Thank goodness I was bullied in the 80's

Back in the good ol’ days of bullying a bully physically, and sometimes mentally and emotional, harassed his or her victim. We have probably all grown up on one side of this situation at one point or another. It’s a rough time in a kid’s life, and if worrying about school and girls were not enough, I had to find random trails home for lunch and after school every day. I had an older, and much bigger and meaner, neighbor that got his kicks out of torturing the few of us who were on this route. Each day it was a guessing game; ‘do you think he went through the softball path or the back trail. Unfortunately, these were the only two options so you had a 50/50 chance of being pummeled. Both paths were through a forest so the bully had several hiding spots. Usually the only thing that gave away the bully’s location was when you heard the screams of another boy was just got caught. Those were rough times, but I feel lucky that I am not going through today’s version of bullying. Of course, the bigger nasty bully still exists, as does the smaller, but sharp tongued emotional bully. Nevertheless, the new kind of bullying is the cyber bully.




The cyber bully may not hold your head in the snow until it feels frostbitten, but what makes this bully more powerful is there is virtually no escape from it. This form of bullying through mobile phones, emails, chat rooms, you tube, social networks, and so on, follows you everywhere. Normally the best part of your day when you are the victim of traditional bullying is getting to your house. You feel like, whew, I did it and now I am safe. But, cyber victims are never safe. Another problem is it is not normally just one bully after you, it can be a number of people and you may not even know who is doing it; leaving you feeling like you are always being watched or even stalked and you are not sure who is doing it. Obviously, this can be very emotionally and socially damaging to a student and no one should have to go through this.

So what should schools do about cyber bullying?



Based on my experience in various schools I would say that most are reactive when dealing with this issue rather that proactive. This is probably because it is a relatively new problem in society and many are not aware of it or not sure how to deal with it. I suggest the first thing to do is to change this reactive way of thinking and take preventative measures. Perhaps, this means teaching it in health class when we normally cover traditional bullying. However, I don’t think that is the most effective method. Developing a ‘social wellness’ program throughout the school might be better. This program should educate students and teachers about what the problem is, how serious it is (including the legal consequences for the bully), followed by how to recognize it and deal with it. Most importantly, students should know how to prevent it. That means having a school program that deals with this issue on an appropriate grade level basis. In the ISB middle school, synergy would be the best forum and Comm. Groups in the high school. I honestly don’t know if it is needed in the elementary school. I think this proactive campaign should be run at the same time for everyone to bring about more timely awareness and make the message clear. Then there should periodic reminders about the topic. Anything less might actually just teach students how to cyber bully and increase the problem. If a program is in place to help students and they know tips such as do not delete a cyber bullying message; instead take it to the appropriate person in the school, and then you can deal with the problem before it becomes an unstoppable mess. Students should know to report cyber bullying.
I’m curious as to stories, experiences, policies, and proactive measure others schools/teachers might have. Care to share?

Copyright… what is copyright?

What's our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?

The more I read about this topic the less I understand. Most of the articles seem to be about copyright in USA. However, I am a Canadian and I teach internationally, with no intentions of teaching in America. I’m not saying this doesn’t concern me, but is there something more applicable to my situation or a global copyright law? I live in Thailand where copyrights, patents, and trademarks are broken everywhere. Nevertheless, as an educator I want to role model the right behavior. As Cindy B put it in her blog, Our role in the Use of Fair Use, "We ourselves, as educators, need to be good models and follow the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. Instead of "Do as I say, not as I do", it should be "Do as I do!" My problem is I don't understand what it is I should and shouldn't do.


It would seem to me like the original reason for copyright was to protect creativity and increase progress of ideas. However, it seems to have lost its way and now it actually can hinder creativity and stop progress of ideas. I assume this is where Creative Commons comes in, but I don't quite understand that either. So rather than pretend I know what I am talking about here, let's try this:

Blogs are all about reflecting and hearing other opinions and perspectives, so let’s put this blog to good use and draw knowledge from the global world. Is there anyone out there that can help me get a clearer idea of what copyright actually is? What it is used for? And most importantly, what's our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?

Don’t be shy, let me see the power of blogging.

UPDATE: While adding the pictures on to this site I decided to link them because I thought that was the right thing to do to reference the pictures. However, the copyright photo linked no problem, yet the Creative Commons photo said I could not add it. However, as you can all see it is there. Is this picture now there illegally? How would I get it legally?

Online Privacy – Is there any such thing? Part 2

Beware of the Google car...

Just like Santa, it knows if you've been naughty or nice; except it tells the world.

While reading “The Thinking Chick” blog about online security it made me think when she stating “Where did we develop this concept of what privacy means? In other cultures, how is privacy viewed?” It reminded me of the differences I noticed when I finally left Newfoundland to travel the world. In a geographically large province with only 500,000 people in total, I was used to small towns and wide open spaces. Large crowds and lack of personal space was very new to me.

The article went on to discuss issues such as a privacy of pictures on Facebook. Later she stated “do we need to rethink what privacy means?" I definitely think privacy need to be given some serious consideration. However, as I started thinking about how lack of privacy might cause some people to ‘run’ away from technology just to avoid these problems, I realized technology is chasing you regardless. It’s not just what you put online. Recently, I’ve seen people in England getting very upset because a ‘Google car’ is driving down their street filming everything and will later put this online on Google Street. So even if you isolated yourself completely from the internet they can still find you. Although, I think Google Street is very cool, I wouldn’t want it filming my street, would you?

This is a video you should all watch about the Google car. Unfortunately, it had the embedding option disables, so you will have to try the link.

Online Privacy - Is there any such thing? Part 1

Yes, there are boxes to check and terms of agreement before signing up for most things online. Then you have to type in your user name and a password before accessing information. Thus, one would think your things are secure, however, more and more I am starting to believe that nothing is total secure online. Ok, if you are posting photos up on Flickr, Facebook, or another site with a similar purpose, then you should realize these sites are intended for public sharing. Nevertheless, you are supposed to have some say in who gets to see what. It is not uncommon to hear of unwanted material showing up online nowadays, so I question if the system is working at all. Of course, this could be friends posting something about you that I you did not want posted. I really hate being tagged in a photo and everyone gets to see it before me since I don't go to Facebook everyday. I wondered why Facebook didn't allow the 'tagee' to approve it before being posted.

However, what Facebook recently did is much more serious. How can a company like this decide on its own that it will change the terms of service without consulting with its customers first. These new terms, according to Samantha MacConnel, who wrote the article 'Don't over estimate privacy of online information', would "ensure the site's [Facebook] permanent claim on personal content posted by the user. This would enable Facebook the right to use content even after a person's profile has been deleted." In other words, they own everything you posted and can do with it what they want. It's bad enough that they would have that policy, but what worries me the most is when people signed up initially they agreed to a certain terms of service and Facebook can change that without their consent.

Although, I don't think in today's set up we can ever be completely secure, there are some ways of increasing your online security. Here are 12 ways to increase your online security.


Also check out this video to see what some schools are doing about this problem. "EMPOWER THEM NOW"

My Digital Footprint

I teach people to think about, discover, care about and reduce their environmental footprint, but today we learned about your digital footprint. It is basically saying that what ever you put on the internet will pretty much always be there and this can eventually come back to haunt you. What's even worse is someone else can even put up something about you, such as a not so flattering photo and this can sometimes be viewed by people you don't want viewing it such as college recruiters or potential employers. This is a concern I have with Facebook as many friends will take photos that are absolutely fine within that group setting, but not so fine when published/tagged and shared with the world.

According to Canadian Marketing Blog, adults can be classified into 4 groups:
1. Concerned & Careful (21% of online adults)
2. Worried by the Wayside (18%)
3. Confident Creatives (17%)
4. Unfazed and inactive (43%)


Kim Komando, wrote in the article 'Your online reputation can hurt you' people should assess their online footprint, then remove the negative and promote the positive. So immediately I typed my name in Google and then did it again with my name in "quotation marks". There were a few people with the same name including a female toddler who I don't think anyone will confuse me with. More articles about me popped up than I expected, however, to my pleasant surprise they were all good. I found an old website I created back in university and also a newspaper article written about me in the Bangkok Post. However, these were all positive things.

The key is not to be afraid of what is on the net but to manage it and make sure anyone trying to view information on you will find a lot of things, but all positive things. I should be highlighting my 2 blogs, my wiki, the newspaper write ups.

As I become more aware of this issue, I hope I can help my students think about their digital footprint. Again they should not fear this, but just be smart and responsible about their actions. Don't upload videos or photos that could be seen in a negative way. Don't write nasty and tasteless comments. Finally, do not join up with social groups you do not actually believe it. Students might find it funny to join up with a 'hate' group, but not realize that later in life someone might ask them about this. In a related topic, the interent can unfortunately be used in negative ways such as cyber bullying. Students also need to be educated about this topic.

Tech'n While Your Down

I've experienced some really cool and new (for me at least) advantages in using technology recently. You see normally I am a very outgoing and active guy. It's quite hard for me to sit still and relax, but I've been forced to. A while back I busted me ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my knee. This required reconstructive surgery, whereby the take a piece of your hamstring tendon and use it for your ACL. So I had the surgery and was laid up at home for about two weeks. I later returned to work, but eventually my leg became infected. Long story short, I'm back in the hospital. I've been here for 2 weeks and have at least 2 more to go to clear everything up. Needless to say, I've missed a lot of school. However, I have not been totally out of the loop. Thanks to techonogy I have been able to stay in touch even while I lay in a hospital bed all along. Let me list the different things I have been using lately.

1. Skype - to attend my Environmental Stewardship class when we had a guest speaker.
2. Live feed - to attend the Technology Masters course.
3. Chat lines - to chat while attend the Technology course.
4. Wiki - this is actually the Env. class project. greenteacher.wetpaint.com It has struggled a bit, but is building.
5. Blog - to make Green Panther updates. green-panthers.blogspot.com
   
6. Email - to communicate with the sub and students.
7. JING - this was the coolest by far.
   

The JING site at www.jingproject.org allows you to capture clips and make movies on your screen. This is not like iMovie or MovieMaker. It is like when you are learning a Google application and there is a video showing you what to type, click, where to navigate, etc. So instead of typing out line after line of instructions, make a short video to show them rather then tell them. My class is struggling with their project and Wiki, so I made a video to show them how to do it then I email them the link. HOW COOL!!! Here is the link to the instructional project video I made for them.

Although I have spent many hours playing with this stuff and working though errors it has been fun. However, for me to continue using a product it does have to save me time; not take it.

Project Sketch

Travel guide for tourists who care

How many times have you met tourists who came to Thailand and wanted to see the elephants, only to be overwhelmed with a feel of guilt afterwards because they get the sense they supported something they are not proud of? Whether, its elephants, monkeys or even people there are a lot of great things to see in Thailand, but often animals or people get exploited and these are not the things we want to support. Our travel guide will help travelers determine where they want to spend their money and what causes the want to support. ISB students will try their best to determine which companies are eco friendly, socially responsible, for animal rights, and are helping the community and all that other good stuff.

Students will be in groups and each group will research a region of Thailand (North, South, North East, Central). They will try to find what tourism exists; especially sustainable tourism. Then students will devise a set of criteria/rankings for sustainable tourism. It might be a kind of star system for each criteria. For example;

	Animal rights	Community development	Environmental responsible	Socially responsible	Overall rating:
Elephant Nature Park	5/5	5/5	3/5	4/5	17/20

Once the information is determined, students will display information on a wiki including rankings, videos, pictures, recommendations, links, contacts, and what you can do to help.

This information will initially be open to the ISB community, and is the basis of the project, but it has potential to grow. If successful, it can be open up to a larger audience. Other travelers can upload their information about what they thought of the sites they visited and it becomes a site for the world to use. As well, there is potential to work with travel agents to get information and give information. If this could support more of the good work that is happening in Thailand and help that industry grow, more of the ‘not-so-nice’ tourism might change their ways.

What are the students gaining from this project?

This project will incorporate Blooms higher orders of learning (including the newer version which includes using technology). For example, students will:

• Analyze – Students examine a lot of data they find about different things to do it Thailand. Then they must validate their findings and will eventually 'mash' much of the data into one source.
  
• Evaluate – students make judgments about each organization/company they research, then assess and recommend where they fit in the criteria. Students will be networking and collaborating, thus having to evaluate the skills of the contributors.
  
• Create – Students will imagine and design the criteria sheet themselves. Students will create a wiki and publish information.
  

This project also meets the following STUDENT NETS STANDARDS:

1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students:

• Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.

2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:

• Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.

This project should start in April, 2009. If you are an outsider that would like to contribute, please leave a message.