What's The Story With CyberBullying? Pt. 3: What Is CyberBullying?

Last Week:  What's The Story With Cyberbullying?  Pt. 2:  Digital Socializing

Cyberbullying is defined differently depending on who you talk to.  Essentially it consists of the following elements:

Behaviour that is:

• aggressive
• intentional
• repeated over time (although this can be by more than one person)
• using electronic forms of contact eg. IM, email, chat, website, gaming, social networking, texting

Characteristics of cyberbullying:

• indirect - hard to see the impact on the person at the other end of the screen
• invasive - there is no where to go to escape
• roles of bystanders are more complex
• primarily takes place out of school

Types of Behaviours

Behaviours can be broken down into direct and indirect behaviours:

Direct Behaviours:

• harassment - unwelcome contact
• flaming - rude and vulgar language, name calling, threats and insults
• unwelcome sexual texts or photos - happens more to older girls
• sexual behaviours (being asked to do something sexual online)

Graphic types of cyberbullying can be more hurtful due to their highly public and revealing nature.

Indirect Behaviours:

• rumours, gossiping and denigration (anger)
• sending private pictures without consent (anger, shame)
• impersonating (anger)
• social exclusion - being rejected by peers and left out of communications

In Pt 4 of this series, we will look at things you can do as a parent to help address this issue with your child.

What's The Story With Cyber Bullying? Pt 2. Digital Socializing

Part 1 (last week): What’s the story with Cyberbullying? Pt 1 - Different Digital Worlds

In Part One of this series, we discussed some of the differences between digital natives and digital immigrants.  We noted that natives express themselves through their technology and see it as an extension of themselves.  This brings us to a key aspect of digital native life:  Cyber Socializing.

Adults tend to underestimate the importance of cyber-socializing to teenagers.  If we recognize how important technology use is to our teenagers we can help facilitate conversations where they are more likely to confide in us if they have negative experiences.

The commonsense media survey found that only 6% of teens were not using media outside of school. Approximately half of the teens surveyed indicated a preference for using mobile devices.  Our students are highly dependent on the internet for communication, but they are not always knowledgeable about the realities of staying safe online.

Teens use technology to explore and express their evolving identities.  Studies have shown that for many teens, cyber socializing has a positive impact on friendship quality and relationships.  Students are highly concerned that if they do not have access to technology they would be socially isolated.  A primary reason that they do not confide in adults when cyberbullied, is fear that they will lose access to their technology.

Next Up:  Pt. 3:  What Is CyberBullying?

Your child's secret life online: 7 ways to manage it as a parent

A great resource for us moms and dads on managing our children's online life.

Your Child’s Secret Life Online: 7 Ways to Manage It as a Parent

MYP encourages creative, critical and reflective thinking

10 reasons why MYP can encourage learning  to happen...

Gaming for Learning

In this digital age it can sometimes be difficult to filter out the distractions that come with the power of technology.  Social media, viral videos, and video games can pull our attention away from more important tasks in our busy lives.  However, one innovative teacher in the Middle school is trying to take of one of those "distractions" and turn it into a powerful learning tool in his classroom.

In Mr. Gibault's grade eight Humanities class, students have been hard at work learning many concepts related to the growth of civilizations and the impact that growth has on the world at large.  Concepts such as supply and demand, and the importance of geography in the development of societies can be difficult to learn in a vacuum, so Mr. G (as his students refer to him as) turned to a video game called Sid Meier's Civilization V to provide context for these difficult ideas.

Civilization V is not your standard video game.  Students are put in charge of making all of the decisions for their developing civilization; where to expand new colonies, what new technology to develop, whether or not to make peace with other civilizations around them.  The game covers religion, economics, geography, science and technology, diplomacy and every decision the students make in the game has consequences for their fledgling civilizations.  They are constantly needing to weigh the costs and benefits of the choices they make.  But most importantly, they are seeing the concepts taught in class played out in a microcosm that they control.

That is the power in what is happening in Mr. G's room.  Students learn about key concepts by discussing and debating them in class,and then they get to experiment with them in a realistic environment.  In that way, Civilization V transcends a video game and becomes very much like what a lab is to science class: a chance to see learning in action.

If you want to know more about what has been happening with Civilization V, the students have been blogging about their experiences.  Take a moment to browse through the hard work they have done.

Star Wars Death Star has been rebuilt

Legoland has built a replica of the Death Star. See how they built it and what it can do!
You could try building it at home but you will need 500 000 bricks!

See the news story and video

Young scientists break down plastics with bacteria.

What impact can high school students make on the scientific community? Watch the TEDTalk and find out.

https://www.ted.com/talks/two_young_scientists_break_down_plastics_with_bacteria#t-273174