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Being A Good Bystander And Pink Shirt Day

On Tuesday last week, our class and the UP class participated in an interactive presentation called “Being A Good Bystander”. This presentation was organised by Cybersmart in the context of Safer Internet Day. There were approximately four other schools that were connected at the same time as us, and the presentation was interactive because we got to contribute our thoughts about a range of cyberbullying scenarios.

The first scenario was about a young girl who went to camp and was photographed by her friends one evening as she was asleep and snoring:

That photo was not a good look!

That photo was not a good look!

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the photo was taken, it was uploaded to a social media site and at that stage of the presentation, we had some time in our Yahl group to predict what would happen… We guessed right: the photo was going to be shared by many people until it went “viral”. Lots of people also commented on it, and the comments for the most part weren’t very nice.

How would you have felt if this had happened to you?

How would you have felt if this had happened to you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this happened, a group of bystanders (people who had witnessed what was happening) decided that they should do something about it. They came up with the following idea:

#nobigdeal: bad selfies went viral!

#nobigdeal: bad selfies went viral!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bystanders decided to take some “bad selfies” and started sharing them on the Internet with the hashtag “#nobigdeal”… and all of a sudden, it became cool to have bad selfies on your site!

The message from the presentation was loud and clear: if you’re a bystander to a cyberbullying situation – or any bullying situation – you can make the right choice and work actively to stop the bullying. The solutions we were shown on the day were very appealing because they came from kids, and they were very creative, and humorous.

What we hadn’t guessed was that the scenario was based on a real-life story that happened in Canada. The #nobigdeal selfies were pink shirts in real life: look at the PowToon animation below to find out more about Pink Shirt Day:

The students are really keen to incorporate the idea of the Pink Shirt in our upcoming anti-bullying day… see what happens: we might have a sea of pink shirts later this month!

Following this session, the students spent two lessons working in mixed MP/UP groups on some “Being A Good Bystander” comic strips that they planned and created on the iPads, using the app “Strip Designer”. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to show these on the blog, as our faces can’t be published!

Mrs Pratt

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