Blog – Latest stories tagged 'cyberbullying'

Research suggests that nearly 70 % of children in the UK have had some kind of bullying experience – yet bullying is a sensitive and complex subject which can be difficult to talk about. One way to tackle it is through the inclusive and accessible medium of film. To tie in with Anti-Bullying Week 2014 (November 17-22) Into Film, an education charity supported by the BFI with Lottery funding, has developed a new resource featuring six carefully selected films – three for primary and three for secondary - to promote discussion about bullying and related themes such as friendship, on-line safety, standing up for what is right and the power of groups, positive and negative. Films are free to order for all schools with an Into Film club.

Titles for primary in are Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010, PG), South African animated adventure Khumba (2013, U) and inventive computer-animated caper Wreck-It Ralph (2012, PG); related activities include watching and discussing a short film about bullying made by young people, mind-mapping and writing techniques to define what bullying is, creating a series of tableaux and planning a two-minute campaign to counter bullying. Incorporating the vital theme of cyberbullying, titles for secondary are The Social Network (2010, 12), about the founders and impact of Facebook, tense British drama UWantMeToKillHim (15, 2013) and futuristic sci-fi movie Ender’s Game (2013, 12). Related activities range from a Character crossroads discussion and worksheet to researching successful people who were bullied as a child, and creating an educational Talking Heads film about different types of bullying and how to stop them. Download the resource here.

Other great resources from Into Film which can be used for Anti-Bullying Week are InRealLife, which uses the hard-hitting documentary of the same name to explore a range of issues relating to the Internet including cyberbullying, and Staying Safe Online, with films and activities for primary and secondary linked to e-safety. All resources are available to download from the website.

Into Film is an education charity that puts film at the heart of young people’s learning. Into Film Clubs are FREE for all state funded schools and non-school settings and offer free access to thousands of films and education resources for learning through and about film, as well as opportunities to learn about filmmaking and go behind the scenes of the film industry. Inclusive and accessible for all students, film clubs help promote young people’s social, moral, spiritual and cultural development helping schools achieve OFSTED requirements.

Supported by the BFI with Lottery funding, together with funding from the film industry and a number of other sources, Into Film incorporates the legacy and staff of two leading film education charities, FILMCLUB and First Light, building on their experience and success in delivering programmes of significant scale and reach to children and young people across the UK.

For further information about Into Film and to start an Into Film Club visit: www.intofilm.org/schools-film-clubs or call 0207 288 4520.

This year, Anti-Bullying Week (17th-21st November) is calling on the school community to take action to stop the bullying of all children and young people. With more and more children owning mobile devices and spending longer online and on social media, cyberbullying is becoming one of the most common forms of bullying and the source of increasing distress to children and concern to their parents and school leaders.

That’s why Internet Matters is helping to raise awareness of the important issues of online respect and cyberbullying by launching an exciting competition with the Anti-Bullying Alliance. The competition asks schools to create their own song, rap or poem on the subject of being respectful to others online to generate important discussions of this issue amongst students, teachers and parents, both inside and outside the classroom. The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges including singer and Internet Matters ambassador, Sophie Ellis-Bextor:

“I’m really excited to be part of a competition that raises awareness of such an important and growing issue for schoolchildren today. I’m looking forward to hearing about how children themselves feel about cyberbullying and their thoughts on tackling it together – I’m sure there will be some inspirational entries.”

There are separate competitions for Primary and Secondary schools. The winning Primary school will receive a visit and inspirational assembly from Olympic medallist Christine Ohuruogu MBE, and the winning Secondary school group will enjoy a special daytrip to Sky’s TV studios in West London where they’ll make their own film.

To support schools participation in the competition, there’s also a lesson plan for teachers on how to help children understand the issues and lead into the creation of their competition entry. This includes notes on how the activity supports the wider curriculum.

The competition is open until 28th November 2014 with the lesson plan and full details about how to enter on the Internet Matters website. Start getting creative!

A few days ago, the word Snappening began to make headlines. A suspected leak of thousands of images of young people had been claimed to have been ‘saved’ from the online app, Snapchat.

According to the report from The Telegraph, hackers accessed around 100,000 private photos and videos of Snapchat users over several years using a third-party service that saves images. Many have then appeared on the 4Chan website. As half of Snapchat’s users are aged between 13 and 17, there is concern many of the images might be of children.

For people of a certain age (or should that be, over a certain age), Snapchat is an enigma – in short, it is a messaging app allowing users to send images to one another to accompany a message on the basis that the image will disappear moments later.

Having recently spent many evenings in the company of someone under that age, the constant click of the electronic shutter aroused my curiosity and I questioned the appeal of using the app. I was told that ‘everyone uses it’ and that was quite simply the main attraction, despite her later admittance that she really couldn’t see the point! There is of course also an element of vanity, why else would it take several attempts to capture the perfect pose for this ‘temporary’ image.

So, when the Snappening first made the headlines, I turned to her to gauge the reaction. Initially there was a little shock (despite knowing that the images could be captured from Snapchat even before the leak), but that soon turned to indifference. It seems that for this particular peer group, only faces make it into the ‘chat’, so there was no concern that anything inappropriate could be leaked – and ‘so what’ if their faces were!

In this case, all of the images have been innocent, but it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see how young people could see the attraction of sharing a fleeting image on the belief that it will only appear for a few seconds before disappearing forever. It seems that they are a little misguided on the power of the Internet and the technology surrounding it. A colleague recently commented “the internet, a hard drive or anything digital leaves a trail! It's like etching in glass, you can smooth it out but if you use a microscope you will see that the image is still embedded into the core of the material like the imperfections in a diamond, invisible to the naked eye”.

So perhaps rather than seeing this as an isolated case only affecting Snapchat, we should be re-visiting the concept of the digital footprint and remind pupils that once something is on ‘The Internet’, be that words or pictures, you lose control. It is also an ideal opportunity to raise the subject of cyber bullying and sexting with pupils who may be using this or similar sites.

For now though, it seems that I am due for more evenings being punctuated with the constant click of the shutter, while the Snapchatting continues until it ceases to be the thing that “everyone” is doing.

If you would like to share your thoughts on this topic, please let us know by using the comments section below