The Nature of Bullying

From Chesi - Fotos CC on Flickr

Bullying isn't an exact science. It's an organism that grows; it's like a weed. With every new technology and Web 2.0 tool, there are always new methods and processes adopted that may harm our students. We need for our students to understand cyber-bullying as a concept, as an organism that eats and breathes. As it stands now, too many students are learning bullying as a requirement for the EETT grant, and most likely with cracker jack curriculum materials that were designed strictly for compliance, not analyzation.

If you desire to have students do a bullying unit, perhaps have them create their own concept map of bullying. Start with resources such as:

• http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm
• This pdf from Stop Bullying Now offers info on what to look for if a child is being bullied. 
• Digizen.org: Great movie on bullying. 

Have them use Dabbleboard.com or Mywebspiration.com to create a flow chart of the concept of bullying, showing what behaviors to look for in a bully, or the bullied child. Have them demonstrate the relationship between the types of bullying or cyberbulling, and the consequences for allowing bullying to happen. Make sure to incorporate the bystander's role and their consequences as well. Here's a version that I am working on:



Here's the direct link:
http://dabbleboard.com/draw/drezac/safetymodel

In this concept map, I offer bullying as an organic process, one that has beginnings, behaviors, and methods. The profile behaviors alone may not elicit abuse, but when combined with technology tools, they can have all sorts of consequences, such as suicide, expulsion from school, and depression. What's also important is how to prevent the consequences. If students create these maps, the aim is for them to know what the consequences are for all of the parties involved, as well as what are the possible solutions to prevention?

This concept map was created using Dabbleboard, a very accessible tool that any students can use without signing up. It's important to have tools available to kids that work right out of the box, so that the concept map is the lesson, not the tool.

Does the concept map work? I think that it's a good start, but, of course, the concept may change when new technologies emerge, as may the consequences.

If we can get students to understand the process of bullying and the systems in place to prevent it, then I think we'll have done our job as educators. Let's not work to just comply; let's work to create.

Dabbleboard: Too Easy

Today I did sort of an experiment. I gave my kids a problem to solve: to create a model of a Fire Escape Route from my classroom. They could use one of three programs: Google Sketchup, Google Earth, and Dabbleboard.com for their modeling. They chose the latter.

When I asked them why most of them chose Dabbleboard, I got the required response: "it's just easy." Now, I'm not going to debate in this post whether the easiest tool is the best tool, but Dabbleboard is a pretty darn intuitive tool. When you are trying to engage young kids with technology, I think you want to show them tools where there's not a lot of hassle like sign up, and give them a tool that works right out of the box.

In Dabbleboard, you can just create.

Graphic Organizers and Embeds: In my practice, I do like the graphic organizer, and although I don't use an Interactive White Board very much, when I do, I love using layovers. Each Dabbleboard is embeddable, which is important because I want the Web to be more customizable. One day, it would be nice to embed just about any Web tool into your website, so that you can create a custom Online Learning Environment. Below is my Online Bullying Attribution Chart. Add to it, if you like.




Custom Links: Lastly, I like Dabbleboard because you can create a custom link to any Dabbleboard page, and you can share and chat with any of your collaborators. One of the frustrations I used to have using an IWB, was that many of our graphic organizers couldn't be saved as a link to the web. With Dabbleboard, that's no problem. For some students, of course, adding a chat can be disruptive, but as the owner of a board, you don't have to share the chat. Check out this example:

http://dabbleboard.com/draw/drezac/citizen

The easiest tool isn't always the best tool, but engaging a student sometimes is more important than slogging through a lesson. And for Tech Facilitators who are trying to engage teachers with Interactive White Boards, please show them Dabbleboard first.