Cyberbullying

As I immersed myself in all this new technology knowledge and ways to use it in the classroom, I started thinking about cyber bullying. I know this topic has been all over the news and teachers and schools are under great pressure to intervene and prevent this from happening.

But how do you do that? The internet is big and we can’t control everything that our students view and write. Of course, what happens on school computers in one thing, and this should be controlled by the school. But how do we as teachers prevent what happens outside of school, on the students home computers?

When I read the article “Top Ten tips for Educators on cyber bullying prevention” I expected to be given 10 straight forward ideas and tips on what to do, basically a recipe to follow in preventing cyber bullying.

But that’s not what I found. Yes, there were ten tips of what to do, but nowhere near as specific as I expected. Instead, I realised that prevention strategies can’t be like a recipe, easy one step instructions to follow as every case is different. The tips provided aid the teachers in creating strategies that fit their own situations.

I was amazed to see that all the articles provided in the literature part of this subject value the use of surveys. They encourage teachers to survey the students to find out what’s going on. I’m not sure why, but this had never occurred to me. Of course it would be the best way to find out what is happening before any interventions can be used.

thanks

Another tip was to promote a positive environment in schools where everyone is accepted and included. If the atmosphere in the school is inclusive and students look out for each other, hopefully the risk of cyber bullying is lower.

I’m still not entirely sure how to deal with this new problem but I hope that in the coming years I will continue to learn and collaborate with others and my knowledge in all parts of education will continue to grow.