NeilKay-Jones

Hi elsiegee40, I agree, my son nearly three and has just finished a ten week course of school before he goes to Pre-school in Sept. This has helped him develop and shows how good he is at interacting with other children. That too makes me shudder to think of how careful i need to be to protect him when i have so much technology around the house. That sounds like a good idea to contact Kent police and it would be nice if we can do something to help stop this from the original source rather than you guys having to deal with trying to block us. As many people have said, it is easy for us to sit here and say how good our product is without having to think firstly about what it is kids will do with this technology. I remember watching a programe a month or two ago where a child was giving lessons to there children over the internet (she was a child prodigy). Would be nice if all kids could embrace technology but obviously it is just not going to happen. My worry is the statistics about cyber bullying death increases. My son was born with Pierre Robin Sequence and has had his 4th operation in his life two weeks ago. He needs speech therapy and although his ability to solve problems is astonishing his speech will effect him in some ways, we will work hard to help him get ready for school. Right now we need to concentrate at Yuuguu on becoming self funding as we are a start-up company but when we have the time we will look into how we can build our software with this topic in mind. Thank you to all who have posted and sorry for going off the original topic.

Hi, I think it is very unfair to say that Yuuguu undermines the good work you are trying to do. Yuuguu was first built for collaboration between remote teams. Education has adopted our software and now with our understanding we do not think it is any use for the under 16 age group. What i am willing to do is discuss with our team here and see if we can think of an idea how to block it. Please bear with me though as we are releasing a new version so time is very tight. Regards, Neil

Hi apoth0r, We would like to understand our audience better but i do believe that collaboration software may have a place in 16-18 year old teens. We are not about shouting how good our software is before we have thought about ideas. Tone is hard to tell as you know in IM and our comments are to be taken as we would like to help. I remember my A-levels and working in study groups where collaboration tools would have made things a lot more easy when working outside of college. Thank you for your broader picture as i bet it is hard work dealing with children of this age with temptations such as IM and i imagine with all the cyber bullying you hear about, you would have to be so careful of what the kids use. It i still very interesting how they came about Yuuguu and managed to bring it into your environment. One thing that has just occurred to me is that our software lets you share your screen with people who only need an internet connection. I would be very worried about the children using this if they have access to documents/information that you do not want others outside of the school to see. It has been very interesting to talk with you all and it seems that below the age of 16 i would have to agree that our software would not be beneficial to the pupils. Thanks for the comments and don't worry you have not burst our bubble at all and hopefully Generation Y will help to create the ideal world or near to it, so children can learn to use technology for both work and fun.

Powdarrmonkey: Yes agreed, for education sector and child safety that is not enough of a controlled environment. I will dig about for some stuff on the distance learning and have you guys ever thought of trying Yuuguu for your own purposes as it is a great collaboration tool for free. Thanks for the chat. Neil

Hi Powdarrmonkey. That is a shame as we have many older students who use Yuuguu to work in research groups, largely for when they are not in school time frames and need to collaborate on projects set by the schools. I would agree to banning software that has not been tested by the school and found a good use for as then as it seems here it would be used for just time wasting and no parent wants to think of their child wasting valuable education time on Im. Bad enough with mobile phones and text. If i dig around some time this week and see how other schools are using our software then i will post back again with some feedback Distance learning is one area I thought of and languages - setting up controlled environments for pupils to meet other pupils in other countries (sort of like a social online pen pal to enhance language skills).

Hi, thanks for your reply. You mentioned that email is not often used for school work which indicates that it is used by some for the right reasons. I agree, children chatting whilst in lessons via Im is not what we want when it is used for personal chat and nothing to do with school work. Has anyone explained to the kids that you monitor their activities and asked them what they would use IM chat for to aid their studies. They may surprise you but i guess you would have to weigh that up with the misuse of technology and so would have to be in some kind of controlled environment.

Hi, I am the Online Support and UX Manger for Yuuguu. We all seem hell bent on blocking these kids from doing something that they obviously have a need for. Why not spend some time with these kids and learn why it is that they are becoming so resourceful? It seems to me that what you offer in their profiles does not match the requirements of todays pupils/students and we should be looking to nurture the way children progress in their education. Hear is a better idea to completely banning them. Run a scheme that lets kids come to you with new technology and ideas. Let them put their case forward for such software and take time to understand that it is in their very nature to be social. The consequences of acting on a complete ban must be thought of in view to gaining any sort of respect and building relationships with kids. I am happy to talk more about this if anyone would like to reply or if you have other ideas. I can see an interesting blog post on our site coming up.