Anti Bullying Week – Helpful resources for the classroom

Published: November 12, 2015

Continuing our ongoing Anti Bullying Month, we’ve been hacking away at the Google results to find you the best resources on cyberbullying that the web has to offer. Below are what we believe to be invaluable assets in the fight against online abuse. Take a look:

Jon Ronson – So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed Extract

(WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE & THEMES)
This extract deals with a true story about how a pair of developers made a joke at a conference, had their photo tweeted and then became the centre of a public shaming scandal.


Due to the themes and language, you may wish to create an edited version for your class, and use it with students in higher age groups. You can use this extract to demonstrate how being careless in public spaces can lead to misunderstanding and how quickly this can escalate, but also as an example of how, if you’re offended, sharing that offense with the world can lead to massive repercussions.
You could use it in an English lesson as a piece of journalistic or non-fiction writing. Ask students to assess how the author has influenced the way the people are portrayed, the use of withholding facts until certain times to create a narrative. Ask students questions such as: is this piece unbiased? Why does the author write in the first person?
If you want to do a specific lesson on cyberbullying, ask students the following questions: Who was being bullied? Was the reaction OK? Could it have been avoided? What would you do if this happened to you? Is anybody to blame for what happened?
Try to encourage students to think about how both the people in the story ended up being attacked, and about how the situation got out of hand. Make sure students take away the fact that anything published publically online can be viewed by anyone, and that by joining in with comments you can keep the abuse coming.

InCtrl – Cyberbullying Lesson Plan & Video Content

A great pack of resources, this lesson plan from the InCtrl website by Cable Impact has two great videos on the topic as well as a fully-featured PDF with outlines on how to make several lessons about cyberbullying. It’s designed for American schools, but all the concepts and ideas apply, and if you are in The States you can even map it to the curriculum specifically.

#GameOn – A Online Miniseries about e-Safety

Made by the Australian Government, #GameOn is a mini-series complete with PDF study guides and transcripts. It focuses on a group of kids who are all facing different e-safety issues, amongst which are cyberbullying and stolen identities. This miniseries is ideal as a way to engage students from both primary and secondary age groups, and all the videos can be downloaded ahead of time at home if your school blocks video streaming sites like Vimeo.

PureSight – Cyberbullying Resource Centre

A need-to-know collection of resources, including definitions of what cyberbullying is, FAQs about how to know if you’re being cyberbullied, even a guide for what to do if your child is a cyberbully. Definitely worth bookmarking and sharing with parents – some of the resources are aimed at how they can assist in dealing with cyberbullies.

These are the best resources we found online but are by no means the only ones out there! If you’ve got a great resource you use in lesson tweet it to us at @webanywhere and we’ll update this list, crediting you as the source.
If you’re a user of School Jotter you may have noticed last week that we launched our Safety Shield button, allowing students to report any abuse of the apps directly to the site administrator, with a screenshot included. You can learn how to use it here.