PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

The nature of school and student to student interaction has changed with increasing technology.  With this idea, one of the most prevalent school problems, bullying, has changed.  It is no longer someone saying something to someone in the bathroom but they send a Twitter or post something on Facebook for the whole world to see. This has caused over 25 percent of teens have to be bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet and well over half do not tell their parents or teachers when cyber bullying occurs.  Since this is all done on social networking sites and through the internet, students feel that it is not the same as bullying so it’s ok for them to post these things.  For my Wicked Project, I am addressing this misconception as well as teaching the students about responsible social networking. My students are 9 – 12 grade AVID students.  By teaching them to be responsible in their social networking, it will help them in the future because then they don’t have to be afraid of what they did in the past coming back to haunt them.  This is a common problem that this generation will have to face.  Things that are funny or cute now, may not be when a scholarship is on the line or even a job. 

To teach this lesson, the students will be learning responsible social networking using the exact programs that cause the problems.  Since Twitter is one of the main sources of cyberbullying, students will participate in discussions using the Academy Twitter and AVID Twitter accounts.  If a student’s parent disapproves on their student using Twitter an alternative assignment will be used for that particular student.  To assess student learning, they will create a PSA (Public Service Announcement) to be shared with the entire school during advisory period.  To create these PSA’s students will use the class set of iPads to film and edit the videos. 

This tool will be used early in the year.  As AVID students they need to be aware of how to responsibly use the internet because colleges and scholarship agencies sometimes look at their social networking to see really what kind of person they are.

Resources that may help guide me in this project are things relating to cyber bullying.  Also, it would be helpful to research ways to communicate the material to students.  Using sources like Jing to screencast and become better at using a blog to communicate ideas and create a forum for students to discuss. The students will be using Diigo to create a digital works cited list to keep resources in one place. To begin their research the students will be given the following sites to start off:  Cyber Bullying Statistics, Cyber Bully Alert, i-SAFE.  But knowing the statistics aren’t enough They will also be given the National Crime Prevention Website and Stop Cyber Bullying to find tactics and strategies to end cyber bullying.

During this course, I will be conducting research and organizing my plan for how I will implement this into my classroom.  Since it will not be something that happens in one lesson, there will be multiple lessons that take place during the school year.  I will be able to use various activities that the students enjoy so that they can have a constant reminder of the principles I am trying to convey.  Also, the new technology available to my students will be able to be brought into the lessons.  One way to incorporate discussion is through the use of a Blog.  For this class, I will be documenting my progress on a class blog but when implemented in the classroom there will be a separate blog for students to post and discuss the relevant material, their progress and discoveries. I would know I was successful by the impact on the students.  By seeing the change in their personalities as well as the way they conduct themselves.  This will be done through the use of pre and post quizzes.  The quizzes will be the same both times to see how the students have learned.  The quizzes will be compared by the students for them to analyze themselves what they have learned.