Unit 3: Creating a Bully Free Environment Within Your School

Unit 3: Prevention- The Role of Others

What is the role of others in the prevention of cyberbullying? What can teachers, principals, other school personnel do to curtail and prevent cyberbullying? What can parents do to help ensure their childrens’ safety online? What can peers do to help ease the situation?

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to identify several measures they can take as parents, teachers, and peers to address cyberbullying after researching the topic.

2. Students will be able to create a project based on their research that outlines specific steps and measures adults can take.

3. Students will be able to evaluate the preventive measures and decide which they feel would be most effective.

What Needs to be Completed by the End of Unit 3:

1. Read through the introductory text to begin understanding the role others have in the prevention of cyberbullying.

2. Access the set of resources available to begin researching what can be done to combat cyberbullying.

3. After completing your research and reading the project directions, create an interactive pamphlet, brochure, or poster that details the measures parents, teachers, and peers can take to address the issue.

4. Post the link to your project in the designated area and view the projects of your classmates.

5. In the discussion area, share some of what you noticed about classmates projects: Follow the guidelines outlined below in the discussion directions.

Introduction

"There are two challenges today that make it difficult to prevent cyberbullying. First, many people don’t see the harm associated with it. Some attempt to dismiss or disregard cyberbullying because there are “more serious forms of aggression to worry about.” While it is true that there are many issues facing adolescents, parents,teachers, and law enforcement today, we first need to accept that cyberbullying is one such problem that willonly get more serious if ignored. The other challenge relates to who is willing to step up and take responsibility for responding to inappropriate use of technology . Parents often say that they don’t have the technical skills to keep up with their kids’ online behavior; teachers are afraid to intervene in

behaviors that often occur away from school; and law enforcement is hesitant to get involved unless there is clear evidence of a crime or a significant threat to someone’s physical safety.er As a result, cyberbullying incidents often slip through the crack. Indeed, the behavior often continues and escalate because they are not quickly addressed. Based on these challenges, we collectively need to create an environment where kids feel comfortable talking with adults about this problem and feel confident that meaningful steps will betaken to resolve the situation. We also need to get

everyone involved: youth, parents, educators, counselors, law enforcement, social media companies, and the community at large. It will take a concerted and comprehensive effort from all stakeholders to really make a difference in reducing cyberbullying."

-Taken from Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D.and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D. Cyberbullying Research Center

Click here to continue reading about what parents, teachers, schools, and others can do in the face of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying Fact Sheet

Project Directions and Available Resources

Project Directions:

Using the links provided here, begin researching about preventive measures to address cyberbullying. These websites have an abundance of resources and information for you:

StopBullying.org

Cyberbullying Research Center

National Crime Prevention Council

Common Sense Media: Cyberbullying

Do Something-Cyberbullying

This list is just to help make the search easier for you. You are welcome to use other credible websites and/or outside sources as you see fit. After you feel you have enough information, you are to begin working on an interactive brochure, pamphlet, or poster that will assist people in knowing what to do should they be faced with a cyberbullying issue.

The way you chose to design your project is up to you.However, it MUST contain at least THREE (sections):

one designed for parents
one designed teachers, principals, and other school personnel
and one designed for peers and adolescents

EACH SECTION:

should be thorough, informative, and detailed as if it were being published by a bullying prevention center
should contain at least one graphic image or picture (at least 3 all together)

You also must include a reference list in APA format somewhere on your project!! Projects without reference lists will not be accepted!!!

There are several Web 2.0 tools that you could use to design your project. Here are some that have been used by others for similar projects. Again, this is not an exhaustive list. If you know of a different website that you would like to use, feel free to do so. You also may use Microsoft Word which has several templates to create brochures, pamphlets, and posters if you think that is easier.

Read, Write, Think-Printing Press

Letter Pop

Glogster

Prezi

Project Upload Space

Please upload/link your interactive project here for others to view. Be sure to type your name next to the link to your project so we can identify whose is whose.

Discussion Directions

This discussion is meant to summarize and evaluate the ideas of yourself and others from this unit. Please keep the focus on the following:

When looking at your classmates projects, what were some things that stood out to you? What commonalities did you notice throughout?

What measures and or steps do you feel are the most effective or have the potential to be the most effective in combating cyberbullying? What makes you feel that way?

Which do you think (if any) would be the least realistic to use or least effective? What makes you feel that way?

Overall, do you feel that others have more options in fighting cyberbullying than you did prior to beginning this course?

You need to post an original post and then respond to at least TWO of your classmates. :)