Saturday last week and the “Rebel Makers Club” organised and run by Hack Horsham were having huge fun coding, creating programmes and operating robots in the HDC offices. The club is open to all ages and there are a fair number who are clearly overjoyed that the type of toys we could only dream of creating 40 years ago are now reality! However the driving force are the creative minds of the youngsters.
This team have already won a national award launched by the Raspberry Pi Fellowship. Challenged to develop a programme on the theme of the “Outdoors” they built a nature trail around Horsham Park: digital chips checking you in on marker beacons and orientating you around a course. They are now focussing on the Horsham Festival 2019 and working on a programme through which on-line visitors will see the development and growth of our town, street by street, through Horsham’s history. A very exciting project which could be used for years to come.
The tech age has brought huge advances. However as my fellow columnist Blaise Tapp recently flagged (“Have emails made our lives worse?”) there are risks. One such is the difficulty in both encouraging young people to be at the cutting edge of technology whilst also being aware of the threats of on-line bullying and abuse.
The NSPCC has described keeping young people safe online was "the biggest child protection issue of our time". The Government has brought forward proposals to work with the social media platforms to make social media safer. The principles behind the proposals are that what is unacceptable offline, should be unacceptable online; all users should be empowered to manage online risks and stay safe and that technology companies have a responsibility to their users. A consultation sets out how these principles can be acted on in practice.
There is support from major social media hosts to support this initiative – if we can help ensure we get the balance right between liberating the internet to be used creatively and still feel that we are helping keep vulnerable people safe that is a goal for which it is worth striving.
Photo caption: With Hack Horsham at the Rebel Makers Club.