Cyber bullying

I think cyber bullying is an important topic.  We try to teach smaller children how to be "polite" at young ages but as a society as a whole, I feel politeness isn't modeled.  So much of what students see and hear in the news (politicians for example), and through social media (celebrities especially), isn't politeness at all.  So much of the "norm" in society is giving opinions, tell what one thinks, and telling others what is "right" and "wrong" that for student to know what is truly "bullying" and what appears to be the societal norms can appear to be contradictory.

As an administrator, this can be difficult to monitor.  I do think that character education at the elementary level and character expectations as students continue to get older is important.  I think that as long as social media is so prevalent, teachers and administrators will have their hands full trying to monitor and address each incident of cyber bullying.  Things have got to change outside of the school environment before what the schools do can be 100% effective.

Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous situation that is synonymous to a car with no brakes.  At one point in time, students had to be in the presence of one another for bullying to occur.  As such, school administrators were often able to make logistical changes to schedules as a means to stem the tide of bullying that might occur to a specific student.  Unfortunately, the same safeguards cannot be said of bullying in the cyber form.  Students are now able to taunt and damage each other with nothing more than a keystroke.

For the administrator, this presents some serious challenges as students often bully each other from home regarding situations that occurred at school.  As a future administrator, I believe curbing bullying must begin with a school sponsored program that addresses cyber bullying in a way that not only makes clear the damages that come from cyber bullying, but allows students opportunities to voice their concerns and needs regarding cyber bullying.  When these practices are put in place effectively - not in a way that seems phony to the students - then teens who bully may begin to take their actions seriously.

7/18/16 Class

Cyberbullying may not be an immediate threat to the first grade students I teach, but the truth is that they are going to face cyberbullying at some point in their lives and I feel compelled to prepare them to be responsible digital citizens. There was a major case of cyberbullying in the media these past few days as an actress from the new Ghostbusters movie (Leslie Jones) was bullied on Twitter. The comments made were hateful and wrong, and very hurtful to the actress. This made me think about our class and how we need to be aware of the reality of cyberbullying and start at an early age to teach kindness as well as responsible technology use.

As we looked at the NETS standards for Teachers and Students, it can be overwhelming to think about all the expectations laid out for technology use. I think it is important to know that technology can support our other content areas and meeting those standards and technology use doesn't need to be in addition to what we already do. I could see teachers being overwhelmed by adding more standards, but hopefully technology can be used to support  and enhance learning across the board.

ISTE Student Standards

I found the ISTE Student Standards to be surprising because so many of them focused on incorporating Digital Citizenship lessons into technology assignments in all curricula. Our former professor said that there should not be a "Technology Class", but rather that proper use of technology should be taught by all teachers as it applies to their subject area. The ISTE Student Standards seem to reinforce this concept, and I believe it is a good idea to hold students to high standards in all aspects of education.

Cyberbulling

It seems that cyber bullying is something that we beat to death but unfortunately I believe that we are at the front of it.There are reasons why we don't allow young people to make decisions because we know that they are not always capable of rationalizing in order to do the right thing all of the time. We are now at a time when a 5 year old is given phones that can connect to anything in the world and we expect the best. Parents use these things as babysitters and then get mad when they find out the child has been doing something that they should not be doing.

Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying is an important topic and one that needs to be handled, but I feel like the school is expected to be more involved than they need to be. Bullying has become a term that students and parents use frequently and most of the time they are coming into the school demanding that actions be taken against the bully. I believe that there is importance to making students and parents aware of what bullying is and how to handle bullying situations, but like many of us said in class today, it sometimes feels like we are promoting bullying accusations.
We have spent some time in other classes looking a discipline policies and student handbooks that are now including cyber bullying and I believe that adding it is necessary. When adding the policy in the handbook many schools have not only added the definition of cyber bullying, but they have gone above and beyond by explaining that it has to be intentional, repetitive and hurtful to the victim. Many people do not understand that bullying is an ongoing issue not just an isolated incident.
I understand as an administrator that it is important to take any and all accusations seriously, but I also feel that we have gotten too far away from the days when parents would say "kids will be kids" or would want their child to "toughen up" and be able to defend themselves. I worry about how we are making life to easy in school for these kids!

Technology in the Classroom and Cyber Bullying

Learning about the technology tools that can be used in the classroom was extremely interesting to me. The one that I enjoyed the most was Plicker. I feel this tool could implemented in my classroom because we worry about how quick our students get into activity. We are still required to pre-test and post-test along the way which takes class time away. I feel this tool can be used when I am quizzing the students over different topics as I scan the room and then monitor if I have to spend more time on that topic or if I can move on. 

With our district looking to move to 1:1 learning about these quizzing tools would be extremely helpful for teachers in our district. I have not heard many teachers discuss the different technology tools that they use because we are limited in the technology, but we are also unfamiliar with the different tools available. I know I did not take a technology course in college which I think could be helpful for aspiring teachers especially when technology is becoming common in schools.