18/01/2018 - Courses for Teachers
How to educate our students on the responsible use of the new media and of social networks
Reading time: 2 minutesAn online course designed by the expert of School of Robotics about how to inspire our students about the responsible use of social networks and of the Internet, to prevent cyberbullism.
The first online course held by Scuola di Robotica dedicated to insert cyberbullying preventing activities in schools. The course can be attended on Sofia MIUR.
A LAW ON CYBERBULLYING
First country to do so in Europe, Italy has passed a bill on 29th May 2017 “Measures to protect minors and oppose cyberbullying through a prevention system”.
Cyberbullying is defined for the first time as “any form of oppression, aggression, harassment, blackmail, injury, denigration, identity theft, alteration, illicit acquisition, manipulation, unlawful processing of personal data to the detriment of minors, carried out electronically, and the dissemination of content on line also involving one or more members of the minor's family whose intentional and predominant purpose is to isolate a minor or a group of minors by putting into effect a serious abuse or a harmful attack.
The bill’s aim is to oppose and prevent cyberbullying in its multiple forms, with a prevention plan and a tailored strategy.
THE DUTIES OF SCHOOL INSTITUTIONS
Once again, the State asks the school to be the protagonist in preventing cyberbullying and, above all, to enforce any education and training activities related to the responsible use of the Internet, in particular social networks. As part of the 29 May n.71 bill, the Ministry of Education published in October 2017 the Guidelines for the preventing and opposing cyberbullying drafted by the Department for education and formation, Department for the Student, the Integration and the Participation. In the Guidelines, recalling the 29 May n.71 bill, the central role of the school is emphasized, highlighting the importance of staff training; from the point of view of young people, the opportunity of "an inclusive approach" is suggested, in order to “develop a project aimed at preventing and counteracting cyberbullying, according to a perspective of educational and never punitive intervention" ( see the Appendix below)
The person appointed by the school to monitorate cyberbullying and, in general, all managers and teachers should take into consideration the problem of cyberbullying as the emerged part of a very complex iceberg that constitutes the new, original structure often faced with a delay in the occurrence of the phenomena associated with it in a broader scenario: the transformation, with varying degrees of intensity, of the organization of social relations with the advent and diffusion of social media. The progressive contraction of the age of access to new technologies by children and the lack of learning paths among adolescents of "digital wisdom" make it urgent to tackle in a timely manner these issues that concern all areas of dis-psychology and not just , as sometimes erroneously believed to be the specialized ones. Nobody, alone, will be able to solve this paradigm shift: all the involved subjects (parents, relatives, teachers, educators) observe the young people with apprehension, disbelief and a sense of impotence. Scuola di Robotica has been dealing with ethical, legal and social aspects of the new media, especially information technologies and new technologies, for about twenty years. Thanks also to the School of Robotics, Roboetica was born. For five years we have developed a methodology (the Firewall method) to implement interventions in educational contexts aimed at promoting the conscious use of social media and the prevention of cyberbullying. The online course will be based on our method.
THE ONLINE COURSE
The course, divided into 5 online lessons, is directed by Stefania Operto (sociologist) and realized with the collaboration of Andrea Fui (Informatic, Scuola di Robotica) and Elena Parodi (trainer, Scuola di Robotica). The presence of subjects with different training is one of the peculiar characteristics of the Firewall method developed by Scuola di Robotica; as will be illustrated during the course, this didactic method can be applied in class in many different disciplines: history, mathematics, physics, Italian, philosophy, art, music, foreign languages and many others. At the end of each webinar, an activity will be assigned to each webinar, the deadline of which will be communicated during each webinar. The course is valid for 25 hours of training (equivalent to 1 CFU). All webinars will be registered and the registration made available the day after the "live".
See more at: https://www.scuoladirobotica.it/it/homesdr/1061/anteprima.html#sthash.X1dbSSHf.dpuf
The on-line course will start on Wednesday January 31st and it will be carried out for four successive Wednesdays (7,14, 21st and 28th of February). It will train participants on the Firewall methodology, that is to work directly with students designing those cases of cyberbullism theye were involved in, they knew about it, or they intervened to prevent them. Those experiences will become ground for discussions, stories, dramatic sketches and media news.
The methodology takes some of its tools from the Threatre de l'Opprimè The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO)