Pandora's Blog

Recognizing local efforts again! This time in the land of grunge! A $20,000 grant from Qwest Communications has made it possible for the city of Seattle to develop a standards-based cyberbullying prevention curriculum for the district’s middle-schoolers. Teachers have been using it since August.

This is a great thing! We need to drill it into the current generation’s head that they need to play nice in the digital sandbox. Yes, there will always be bullying, but there is a severe difference between name calling and campaigns to destroy the life of a peer (which happens more and more frequently).

If parents used computer monitoring software like our PC Pandora to keep an eye on their kids, they’d be able to help limit and stop cyberbullying. But sadly, the responsibility rests within the hands of the bully’s parents. And since they aren’t doing anything about it, the city has to step in and go on the educational offensive. So, bravo to Seattle for stepping up!

Seattle Schools Share Cyberbullying Prevention Curriculum

Teachers may want to act when teenagers use technology to make life miserable for classmates, but resources to combat the escalating problem have been few and far between.

The Seattle school district is working to change that.

Just what drives adolescents to post humiliating photos and hurtful comments online, even to set up “hate groups” targeting individuals on social networking sites?

With a $20,000 grant from Qwest Communications, Seattle has developed a standards-based cyberbullying prevention curriculum for the district’s middle-schoolers. Teachers have been using it since August.

“We want to give teachers practical tools to help them help their students consider consequences, stay safe and make good choices,” said Mike Donlin, who runs Seattle’s cyberbullying prevention program and was instrumental in creating the curriculum.

The 46,000-student district showcased the curriculum to educators from four other Western states the week of December 15, in an effort to broaden its use. Teachers from Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, and Oregon observed a Washington class of 28 eighth-graders in a Language Arts class that integrated cyberbullying prevention into the lesson.

The eighth-graders were shown a video simulation of what looked like a typical school assembly, but the girl who got up to address the group didn’t talk about the upcoming dance or fundraiser. She instead singled out another student and verbally attacked her, calling her ugly and telling her that no one, including the teachers, liked her. Then the camera panned the assembly audience, showing the distraught target and the shocked faces of the other students.

The uncomplicated but powerful message: Don’t say things online that you wouldn’t face-to-face.

Students in the Seattle demonstration class got it. After going over vocabulary, they answered questions about their emotional response to the video, and then discussed them. They commented that the bullying behavior was “messed up,” rude, and disrespectful, said middle school guidance counselor Becky Schwartz. It was the first such useful resource in the fight against cyberbullying she has seen, said Schwartz, who works in the 37,000-student Deer Valley Unified School District in Phoenix. The Seattle students learning with the new curriculum were completely engaged with the lesson, she said.

Schwartz expects the Seattle curriculum to be adopted by her district. Cyberbullying there has been on the increase for the past three years. Students have come to her after photos in the locker room, taken by cell phone without their knowledge, have been posted online.

Technology keeps cyberbullies from the consequences of their actions. “The kids so easily will target other kids online because they don’t have to feel the emotion and see the response of the victim,” Schwartz said. The curriculum isn’t mandated in Seattle schools, and no data is available on its success from the teachers who are using it, but Donlin is encouraged by responses so far.

“I’ve been getting some really positive feedback from around the country and the world,” he said.

Cyberbullying prevention is a natural fit for telecommunications company Qwest, according to Washington company president Kirk Nelson. “We are a technology company. We are in the business of connecting people to their world,” Nelson said. “While that’s our business, we also believe we have an obligation to see that the Internet is used in a way that reaps all its benefits while staying safe.”

The Qwest site offers information for parents, guardians, and teachers on cyberbullying, online gaming, and identity theft prevention for kids.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 8:44 AM and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.