April+Tech.+Conference+Video+Reflection

April Tech. Conference Video Reflection:

I chose to watch a SimpleK12 webinar from Kevin Honeycutt about cyberbullying. It was entitled Cyberbullying: What Every Teacher Should Know

This was a great hour long video about the research and facts behind cyberbullying and how it affects the brain. The first part was about "downshifting" when you basically shut off while you are feeling like you're in survival mode. He talked about how this bullying affects and "steals" their learning in the fact that kids are in fight or flight mode and aren't ready to learn literature, for example. He had great ideas about how to talk to students about bullying through the things we teach everyday. http://wwww.mysafesurg.org was shared as a great resource of his for access to the information he shared. He talked about kids screwing up their lives with one click. He also talked about "piling on" and how kids jump on the bandwagon and how its magnified by technology. What used to happen between a couple of kids causing a kid to feel bad can now be "piled on" by 100+ kids and cause kids to be suicidal because he/she thinks that everyone in the school hates him/her. He enforced the need to parents to make sure that they learn kid lingo and online chat lingo in order to keep their kids safe and in line. We need to remind our kids that every chat can be saved in a transcript and remind them that we are creating a digital legacy that won't go away. Everything we say, even now, can be used for or against us later. YouTube, for example, is a digital legacy. They should as themselves, "Do I want to be known for this?"

The other part of the webinar included ways for kids to use technology positively. They can create a very positive digital presence, do online field trips, etc... Most had a digital footprint before they were even born (parents put sonogram pics on Facebook, etc...) The best piece of advice for kids was this: "Never say or send anything you'd be embarrassed about if the whole world saw!" As simple as this sounds, it is something that all kids need to hear often. He made reference to NetSmartz that are age-appropriate resources for kids and their parents. It ended by saying that kids will make mistakes. We just have to do what we can to make them knowledgeable and protect them where we can. The webinar ended with a question and answer session.