Below are 3 quotes I pulled from Renee Hobbs' Digital and Media Literacy, Chapter 7.
1. "A middle-school student in Costa Mesa, California, created an online group on Myspace with the title, "I Hate Classmate's Name." There was an expletive, an anti-Semitic reference, and a post that read, "Who here wants to take a shotgun and blast her in the head over a thousand times?" (Hobbs, 2011 pg. 125)
You read about cyber bullying all the time but seeing cyber bullying in action is completely different. I
saw my first case directly before this school year started. It was my friend's 13 year old and the social platform was Instagram. Instagram is a picture/video sharing app that connects the user to social media directly on the Instagram site or indirectly on Facebook, Twitter, etc… In any case, an Instagram page was created with the title "Kill Student's Name." I was shocked and not at the same time. I knew this girl was being bullied but this was a new level. I had witnessed the interaction she had with these girls or "queen bees" as I like to call them. She had battled with them previously through text messages and her mother had tried to take a stand short of calling the police. But the social media message page was a whole new level. Where were these girls' sense of what was right and wrong? I couldn't decipher. I urged the mother (my friend) to take this to police but naysayers convinced her the police in Fairmont would stand idle and that the News reports across the country that law makers were taking a stand were far and few between. The older daughter figured out how to hack the webpage on Instagram and took the page down and locked the bullies out. I'm not sure that was the best stance to take seeing how easy it is to set up a new page. What I do know is that this form of bullying doesn't have an off and on button. It continues all day long and into the night. Our students are not resting, instead they watching their schoolmates jump on the bandwagon unable to turn their eyes away.
"But how should these disputes be handled?" (Hobbs, 2011 page 125)
In our school, this dispute was handled by the admin and teachers in an inappropriate fashion from my point of view. They discovered that my friend's child was actually attending the school from out of district. To stop the "drama," she was kicked out of school without a warning. My friend had to go to the Board of Education to keep her child in the school she's been attending since she was young. In this instance, not even the admin or teachers were willing to fix the situation at the root of the issue. Award the bullies? To me this is the way I saw the situation. In this situation, the school abandoned creating digital responsible citizens. Instead, they sought convenience.
That day my son called me at work to let me know what happened. He was distraught. He'd seen the link of Facebook. I tried the best I could to calm him down. However, in the same breath he asked if could have an Instagram account. What do you think my answer was?
2. "...The Internet is not a separate place a person can go to from the real world. The Internet is the real world. Only faster" (Hobbs, 2011 page 139).
If nothing else, I think this could possibly be one of the largest take home messages we can relate to our students. I often think that students have a hard time realizing just how fast a message or image can be sent across the Web with or without our permission. Our students are used to their world being much smaller even if they do think it is "large." Just to prove this fact some educators are posting messages on FB to show how fast (or how viral) their message can travel across FB through sharing and "Likes". Out of morbid curiosity I wondered how the campaign went. I found this educator's plea on a webpage titled, "If you are reading this, please click LIKE': Teacher who warned students about internet dangers with online note goes viral." As of November 29, 2013, 9 days after she started the campaign, it had been liked more than 392,000 times and shared more than 30,000 times. I cannot even imagine what that number is currently at - 1 year later.
3. "Teens may have thoughtful and often sophisticated reasoning processes that reflect their decision making about what's OK and what's not. Dialog about these issues builds critical thinking skills and gives teens a chance to reflect upon and articulate their values" (Hobbs, 2011 page 136).
I think we need to give our teens more credit. We forget they have powerful thoughts and feelings on the world around them. And when we do realize they have an opinion - often we shrug it off as silly or immature. However, instead of shrugging off a teenager - why not use their opinions (whether negative or positive) to build critical thinking skills, especially in light of all they are being bombarded by in the media. Below is a video I found of a teenage girl who is trying to articulate her thoughts on life in general. She's using multimodal media to "talk" to the world. In this case, I believe (I could be wrong) she has a strong mentor in her life to teach her how to share her opinions in a positive light via social media. She may have created this video herself and bravo if she did. I'd like to think that teachers are helping students create products like this. It is the direction we need to move in.
A Dollar Short and a Blog Late
I am a post late in posting this video. It actually would fit well with Weekly Reading #9. I can't embed so I'll post a link. However, I will warn you - the video contains very explicit language. If you don't like the F word and disagree with it being used to make a point, especially by little girls - Don't Watch! Seriously! I'm not even half kidding. Don't say I didn't warn you. Me on the other hand - I don't offend very easily.
Little Girls Swear Like Truck Drivers to Make a Point about Sexism
Citation
Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: connecting culture and classroom. (p. 125, 139, 136). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin; A Sage Company.
1. "A middle-school student in Costa Mesa, California, created an online group on Myspace with the title, "I Hate Classmate's Name." There was an expletive, an anti-Semitic reference, and a post that read, "Who here wants to take a shotgun and blast her in the head over a thousand times?" (Hobbs, 2011 pg. 125)
 |
| Social Media |
saw my first case directly before this school year started. It was my friend's 13 year old and the social platform was Instagram. Instagram is a picture/video sharing app that connects the user to social media directly on the Instagram site or indirectly on Facebook, Twitter, etc… In any case, an Instagram page was created with the title "Kill Student's Name." I was shocked and not at the same time. I knew this girl was being bullied but this was a new level. I had witnessed the interaction she had with these girls or "queen bees" as I like to call them. She had battled with them previously through text messages and her mother had tried to take a stand short of calling the police. But the social media message page was a whole new level. Where were these girls' sense of what was right and wrong? I couldn't decipher. I urged the mother (my friend) to take this to police but naysayers convinced her the police in Fairmont would stand idle and that the News reports across the country that law makers were taking a stand were far and few between. The older daughter figured out how to hack the webpage on Instagram and took the page down and locked the bullies out. I'm not sure that was the best stance to take seeing how easy it is to set up a new page. What I do know is that this form of bullying doesn't have an off and on button. It continues all day long and into the night. Our students are not resting, instead they watching their schoolmates jump on the bandwagon unable to turn their eyes away.
"But how should these disputes be handled?" (Hobbs, 2011 page 125)
In our school, this dispute was handled by the admin and teachers in an inappropriate fashion from my point of view. They discovered that my friend's child was actually attending the school from out of district. To stop the "drama," she was kicked out of school without a warning. My friend had to go to the Board of Education to keep her child in the school she's been attending since she was young. In this instance, not even the admin or teachers were willing to fix the situation at the root of the issue. Award the bullies? To me this is the way I saw the situation. In this situation, the school abandoned creating digital responsible citizens. Instead, they sought convenience.
That day my son called me at work to let me know what happened. He was distraught. He'd seen the link of Facebook. I tried the best I could to calm him down. However, in the same breath he asked if could have an Instagram account. What do you think my answer was?
2. "...The Internet is not a separate place a person can go to from the real world. The Internet is the real world. Only faster" (Hobbs, 2011 page 139).
 |
| Social Media Messages |
3. "Teens may have thoughtful and often sophisticated reasoning processes that reflect their decision making about what's OK and what's not. Dialog about these issues builds critical thinking skills and gives teens a chance to reflect upon and articulate their values" (Hobbs, 2011 page 136).
I think we need to give our teens more credit. We forget they have powerful thoughts and feelings on the world around them. And when we do realize they have an opinion - often we shrug it off as silly or immature. However, instead of shrugging off a teenager - why not use their opinions (whether negative or positive) to build critical thinking skills, especially in light of all they are being bombarded by in the media. Below is a video I found of a teenage girl who is trying to articulate her thoughts on life in general. She's using multimodal media to "talk" to the world. In this case, I believe (I could be wrong) she has a strong mentor in her life to teach her how to share her opinions in a positive light via social media. She may have created this video herself and bravo if she did. I'd like to think that teachers are helping students create products like this. It is the direction we need to move in.
A Dollar Short and a Blog Late
I am a post late in posting this video. It actually would fit well with Weekly Reading #9. I can't embed so I'll post a link. However, I will warn you - the video contains very explicit language. If you don't like the F word and disagree with it being used to make a point, especially by little girls - Don't Watch! Seriously! I'm not even half kidding. Don't say I didn't warn you. Me on the other hand - I don't offend very easily.
Little Girls Swear Like Truck Drivers to Make a Point about Sexism
 |
| Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com |
Citation
Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: connecting culture and classroom. (p. 125, 139, 136). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin; A Sage Company.
2 comments:
Jamie first of all I would like to know if you would come and be a guest speaker for my youth team? Private message me and I will give you details.
Second- I hope that something happened to the bully and that your friends child is safe and well.
I shared your video with my private FB team it was a great positive tool we would like to use for Youth Town Hall.
Your story is one we hear about to often in prevention. The media bullying is so very powerful and it happens so fast and has a powerful punch to those being bullied. Not fear.
I will tell you that our youth team took a FB video and circulated in their school that was a positive and had a great reaction for a girl who under went something similar like you described.
The kids hash tagged the video and then had a huge campaign around the video especially this month. October is anti-bullying month.
Your words were powerful it was clear you had very serious concerns. Thank you for sharing.
I am sorry that your friends child had such an issue with cyber-bullying. As parent and teacher to teenagers it is definitely an issue that we all face daily. I'm appalled that the Marion County BOE handled it the way they did instead of protecting the child they made her a victim themselves. Wow. Goes to show what kind of systems that we work for and the complete inadequacy of our boards of education.
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