Digital Safety Reflection

Before this project, I had only a vague idea of what it meant to be digitally safe.  I knew what I had to do to keep myself safe, but the possible repercussions of a simple mistake were something that I never bothered to explore.  I am so much more skeptical of things that I find online now.
My group's section was on Cyberbullying.  As future teachers, we had heard of some of these stories about students who had been cyberbullied so badly that they felt they needed to take their own lives.  However, the fact that these suicides have become so frequent is something that escaped my attention.  As technology advances, kids and adults are being exposed to more and more ways and methods of cyberbullying.  It is scary to think that 53% of kids have admitted to saying something mean or hurtful to others online (STOPtechNObullying: Statistics").  This indicates to me that teachers and parents and other adults need to take more steps to teach students the consequences of their actions online.  If they knew that they could be encouraging someone to commit suicide, they would think twice about saying mean things.
There were many useful links provided to us during the course of the presentations.  There were games, interactive websites, and many videos.  All of these will prove to be useful in the future when we become teachers.  I think it is necessary for all teachers, regardless of content area, to teach these lessons.  These lessons are a matter of life and death - and if a student is not on the roster anymore because he or she took his or her own life, then what is the use of English or Math?  The subject of Cyberbullying and online safety is more important than these other subjects and should be given priority.  Parents, teachers, school administrators, and community leaders need to band together to put a stop to Cyberbullying, especially because it has been discovered that bully victims are up to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than others who have not been bullied ("Bullying and Suicide - Bullying Statistics").  If these adults were to be more vigilant in watching the children of their neighborhood when they are online, they could save lives.
 This project was very useful for future teachers.  In fact, if anybody were assigned this project, they would have found it informational as well.  In my opinion, knowing more about these topics will always be beneficial for consumers and internet users. 
Our group did not use Wiggio for this project; it was too temperamental the last time we used it; instead, we cooperated over Google Docs and Gmail.  We were able to share files and thoughts.  Even if these two tools do not have the same capabilities as Wiggio or another similar tool, they functioned well for our purposes.

 Works Cited

 

 Bullying and Suicide - Bullying Statistics. (n.d.). Bullying Statistics - Teen Violence, Anger, Bullying, Treatment Options. Retrieved from http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html

STOPtechNObullying: Statistics. (n.d.). STOPtechNObullying: Technobullying. Retrieved from http://www.stoptechnobullying.org/statistics.php