Blog 7: Cyberbullying

The content this week focused on a very sad reality of the digital age: Cyberbullying.  The Cyberbullying Research Center defines Cyberbullying as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (The Cyberbullying Research Center, n.d.).  Cyberbullying can be even more devastating than traditional face to face bullying because the victim never gets a break since the harassment is occurring online it is not confined to the location where the bully and victim see each other.  

The most surprising part to me, although perhaps it shouldn’t be, is the amount of bullying taking place in higher education and the workplace.  The article From the Sandbox to the Inbox: Comparing Acts, Impacts, and Solutions of Bullying in K-12, Higher Education and the workplace.  Although bullying is NEVER EVER okay at any time period in your life, you would expect it to be a K-12 issue. I don’t really have much of a “campus life” experience to reflect on so I am not sure if bullying was a problem at my school or not.  I lived at home and commuted, first to the community college and then to a four year school.  Since I didn’t live on campus I really didn’t know many people other than those from previous classes so it was pretty superficial.  I am interested to read about the experiences of those who lived in campus housing or were involved in activities at their campus. 

 

It is even sadder to me that this continues into the workplace. By the time you leave college you’re well into being an adult and should have long outgrown this type of behavior.   I have worked places where there are some cliques and gossip, but I just kind of ignored it.  Based on the reading I guess I have just been extremely lucky to not experience this.  It just floors me that grown adults are sitting around cyberbullying others.  I don’t know how we can ever expect children to do better when the example is clearly not being set by adults in many cases. 

The article How It’s Done: Incorporating Digital Citizenship Into Your Everyday Curriculum is a good read because it discusses how we can shift the focus from just “cyberbullying” into being a good digital citizen.  The success of the Digital Citizenship Project in the article is largely due, I believe, to the student involvement and focus on shifting the culture.  Not being a cyber bully is not enough to make someone a good digital citizen.  Being a good digital citizen encompasses a whole range of behaviors and skills.  For example, a cyberbully harasses the victim, makes mean posts / images etc.  If a person receives the picture or witnesses the harassment online and doesn’t do anything, they aren’t technically a cyber bully but they aren’t a good digital citizen, either.  Digital citizenship focuses on creating well rounded users of the online space by taking a holistic approach rather than just attacking one problem.

I do feel that the videos are impactful, but it is better if they come as part of a program such as digital citizenship education.  Many schools are including character education in schools now and that combined with anti-bullying messages can be very powerful.  In my district we use Josten’s Renaissance program as part of our character development program.  We also had a program where we nominated students each week for student of the month.  It was a way that students that didn’t necessarily always get recognized for grades could get recognition for their positive character development.  

I currently teach Fundamentals of Computing and we do an entire unit on Digital Citizenship that includes cyberbullying / acceptable behavior.. There are a lot of good lessons out there.  One of my favorites is by teacher pay teachers creator TeacherInRealLife.  Her Digital Citizenship Notebook project is SO good.  It covers digital citizenship, who you are online, social media and mental health, intellectual property, big data, and credible sources.  It has short lessons on each topic that incorporate Common Sense Media’s curriculum and at the end the students create a digital citizenship notebook with a page on each topic.  It is meant for 6th graders but I will tell you it translates very well for my high school freshmen as well.  I included some screenshots below and links to her content so you can check her out.  Since it is likely that I won’t have time for the students to do the entire project in the library, I may combine it and have each class work on one page and put it together as a collaborative project across grades.  

TeacherInRealLife's Teacher Pay Teacher Store - If you like the project you can purchase it here

Cover Slide

Directions Slide

Student Example Work  TeacherInRealLife's Digital Citizenship Workbook 

As a district, we also use Common Sense Media’s digital citizenship lessons which include cyberbullying. Students are required to participate in these lessons as part of their 1:1 device agreement. We go through the lessons together and then create some sort of artifact to show that we completed it as a class and then that artifact is turned into our administrator. If your district doesn't use Common Sense media you can still access the lessons with your educator email. There are many different lessons available across grade levels. A link is below:

Common Sense Media - Resources for Educators

Other projects that my students have done are cyberbullying awareness posters, collages, “Instagram” collections (done on a slides template that is in the form of a Instagram slide), and recording public service announcements / commercials.  We watch some ad council videos as a demo.  I think that any of these could transfer well into media center lessons.  

As a media specialist I know that I will not have the students long enough to do a digital citizenship unit.  I do plan to pull pieces and parts from my lessons For the media center, I think that setting expectations and monitoring is key.  I know that this is easier said than done, but knowing that the media center strictly adheres to the technology policy of the district and the school’s rules will help set the behavioral expectations.  I will also do short lessons on appropriate technology use and the negative impacts of cyberbullying.  My district has also started hosting events at schools to help educate parents on the issues students face with technology and social media.  These have been well received because often parents are behind the current social media app trends.  Anytime we can bring the parents and educators together to combat a problem everyone wins.  It also shows the students a united front for expectations.  If allowed, I will definitely host these kinds of events at my media center.  

References

Faucher, C., Cassidy, W., & Jackson, M. (2015). From the sandbox to the inbox: Comparing the acts, impacts, and solutions of bullying in k-12, higher education, and the workplace. Journal Of Education And Training Studies, 3(6), 111-125.

Orech, J. (2012). How it's done: Incorporating digital citizenship into your everyday curriculum. Tech & Learning, 33(1), 16-18.

The Cyberbullying Research Center . (n.d.). What is Cyberbullying? Retrieved from Cyberbullying Research Center : https://cyberbullying.org/