Cyberbullying and the Law (Grades 9-12) - Lesson
In this lesson, students learn about and discuss the legal aspects of cyberbullying.
Wikiwars
With all the recent attention focused on stories of teenagers charged with distributing child pornography for taking sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, jobs lost due to Facebook and MySpace entries, and libel suits over blog posts, people are justifiably concerned about the permanence of material posted to the Internet. Many a teacher or parent has had to carefully explain to children or teens that whatever they post online might be seen by people other than the intended audience, and might be out there for a very long time.
Upcoming events
The Association to Reduce Alcohol Promotion in Ontario is accepting submissions for the ARAPO Recognition Award until Friday, February 29th. (Yes, it's a leap year.) In the words of their Guiding Statement, the award is for “recognition of individuals (e.g. journalist, teacher, student etc.) or organizations (e.g. schools, businesses) that have made, and continue to make, outstanding efforts to reduce the effect of alcohol promotion in Ontario.” Nominations must be made jointly in writing by two or more members of the community, following a format you can find here.
In time for Safer Internet Day, new resources to fight cyber bullying
Today is Safer Internet Day, an annual international event sponsored by Insafe to promote a safer Internet for children. Recent research on Internet life has shown that the greatest threat to kids online comes from kids themselves, both in the form of risky behaviour and online harassment, or cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can take forms such as harassing e-mails or text messages, social exclusion and spreading private photos and videos, among others, and presents a particular challenge for parents and teachers because it often happens outside the home or classroom. Because the Internet has become an essential part of kids' social lives, cyber bullying can also have more devastating effects as youth feel they have no escape.
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
One of the most famous images of online life is the New Yorker cartoon captioned “On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.” The cartoon, published in 1993, was hugely influential in fixing an image in the public imagination of the Internet as a place where anonymity reigned. It did not take long for that humorous view of anonymity to take on a darker cast, as parents began to fear that Internet predators would use this invisibility to lure their children in the guise of twelve-year-old girls. It's instructive, though, to realize just how long ago this cartoon was published, and how much the Internet has changed since then.
Not Black and White: Understanding the Nuances of Cyberbullying
How big a problem is cyberbullying? To judge by media coverage, which frequently focuses on the most sensational and extreme cases, it’s an epidemic, and schools and legislators have often responded with heavy-handed measures. Students, on the other hand, are more likely to say that cyberbullying is less of an issue than adults perceive it to be – though even they, in many cases, overestimate how common it actually is. MediaSmarts’ report Cyberbullying: Dealing with Online Meanness, Cruelty and Threats, the third in a series of reports based on data from our Young Canadians in a Wired World survey, suggests that so far as Canadian youth are concerned the answer is somewhere in between, presenting a portrait of online conflict that demands more nuanced, contextualized and evidence-based responses.
Don’t Drink and Drive: Assessing the Effectiveness of Anti-Drinking Campaigns - Lesson
In this lesson, students explore a variety of anti-drinking and alcohol awareness campaigns in order to determine their effectiveness. Students will deconstruct the different approaches that have been used by various organizations to reach teens and young adults and will debate those techniques that are most likely to resonate with youth. In a summative activity, groups of students create and implement an alcohol awareness campaign for students.
Kids, Alcohol and Advertising - Lesson 2: Young Drinkers
In this lesson, students learn why the alcohol industry needs replacement (new) drinkers and how it exploits the needs and desires of young people in order to foster brand loyalty.
Pyramid Power: How Hate Spreads Online
The last few weeks have shed an unprecedented light on the use of digital media to spread and inspire hatred. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the perpetrator in the attacks on Canada’s National War Memorial and Parliament buildings, appears to have been motivated in part by exposure to online postings by a self-described member of the Islamic state[1], and the Federal government has already stated that it intends to create tools to remove online content that promotes the “proliferation of terrorism.”[2]