That’s it, guys. We made it to the end of the year, and in our last class together, we got to see some really cool presentations from our peers, talked about some very interesting subjects and showed some great tools that we have at our disposal as teachers to use in our classrooms. Some of my personal favourite Ed tech tools that were introduced to us was the tool Goosechase. I especially loved that it is something that can be used in a lot of different classes and it can be a great way to get students up and moving and also get them engaged in the material in class or, give them a break from the material in class. I think it’s fun for people of all ages as it’s something that I’ve ever done with some of my peers in our 20s, and we’ve still been able to get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
While I think it’s awesome that we got to look at these topics and tools, there’s one thing that really stood out to me in the presentations, and that was the presentation on the topic of cyberbullying. This is a topic that I think many of us may have faced when we were younger; I should know that I did. I grew up on the Internet in an age where anonymity was not as prevalent as it is today on TikTok, where you could really just say anything through a username, and no one would know what it was. However, we did have something called ask.fm, which I never had because I didn’t like the idea of a website where anyone could ask you a question anonymously, and you could answer it publicly on a profile that anyone could see. As expected, the website opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for bullying and was incredibly dangerous.
For examples of the kinds of things people were saying on the website, check out this article :
The idea of being able to bully someone online and then never know who it is or be able to follow a username back to you was absolutely terrifying to me as a student who was already bullied enough as it was in class. Yet, people still managed to bully me through this site by asking other people questions about me or making really horrific claims about me. I didn’t find out about these claims until multiple days later when someone told me. But of all the situations of bullying in my school experience, this is one of the ones that sticks out to me the most because it was scary not knowing who was talking about me, and it was upsetting. I also had a lot of people accusing me of making these comments about myself just to stir up drama. It was really frustrating, and it trickled from the online platforms into my real-life school environment and, in a lot of ways, made me feel like more of a social pariah than I already had felt.
I’m grateful that one of the groups talked about this issue because it’s only becoming more prevalent in our classrooms today. I think it’s super important that we, as teachers, address the issues that come with anonymity on social media and on the Internet. It should be part of our job to try to teach our students the dangers of cyberbullying and why it can be just as damaging, if not more damaging, than being in the room with someone.
In my future classrooms, I hope that we can address this topic with maturity and an open dialogue with my students. I hope that we can work together towards creating a classroom environment that doesn’t bully each other and also is aware of the impacts of cyberbullying. I also want to be able to create a culture in my classroom where students who feel like they’re being bullied either online or in person can come to me and tell me if something is going on.
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