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| The Mushroom Cloud of Cyber Bullying: A Prediction About What the Future Holds |
| Tuesday, 15 December 2009 10:12 | ||||||||
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Cyber bullying is in the increase, says Vancouver Sun Article Dec. 14, 2009. We’ve known this for a long time. The booklet entitled, “Take Action Against Cyber Bullying” is a soft bound book, meaning that pages can be changed and updated every year because the statistics update so often. We, as a world nation, particularly in the field of public education, are in the middle of the biggest transition for accessing information than ever before seen. The cyber world is in its infancy, and like all mushroom clouds just blooming, we cannot know the final and far-reaching consequences. However, this is what we do know for sure 1. There are no Cyber Police. Therefore the Cyber World has no built in systems of checks and balances. That means that bad things can happen and there is no force there to stop it. For these reasons, we will continue to be reactive to the bad things that happen on line, rather than pro active. 2. There are amazing and vast learning opportunities in the cyber world. New applications are available every day, and it is become less expensive to download, upload and use tools that open the world. 3. In 10 years, I predict that we will have transitioned through these times, and that the huge majority of adults will be cyber natives. The cyber world will be what they grew up with, and learning to navigate the system will not feel like yet another learning challenge, the way is feels to many of us adults now. The tremendous good that the Cyber World holds for the learners of today and tomorrow will always be overshadowed by the mismanagement of messaging systems when they are used to slander, embarrass humiliate and exclude people from their peer group. And as many ways as there are to learn new things, there will be ways to bully others. In 10 years, things will be the same, in that cyber bullying will still be going on, but it will be different because we will have become accustomed to dealing with these types of cyber issues. Some cyber supporters compare the tools of paper and pencil to the tools of the keyboard and the cyber world. Their argument suggests that, even though children wrote nasty notes to each other and about each other and sent them around the room, we never banned the use of paper and pencils for learning. The same should be true of the cyber world. Can we really shut out the learning opportunities that the cyber world offers? The answer is no. However, we do need to continue to work on consequences for abusing the systems that we need to use for learning. That is our biggest challenge right now. I wonder what it will be in 10 years?
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D
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Bully is the Way of Life This is the way of Life the Strong pick on the Weak it happens in Nature the Only different is the Strong kills the weak. Picking on people makes them tough so they are not little punks there whole life  |
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Jazmin
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... Great article! The fact that we have no one supervising or overseeing cyber bullies makes it extremely difficult to stop. This can be especially damaging to kids and high school students. You can visit http://highschoolmediator.com to read more about cyber bullying and how it affects teens. |
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