Andy's College Journey: Create No Hate

Be a Friend, Not a Stranger

During this project, the class was asked to design a presentation on digital safety. My group was assigned to create a powerpoint about cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is the "use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature."(Cyberbullying 2019) Everyone including myself came up with brilliant ideas for this assignment because most of us experienced cyberbullying as teenagers. One idea that we all agreed upon is using Microsoft teams to document our information findings along with Kahoot to create a quiz for our project. Within our group, each of us contributes individually to this assignment. For example, Lace and Cauline were in charged to search up different forms of cyberbullying, whereas, Chelsey and I were in charged to create the questions for our Kahoot game. Although, I found other presentations appealing to me as an educator that I wished to used when I started my project.

The presentation that I found appealing to me is the "Copyright and Fair User Practices" project from Group C. The group handed out printed guidelines to the class for us teachers to use as a reference as we go along with their presentation. These guidelines are to inform all educators of what they can do under the law of copyright. They also stated issues on ownership, exceptions, and plagiarism. On the other hand, plagiarism is an important factor for students to be familiarized with when writing an academic assignment. According to plagiarism.org , "It is given as taking ideas from someone else and claiming them to be their own." (Plagiarism 2017) Personally, I believe this information is correct because all academic writers should give credibility to borrowed sources from publishers and websites. In Group B presentation, I feel that "Pharming and Phishing" is meant for high school students who are enrolled in a computer class. This group presented an amazing explanation of why pharming and phishing is a crucial component to your private information.

In our cyberbullying presentation, our main focus was to gather statistic data and different forms of cyberbullying. As I mentioned earlier, I wished to add forums and guidelines like other groups in our project. The benefit of using forums is to allow users to enable collaboration, give feedback, and share opinions with one another. Many of my classmates would choose to create a forum than Quora because some of them say its easier and accessible. Another thing that I wished to add is guidelines because it sets boundaries for users to make intentional decisions. As a group, we feel that "Warning Signs" should be taken out and replaced with forums.

I would definitely incorporate cyberbullying into my lesson plan by making a classroom activity. First, I would start off by having my students watch a couple of scenarios of bullying. Then, I'll assign my sixth graders into groups of four. Within their groups, they are to create two bullies, one victim, and one friend. The objective of this activity is to create a skit that is three to five minutes long on examples of cyberbullying from videos they have just watched. Students are free to use any props of their choice along with personal electronic devices they wished to choose as they plan their mini skit. This project would only take sixty minutes and should be ready to present to the class. "In order to increase student motivation and engagement, students should be given meaningful choices in their learning, and tasks should be relevant, using real-world experiences and examples.(Dabrowski& Marshall 2018)

This project taught me many things about digital safety. I learned the importance of how "Copyright and Fair User Practices" plays a significant role in the community and education. I also did appreciate working with my group members for once in my life because they all contribute to this project. One thing that made me proud as a member of the group is creating a short video to prevent cyberbullying. Furthermore, the tools we used for our project to collaborate with one another is Microsoft Teams. In addition, another tool that I do recommend is "Asana." This collaboration tool allows users to assign tasks to other members, create due dates, and add followers to critic our work. As a future educator, I'll be mindful to use these resources that were introduced to me in my teaching lessons.