Cyberbullying (education focus)

‘Cyberbullying is using technology to deliberately and repeatedly bully someone. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere and can leave you feeling unsafe and alone.’ (cybersmart.gov.au) Cyber bullying can be in form of text, public humiliation through online media, exclusion of individual online, inappropriate image tagging and much more.

Cyberbullying can be as simple as continuing to send e-mails or text messages harassing someone who has said they want no further contact with the sender. It may also include public actions such as repeated threats, sexual remarks, hate speech or false accusations. Cyberbully often gang up on a victim by making the person the subject of ridicule in online forums, hacking into or vandalizing sites about a person, and posting false statements as fact aimed a discrediting or humiliating the targeted person.

According to research, boys initiate mean online activity earlier than girls do. However, by middle school, girls are more likely to engage in cyberbullying than boys.Whether the bully is male or female, his or her purpose is to intentionally embarrass others, harass, intimidate, or make threats online to one another.

Consequences of cyberbullying are multi-faceted, and affect online and offline behavior. Research on adolescents reported that changes in the victims’ behavior as a result of cyberbullying could be positive. Victims “created a cognitive pattern of bullies, which consequently helped them to recognize aggressive people. (www.cyberpsychology.eu) “However, the Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace abstract reports critical impacts in almost all of the respondents’, taking the form of lower self-esteem, loneliness, disillusionment, and distrust of people. The more extreme impacts were self-harm. Children have killed each other and committed suicide after having been involved in a cyberbullying incident.(www.stopcyberbullying.org)

Unlike physical bullying, electronic bullies can remain virtually anonymous using temporary email accounts, pseudonyms in chat rooms, instant messaging programs, cell-phone text messaging, and other Internet venues to mask their identity; this perhaps frees them from normative and social constraints on their behavior.

Additionally, electronic forums often lack supervision. While chat hosts regularly observe the dialog in some chat rooms in an effort to police conversations and evict offensive individuals, personal messages sent between users (such as electronic mail or text messages) are viewable only by the sender and the recipient, thereby outside the regulatory reach of such authorities. In addition, when teenagers know more about computers and cellular phones than their parents or guardians, they are therefore able to operate the technologies without concern that a parent will discover their experience with bullying (whether as a victim or bully).

As teachers how can we notice a cyberbully or its victim and how do we intervene to stop cyberbullying in the future?

The Social Constructivism in Education

Constructivism is a theory to explain how knowledge is constructed in the human being when information comes into contact with existing knowledge that had been developed by experiences. It has its roots in cognitive psychology and biology and an approach to education that lays emphasis on the ways knowledge is created in order to adapt to the world. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order. Constructivism has implications for the theory of instruction. Discovery learning, hands-on, experiential, collaborate, project-based, tasked-based are a number of applications that base teaching and learning on constructivism.

The purpose in education is to become creative and innovative through analysis, conceptualizations, and synthesis of prior experience to create new knowledge. The educator’s role is to mentor the learner during heuristic problem solving of ill-defined problems by enabling quested learning that may modify existing knowledge and allow for creation of new knowledge. The learning goal is the highest order of learning: heuristic problem solving, metacognitive knowledge, creativity, and originality. To put it simply, social constructivism not only acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process (Wertsch 1997).

According to the social constructivism approach, Future teachers have to adapt to the role of facilitators and not lecturers. Whereas a lecturer gives a didactic lecture that covers the subject matter, a facilitator helps the learner to get to his or her own understanding of the content. In the former scenario the learner plays a passive role and in the latter scenario the learner plays an active role in the learning process. The emphasis thus turns away from the instructor and the content, and towards the learner (Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 1998).

This dramatic change of role implies that a future teachers needs to display a totally different set of skills than a lecturer. The teacher cannot just tell, but asks; the teacher cannot lectures from the front, but must supports from the back; a teacher should not give answers according to a set curriculum, but provide guidelines and creates the environment for the learner to arrive at his or her own conclusions. Thus future teachers should be able to adapt the learning experience ‘in mid-air’ by taking the initiative to steer the learning experience to where the learners want to create value.

I believe this is what we as future teachers need to keep in mind and develop for the future generation of students.

Promoting Intellectual Quality with an IWB

I recently (well its been a few weeks) handed in an assignment using IWB (Interactive White Board) to create a lesson for year 10 RE class. I have to say it took me by surprise how versatile the software truly is.

It is a real spinoff to the ordinary PPT lesson alot of teacher ultilise in todays ICT integrated lessons. I found it unique and adjustable to many curriculum but I do have to say the basic things that can be done in that particular software is catered for Primary Teachers.

I still like the dynamic web lesson software such as Prezi, but I do see the use of IWB in classroom. I guess just like every new technology and teachers we all have to learn how to get along. I do see myself using IWB in the future to integrate a more active and engaging lesson but for now I will have to learn how to manage a moving and active classroom  if I am going to ask students to move around the classroom and writing things on the IWB.

Educational games on the internet can be applied to be a lesson in the classroom especially for primary.

http://www.leapfrog.com/gaming/online-games.html

Elearning (Mobile Learning)

Elearning is a strategy phenomenon that occurs everywhere and anywhere. Elearning is a term shorten from “electronic learning” which is involves mobile learning, so what is mobile learning? To define mobile learning we first need to define ‘mobile’. Mobile refers to moving, thus when combined with learning come to be what we understand as ‘learning on the go’. This means that learning can occur anywhere because of the fact that information is accessible anywhere, electronically (hence mobile learning is a part of Elearning).

Mobile also refer to the device we access information in today’s society ; a mobile phone. Mobile phones now have access to the Internet and many apps. These apps has developed from just everyday assist tool to books, educational app, banking, interactive games and much much more.

Because of such significant impact of the internet and apps, education have taken a part in integrating this success into the curriculum. Some of its impact is a very positive and engaging lessons that teachers across the globe has utilized in the last 20 years, but those who does not keep up with this technological progress do get left behind and it does impact on the classroom and students. I for one have a first hand experience of seeing a teacher who is left behind by this technological advance and yet still do very well in delivering her lessons.

I believe eLearning is a tool to enhance learning for student but we still need the teachers to be an expert in delivering the content in the first place. Thoughts?