Data Protection and Charities

The Jan 2011 paper needs you to be able to write about the risks to charities of using the interwebz. It specifically requires you to write about the "relevance of the Data Protection Act to charities".

I'm sure there is lots about this on the interwebz. Lots and lots.

The Conversation:
I had a question. The question went like this:

"Hey, Mr F dude, this booklet thingy I printed off the interwebz, it's about the Data Protection Act. It's wikid, look - it tells you everything about the Data Protection Act and charities. Kewl eh?! Blud"

My reply:

"Hmm, Emily, this appears to be from the Isle of Man. I wonder if their Data Protection Act is the same as the UK one"

And, guess what? They're similar, but not exactly the same.

So - be careful where you're getting your Data Protection Act information from! Lots of places have something called very similar.

The Happy Ending:
As a result of  our conversation, I wandered over to the Information Commissioner's Office website (that's the dude who is in charge of Data Protection in the UK - so we know this is a pukka source). If you go there you'll see it has a search bar at the top right. Try typing charities into it and hitting the search button.

Make sure you're looking for the right sort of information:

• what the data protection is - it's date and that sort of general background
• what charities have to do to comply with the data protection act
• why they need to comply with it
• what might happen if they don't

OK?

DPA - fines

Just some news about fines for organisations found breaching the conditions of the Data Protection Act which could be useful.

Commissioner issues first Data Protection Act fines

Charity and Facebook

Might be useful for ICT 01 exam in January 2011...

Pudsey and the social networks

Online Newspapers - examples to use

Yahoo has a handy list of newspapers by country - you could use this to find newspapers that other people haven't looked at perhaps.

The Big Project has something similar.

I've looked at the Beccles and Bungay Journal (I chose it because I know it's a nice small site and a very local newspaper), the Nome Nugget (because it's very small and easily doable - and it has a kewl name) and the Derry Journal (because I thought it might have some interesting features) as well as the West Highland Free Press (just because).

You probably don't need as many as that.

Index for a Word document

Someone, let's call her "Jodie"*, was having some difficulties producing an Index in Word. Neither I or my Evil Assistant had ever used Word 2007 to produce an Index before. We couldn't find "Mr Glitter" who knows what he's doing with such things.

So I used a "Popular Internet Search Engine" to find this awfully useful page from the Dummies (no, not those ones, the real ones) about how to do an Index.

That page used a keyboard shortcut to mark each index entry. You can use that, sure (as everyone knows, keyboard shortcuts are the coolest thing this side of Oslo) but you might find it easier to go References > Mark Entry (on the right). Mild!

Check the Tips bit at the bottom for a handy Mark All tip. Trust me.

*Jodie's name has been anonymised in this blog post.

Colour Swatch Generators

There are lots of interesting ways to find colour swatchs and to try out possible colour combinations - particularly useful for websites.
Try:

Colourschemer
Colours on the web colour wizard
Colour scheme designer
Colour combos (scroll down)

Or try searching using a popular internet search engine...

BBC Connect - useful resource for Data Protection stuff?

Might be a useful starting point - http://www.bbc.co.uk/connect/needtoknow/your_rights.shtml

January 2011 Exam Paper

The January 2011 exam paper is now available! Woot!!

It isn't possible to link to an online version of the paper - AQA have put it behind a password. There's a version on Shared Docs you can access.

In summary you need to produce a series of webpages (I'd guess between 6 and 9). These need to be for the readers of an online newspaper.

The pages need to deal with how charities use ICT to:

1. raise awareness of their work
2. obtain donations
3. support groups and individuals across the world

Ypu need to cover a "range" of examples to show this - I'm guessing this means 6 or 7 maximum.

You also need to produce a section explaining the relevance of the Data Protection Act to charities.

First Tasks:

• produce an original timeplan - notes and examples on shared documents (I'll add these to That Blue Square Thing later today)
• complete an audience analysis grid - (link to Word version)
• find out who reads online newspapers - an entirely unscientific survey involving asking a few people if they read online newspapers if fine for now
• take a look at a few online newspapers quickly to see how they present information (again, this is entirely unscientific at this point)
• have a think about how charities might use ICT