology
10.35 Welcome speeches
President of the Republic of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid
Ene Tomberg, President of the Estonian Union for Child Welfare
10.50 Child in the digital world
Kristi Salum, Information Technology Foundation for Education Innovation Centre, programme manager.
11.30 Evolving concept of literacy in the digitalized world – a Finnish perspective
Lauri Palsa, researcher, Finnish National Audiovisual Institute
12.10 What kind of role models are adults in social media? Youth perspective
Andra Siibak, Professor in Media Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, University of
Tartu
12.45 Lunch
13.30 Three parallel workshops
Workshop I Child development and digital competences
Workshop is led by Elina Nevski, University of Tallinn
Workshop II Children in the changing digital world
Workshop is led by Barbara Haage, Social Insurance Board
Psychologist-psychotherapist Kätlin Konstabel and Child Helpline consultant and family
therapist Kätlin Servet will participate in the discussion with the youth
Workshop III Better protection for children online
Workshop is led by Anu Baum, Estonian Police and Border Guard
Presentations:
Anton Toni Klančnik, Europol, European Cyber Crime Centre
Michael Sheath, Lucy Faithfull Foundation, United Kingdom
15.00 Coffee break
15.20 Youth feedback on the conference topics
15.40 Children’s own advice for a healthy life online
Anne Larilahti, VP, Head of Sustainability, Telia Company
16.05 Safety @ Facebook: how Facebook thinks about and responds to the safety of our teenage users
Amy McArdle, Safety Policy Manager for Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Facebook
16.30 Awarding ceremony of the winners of the children and youth creative works competition
„Children in the changing digital world“
16.35 End of the conference
Kristi Salum
ProgeTiger programme manager, Information Technology Foundation for Education
In today’s world we have all been – including the children – digilized. Smartphones, computers,
internet, etc are such big parts of our daily lives that their existence appears to be one of the most
important rights. But every right comes with a responsibility… How to help children to make
smart choices, be a responsible and wise digital user and become a driving digital creator – this
requires understanding and support from parents and teachers.
Lauri Palsa
Researcher, National Audiovisual Institute KAVI
Societal trends, such as digitalization and the growing meaning of media in our daily lives, are
current topics in the educational discussions in Finland. What role does the media play in the
lives of children? How can we empower children and youth to use opportunities offered by the
new media, but also support them to tackle the possible challenges? In this presentation I will
discuss and share insights of the role of media education in the Finnish educational system from
the perspectives of evolving concept of literacy, goal-oriented education and cross-sectoral
cooperation.
Andra Siibak
Professor in Media Studies at the Institute of Social Studies
in the University of Tartu
The smart-generation youth is often portrayed in a quire negative manner – they are either
addicted to digital devices or share their private information in social media without thinking. It
is less often questioned; what kind of role models are adults to these youngsters with their own
social media behaviour? Might it be that the youth finds questionable social media behaviours in
adults? Based on the results of a focus-group research with basic- and gymnasium level students
(N= 53) and interviews with pre-teens and their mothers (N= 14), I will observe what the
youngsters object against in regards of adults’ social media behaviour. Among other things, she will
introduce pre-teens’ emotions towards net-parenting i.e. sharing information and photos of
children in social media; and what students think teachers’ social media netiquette should be like.
Workshop is led by Elyna Nevski
Lecturer at the School of Educational Sciences at the University of Tallinn
Today’s homes are “digital homes” and children’s technology usage begins at an early age (0-3
years). Parents are not so bothered with whether or not to allow digital devices for their children,
as they are with how to use digital technologies in a way that is based on their children’s interests
and would be the most useful and developmental based on the children’s development. Today’s
parents are in a situation, where they would need help and advice in guiding their children’s
digital technologies use. The focus of the workshop is on guidance strategies, which parents, teachers and peers can use in guiding children’s digital playtime. The workshop includes practical activities on BYOD principle and active discussion in groups.
Workshop is led by Barbara Haage
Social Insurance Board
Workshop will discuss what youngsters do in the digital world, how it affects children’s welfare,
how we can help and what can we do for prevention. With youth inclusion, the matters will be
discussed by psychologist-psychotherapist Kätlin Konstabel, Child Advise Phone 116111
consultant and family therapist Kätlin Servet and Social Insurance Board child protection
department prevention manager Barbara Haage.
Workshop is led by Anu Baum
Estonian Police and Border Guard Board
Anton Toni Klančnik
EUROPOL, European Cyber Crime Centre
The presentation will give overall in-sight to Europol organization and its activities, especially in
tackling the crimes against sexual exploitation of children. He will give some insights on
emerging trends; how could member states contribute and what kind of assistance can members
states expect from Europol. He will highlight the information flow and its importance in order to
safeguard children, gather evidence and bring criminals to justice.
Michael Sheath
Lucy Faithfull Foundation
In his presentation, Michael Sheath will attempt to set out the typical route many offenders take
towards viewing indecent imagery of children. The presentation is based upon the ‘CSAM
Cycle’, a theory he has set out in a published journal. The CSAM Cycle considers the influences
acting upon man who view both pornography and indecent imagery and considers how, over
time, men become disinhibited, aroused, and driven to view more and more deviant and
disturbing material. He will also consider how our knowledge of offenders can improve
prevention strategies, and how Helplines for offenders can be a central part of any strategy to
protect children from on line abuse and exploitation.
Anne Larilahti
Vice-President, Head of Sustainability, Telia Company
Telia Company regularly listen to children’s own perspectives of life online in collaboration with child rights organizations and schools in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Recently around 700 children, 12 years old, participated in the Children’s Advisory Panel (CAP) and created their own advices for a healthy life online. The children’s school classes participated in co-creative workshops, organized by Telia and its partners, including World Childhood Foundation and Estonian Union for Child Welfare. The advices were created on surf tablets in the format of a short animated film by using Plotagon Education animation tool. The aim of the CAP initiative is to further develop Telia’s understanding of how we as a company can improve our own approach to children as users of our technology, and to contribute to the ICT industry’s and society’s understanding of children as online citizens.
Amy McArdle
Safety Policy Manager for Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Facebook
In her presentation, Amy will talk participants through the 5 pillars of our safety infrastructure: policies; tools; help; partnerships and feedback with a specific focus on teen users and will also outline some of Facebook’ wider child safety efforts.
Kristi Salum works at Information Technology Foundation for Education Innovation Centre (HITSA) as the lead of ProgeTiger programme. Prior to this, she has also long-term experience as a class teacher, programming club instructor, in teacher training and in the creation of several learning materials.
Lauri Palsa (M.A.) is a researcher in the National Audiovisual Institute in Finland. He has several years´ experience in researching, developing and promoting national media education. Palsa has worked also in different positions in the Finnish Safer Internet Centre. In his free time Palsa studies and writes a PhD dissertation in the University of Lapland. His research interests focus on the contextualized literacies in the digital world, school curriculum and media literacy research methodology.
Andra Siibak works as a Professor in Media Studies at the Institute of Social Studies in the University of Tartu. Her main research area is the internet usage of children and youngsters and the risks and opportunities following it. In her research she has looked into generational specifics in internet usage, online communication between family members, roles of parents/siblings/peers/teachers as mediators of children’s internet usage; usage of digital technologies by small children and babies, textual and visual identity creation in social media and dilemmas related to privacy. Andra has been in the expert position European Parliament and European Council projects (e.g. media- and digital literacy of youth; cyberbullying) as well as one of the seven experts (Cahenf-IT) whose recommendations were the basis of the European Council guidance material about children’s rights in the digital world. Currently she is involved as an expert in the OECD project “21 Century Children” which aims to provide research-based policy-suggestions on children’s welfare. She is the winner of the Young Scientist Award of the Estonian Cultural Foundation of the President (2015).
Elyna Nevski works at the University of Tallinn in the School of Educational Sciences as a lecturer and her main working area is educational technology. Primarily she directs in teacher training all from basic education teachers, class teachers and subject teachers to vocational teachers and youth workers. She also works in a kindergarten-elementary school as an informatics teacher and educational technologist. Her research fields are digital play of small children and parental guidance strategies.
Barbara Haage began her career as the child service official of two municipalities. Her next step was working at the NGO with different social projects and as a counsellor at the Child Helpline. At the same time, Barbara was the social work specialist at a day centre, where she worked with adults with different social special needs. After this, Barbara got the opportunity to work at the start-up company Midwife Advice Line. Currently she works at the Social Insurance Board, where her main area is prevention. In Estonia, several state institutions cooperate in areas of law enforcement, healthcare, education and much more, for the interests of children’s and families’ welfare. Barbara’s job is to harmonize this cooperation.
Kätlin Servet has graduated Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees on Social Work at the Tallinn University of Pedagogy with her minor being the occupation of child protection counsellor. Kätlin also gained a medical nurse occupation at Tallinn Medical School and learned law for three years at the Nord Academy. Kätlin has the occupation of family psychotherapist and has practical work experience in all of her specialties. Currently she is working at the Social Insurance Board as the Child Helpline incident consultant, owns a private practice as a family therapist and is part of the rehabilitation team M.R. Therapy. With the aim to keep her mind fresh, Kätlin is also studying at the University of Tartu psychology Master’s level prerequisites programme. Kätlin likes to think quietly and dream big!
Kätlin Konstabel is a psychologist and family therapist. She has a Master of Sciences in Psychology from University of Tartu and has worked as a psychologist for the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board, Tartu University Science School, Psychiatry clinic and a private practice. In addition, Kätlin has been the lecturer of University of Tartu Psychology institute and Tallinn University of Technology Cyber criminalistics and cyber safety centre for years and has researched children’s internet addiction at the National Health Foundation.
Anu Baum began working at the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board in 2001. Since 2002, she has been involved in the IT and law fields – starting from proceedings of cybercrimes to leading the according field at Police and Border Guard Board. From 2009 to 2014 she also took responsibility for handling the area of prevention of crimes against children, which includesonline offences. During her time at PBGB, Anu was a member of several work groups for fight and prevention of crimes against children on both national and international levels. She has initiated and conducted several successful projects, for example both the Estonian Safer Internet Centre Smartly on the Web project as well as initiating the work of web constables. Currently Anu is dividing her time between Tallinn University of Technology Cyber Defence Centre – of which she is one of the founders – Estonian Police and Border Guard Board and her own legal office.
In 2017, Anu defended her Master’s thesis at University of Tallinn on “Jurisdiction of data in cloud computing”.
Anton Toni Klančnik is employed at Europol beginning in early 2018 as a Specialist in the fight against the online sexual exploitation of children and related offline crimes. Previously, he was a Senior Criminal Police Inspector and Head of Juvenile Crime Section at General Police Directorate in Slovenia. He has been an expert for over 15 years dealing with the issue of violence against children and in families, and with the dark side of the Internet – sexual abuse of children. In last few years in Slovenia, he was actively involved in different inter-sectoral (professional) cooperation in this field, especially in the international environment. At the strategic and operational level, he cooperated with a number of institutions in Europe and beyond. He is the author of several expert articles and thesis supervisor, and also lectures in the same professional field for various audiences. As a professional associate has also participated in the preparation of the prevention materials and even in the scripts for youth movies (e.g. Slovene film Gaja’s World).
Michael Sheath has been working with sexual offenders for over thirty years, spending ten years as a Probation Officer before joining the Lucy Faithfull Foundation in 1997. He has interviewed hundreds of sexual offenders, and has worked on projects initiated by the UK government which are designed to tackle offending on the internet. Michael has also conducted whole community risk assessments on British Overseas Territories, including Pitcairn, The Falkland Islands, St Helena, and Montserrat.
Anne Larilahti is the Vice President of Telia Company and Head of Sustainability Strategy. She is responsible for setting the sustainability strategy and agenda for Telia Company. It is Telia Company’s firm belief that the best way of ensuring sustainable growth and profitability is integrating sustainable, responsible business practices into all parts of business and strategy, to create long term shared value for the company, its stakeholders and society. Before joining Telia Company Anne was heading the Finnish Ski Area Association and earlier enjoyed a long career with Nokia in different marketing and sustainability functions, lastly as Head of Sustainability for Nokia Siemens Networks. Children’s rights and the new challenges brought on by their lives online is a special interest to her and a growing part of her current work.
Amy McArdle recently joined Facebook as Safety Policy Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where she is based in Dublin. Amy has worked for more than a decade in policy related roles in a variety of professional contexts including with: the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva; the Human Rights Law Network in New Delhi; a leading Irish criminal defence firm; an Independent Senator focused on children’s rights in the Irish Senate; and in public affairs for the early years care and education sector. Amy has an academic background in criminology, law and international human rights law. She is passionate about the promotion and protection of human rights, with a particular interest in women and children’s rights. Amy is a voluntary Board member of the online youth-led NGO SpunOut.ie.
Birgy Lorenz (PhD) is a cyber defence researcher at Tallinn University of Technology. Her task is to lead the Cyber Olympics project, in the framework of which are organized the high level competition for youth called CyberSpike and research-competition CyberNut for younger cyber defence and digital safety enthusiasts. Birgy has also been a member of the Estonian Safer Internet Centre – Smartly on the Web – Advisory Board for years as a representative of the Estonian Informatics Teachers Association.
The conference is organised in cooperation between Estonian Union for Child Welfare, Information Technology Foundation for Education, Social Insurance Board and Estonian Police and Border Guard Board in the framework of the Estonian Safer Internet Centre project Targalt internetis. The project’s mission is a smarter Internet use by children and their parents and the prevention of the online distribution of child sexual abuse material. The activities of the project are being implemented by four organisations:
Estonian Safer Internet Centre is a member of Insafe network and Estonian Hotline is a member of the association INHOPE.
The conference is financed by European Union programme Connected European Facility, Council of Gambling Taxes, Information Technology Foundation for Education and Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.
The annual conference of the Estonian Union for Child Welfare, entitled „How are you,
Estonian Child? Children in the changing digital world“ will be held on 22th of November
2018 in Hestia Hotel Europa Conference Centre (located at Paadi 5, Tallinn).
The Digital world is a natural part of our daily life. We consume e-services more and more and
the skills to consume and shape these services knowledgeably is becoming more and more
important. Children learn to use new technologies faster than adults as they are born into a world
where a computer and smart devices are the natural part of life. The digital world provides
children with excellent opportunities (to learn, to communicate, to consume and create
information) but at the same time it includes dangers (consuming damaging material, falling
victim of sexual abuse, cyber-bullying, etc).
How do children use digital technologies and its opportunities? What role do these
technologies play in the learning processes and development of children? What risks to
children take, what dangers to they encounter, what information and support do they need
to cope successfully in digital social networks and who can they get it from? These are all
topics and questions which we will be discussing in this conference. We will also go over the
roles of adults – teachers, parents, specialists working with children – in supporting the
development of the digital competences of children and youngsters.
The conference is predominantly directed to adults, but youngsters are also invited to participate
and to share their thoughts and suggestions at the end of the conference.
Simultaneous interpretation during the conference into Estonian and English is ensured. There is
no simultaneous interpretation in the workshops except in the workshop Better protection for
children online.
The conference is organised in cooperation between Estonian Safer Internet Centre partners:
Estonian Union for Child Welfare, Information Technology Foundation for Education, Estonian
Social Insurance Board & Child Helpline and Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.
The conference is financed by European Union programme Connected European Facility,
Council of Gambling Taxes, Information Technology Foundation for Education and Estonian
Police and Border Guard Board.
Additional information:
Malle Hallimäe +372 6311 128; konverents@lastekaitseliit.ee