User:FGrose

Frederick Grose, MPH, CIH

Safe Use of the XO and Peripherals

At this point, my comments in the Safe Use of the XO and Peripherals are aimed at raising awareness of the potential for content developers, teachers, & users to begin to culture an appreciation for preventive health, safety, & security by the way they plan and present their work. It is a delicate and difficult process to successfully interject a thought about safety when their primary attention is focused on another more interesting or productive activity. (How often do we breeze over the safety precautions included in owner's manuals--or even look at the manuals!) While many believe that the precautions are only included to satisfy liability lawyers, safety and health educators look for single-point lessons that can be delivered at appropriately teachable moments.

For example, the safety message icons included with the XO packaging will be quickly lost and forgotten without some planned refreshing. The shutdown screen is one such reminder, but it appears only briefly, too quickly to do much more than trigger the memory of an earlier lesson. Better would be a progression of the icons, perhaps while the XO is starting up, next to or in place of the dots that circle the symbolic child. Such a splash display would only be really effective if there were short, memorable, perhaps play-oriented cartoon lessons for each of the present (or future) safety icon topics. One or more of the safety lessons should be on the list of early recommended activities for deployment of the XO by teachers and administrators, and one or two more should be planned for subsequent days or weeks in order to begin to develop a habit of briefly including safety, health, or security thoughts at the top of the agenda for any gathering of a community. This is an honest, 'safety first' policy that opens the door for community members to discuss and resolve safety or security concerns.

In a similar manner, we should look for opportunities to help content and activity developers and deployers to integrate short, thoughtful, and effective reminders for users to avoid hazards. For example, checklists provided to reviewers and testers should include items for code and activity safety.

[E-mail me] or use my discussion page.