open thinking

I’ve been putting together a few Cyberbullying resources for a presentation to 14-18 year old students. I’ve covered the topic dozens of times, to many different target audiences. Overall, I think I’ve been fairly successful in getting the message across.

I’ve been trying my best to avoid the “checklist” approach to the topic, in other words, I’m not much for presenting a list of do’s and don’t re: cyberbullying or Internet safety. I’m looking to promptg much deeper, more serious responses to this topic. I think that the only way we’ll be successful in this is to have our children emotionally connected to the problem. In some cases this emotional connection comes too late. I’ve unfortunately been called in to a couple of cases where cyberbullying education came after major incidents, including suicides.

While looking for resources tonight, I found a couple of new ones I hadn’t noticed before. First, this tear-jerking ABC News report was particularly powerful. As a parent, this really affected me.

Also, several of these NetSmartz “Real Life Stories” were very well done. Most were done as narratives or based on true stories, and I find this approach can be much more powerful than sensationalized fictions.

For more cyberbullying resources, see my Wikispaces wiki. Please feel free to add others.

Related posts:

1. CyberBullying Presentation
2. Youtube Banned In Victoria (AU) To Halt Cyberbullying
3. Cyberbullying Video “Let’s Fight It Together”
4. CyberBullying Article
5. Digital Storytelling Resources