Week 3 Blog - Cyber Bullying and Computer Games

This week's lecture was about cyber bullying. Although most people are aware of cyber bullying I didn't realise just how widespread it was among all the technologies (email, text, blogs, messenger, Facebook, Myspace etc), and how easily kids can access the ways to do it. The short clip on Lauren's story really bought it home how kids don't think about the consequences of their actions, how quickly situations can get out of hand and how quickly it spirals out of control and outside sources need to be involved (police).
I was quite impressed to see there are a plethora of resources available online to help educate parents, students and teachers on the issues of cyber bullying. Programs for students to play on to help give them an understanding on what is acceptable Internet behaviour. Also what details they can and cant divulge on the Internet.
If we are going to push technology upon students earlier and earlier in their lives then we also need to teach them responsible usage of the learning tool. I believe it is so important to spend a lot of time educating the students on the dangers of the Internet, especially since it is so unregulated.
It was also worthwhile to know that it is also about educating the students on reporting such activities, a concept I hand previously taken for granted that they would automatically do it. A real eye opener.
This youtube clip that was shown in the lecture really hit home http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW14kz3TKug

The workshop started with a learning activity involving getting a frog to jump. Rules were set before we began the task so that we knew exactly what was required. The task was to make the frog jump. In groups of 2 we were to use all the materials provided to make it jump. Very interesting the amount of different ways groups came up with!
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The second part of the workshop was to create a quiz using the QUIA program (quia.web). An awesome program, very valid for school children and so easy to use. I have posted a copy of my quiz on this blog.

The next part was to create a hangman program. I used a teddy bear having his balloons burst rather than hangman icon as it is a little nicer to see! I attached a post to see below.

The next part was to create just another type of activity. I chose word jumble. I had a cartoon theme. I posted a screen shot of the page below.

I really enjoyed this workshop, very good program to know about and will come in very handy in the future!


http://www.quia.com/profiles/tbarnes210

http://www.quia.com/hm/671342.html

http://www.quia.com/jw/388896.html

This is the Quiz - I chose Dogs

This is the Hangman Activity

This is the word Jumble I made - Cartoon theme