6.3 Meeting with Teachers

Presentation of the general goals:

• Promoting a better climate in the school
• Promoting a positive use of the web
• Become a positive “digital-community”

Are students more experts than adults in Internet use?

Is the Internet mainly a positive or a negative invention? Why?

Can we (as adults and educators) support students to prevent and solve problems related to internet misuse?

Conclusion and message:

The Internet has a great potential for students learning, but can also be a significant source of distraction and risk if not used with awareness, creative and constructive approach. Teachers and educators may have an important role in this field through a variety of strategies of promotion, prevention, and intervention.

• Virus (mind your clicks)
• Privacy (image of the “social toilet”)
• Personal data exposure (image of tooth-brush-passwords)
• Masquerading (Do we know who is behind?)
• Insulting and hate speech
• Addiction
• Outing (diffusion of embarrassing information and photos)

Conclusion and message:

Why do students take risks on the web?

(Because they are in the “exploring” age because they don’t know consequences, because they feel smarter, because they follow the “crowd” or the fashion of the moment, because of lack of EMPATHY…)

Conclusion with interaction and message:

• Why do we take risks on the web?

(because we don’t know the consequences because we feel smarter because we follow the “crowd”, or the fashion of the moment, lack of EMPATHY…)

• What is cyber-bullying?
• What is the difference between traditional bullying? (why can the consequences be much worse)
• Examples (raising of empathy)

What can we do as educators (teachers or parents)?

• talk about theuse of the digital media with youngsters: this can also help to keep updated with the technologies they use the most
• Set rules (can be discussed together, but once approved should be followed)
• Keep the dialogue open: besides the rules, youngsters should know they can refer to adults if something goes wrong, and they will get help, not blame.

  Conclusion and message:

  Cyber-bullying is not a game. It can happen to everyone.

  Every student should feel responsible for stopping / reporting it to reduce the damages.

  Empathy is a key point: if students put themselves in the victims´ shoes then they can understand there is no excuse not to act against it.

  It’s very important that kids know they can talk with adults when something happens: “we all are in the same boat!”

• The mediation club: a team of students who will be trained to support their classmates to solve conflicts non-violently by offering a mediation which enables students to find fair solutions in case of conflict.
• No Blame Approach:a way to reduce bullying and cyberbullying acts and their consequences, by asking all the students involved (on different levels) to contribute to changing the situation of the bullied child to the better and take responsibility to restore a positive climate

This approach requires not to “blame” (= publicly accuse) the “bully”right away but rather try first to involve him in the problem solution. This is an important point which Teachers and Parents should discuss(especially) and agree on before starting to apply it.

• Discussion of activity calendar
• Question & answer time