Cyberbullying: Using Virtual Scenarios to Educate and Raise Awarenessli
June 29th, 2009 by JillWe need to have a better awareness on how to educate on cyberbullying. Graduate students in counseling and education came together in this project. Cyberbullying “refers to bullying via electronic communications tools.”
Seven Types
- Flaming
- Harassment
- Denigration
- Cyberstalking
- Impersonation or Masquerading
- Outing or Trickery
- Exclusion
Trends
Age: increases in elementary years, peaks in middle school, declines in high school
Gender: girls more likely to be online and cyberbully
Broadband Data Improvement Act in 2008 included Title II “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.”
Phase I: Adapted previous survey by Li (2006, 2007). More than half were aware of someone being cyberbullied most were not reported to an adult. Slightly more boys than girls were both bullies and being bullied, most happened outside of school, over half were not reported, and situations typically happened on average about 4 times.
Phase II: Focus Groups to further inform survey data, explore the student views and experiences to collect information to use in creating scenarios. Found commonalities and put in three categories – Reactions, Knowledge, and Coping. Results said most cyberbullying would take place between the student and someone they know, and most were due to a misunderstanding. The most common answer for who they would talk to about it was the school counselor, also stating that they felt more adults need to be educated about cyberbullying.
Phase III: Virtual Scenarios fully “acted out” using avatars in Second Life, based on phases I and II: (1) Gossip Goes Virtual and (2) Mark Visits the School Counselor. Students watched the scenarios and offered feedback.
Recommendations for parents: understand what it is, educate children, be aware, be involved.
Resources:
- CyberSmart Curriculum
- NetSmartz
- iSafe
Showing video of Second Life Scenario, “Mark Visits the School Counselor.”
Q&A
Second Life was used for the video scenarios to link the technology and counseling worlds, this seemed the easiest place to do this in a place that is away from the true counseling and reporting of cyberbullying in person to make it more comfortable for students.
More scenarios are hoped to be added later.
The scripting process for the video scenario used words from students in the focus group sessions. They reviewed feedback from the focus groups and used data and phrasing spoken by the students to create the scenario.
Focus Groups were recorded using digital audio and transcribed later.
MovieTeacher46.com has a list of movies where bullying takes place to use as a discussion starter.
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