Creating and Maintaining a Stop Cyberbullying Zone at Your School - a popular presentation Parry gives globally

Length and Format:

This presentation can be arranged as a workshop, panel or interactive expert presentation, depending on the conference’s needs and time slot availability. It can be delivered (in edited form) from 60 minutes to a 90 minute workshop.

Featuring:

 

Parry Aftab, cyberlawyer, Facebook’s International Safety Advisory Board member (1 of 5 worldwide) and founder and Executive Director of WiredSafety.org and StopCyberbullying.org.

Including local teens and preteens, child protection advocates from North America, Facebook or similar industry leader representative and participating principals in both workshop and panel formats. If in interactive expert session (with Dr. Aftab as the sole presenter), teens, preteens, principals and industry leaders represented in video contributions.

Overview of Presentation:

All principals, from k-12, are addressing cyberbullying in greater and greater numbers. While their ability to regulate off-premises and after-hours cyberbullying varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, cyberbullying prevention and solutions must start in school. The problem with addressing cyberbullying, however, is that no one solution size fits all cyberbullying.

 There are five different kinds of cyberbullies, and four different approaches to cyberbullying. There are 74 different ways a mobile can be used to cyberbully someone as identified by students in middle school.  Girls cyberbully differently from boys and 6 year olds cyberbully differently from their older counterparts. 

Cyberbullying of special-needs student may violate their human rights, as might similar attacks against minorities and students with differing sexual preferences.

Since 1995, Dr. Aftab has been working with her volunteers to help young people (and adults) victimized by cyberbullies and online harassers. Featured in Readers Digest in 2000 (in 82 other countries’ Readers Digests), her organization teaches netizens how to avoid online attacks and address them once they occur and helps investigate cases of serious online attacks.

Over the years, in the trenches, she has learned the methods used by cyberbullies, practical and easy prevention tips and tricks, industry best practices and how students can be part of the solution (instead of just part of the problem). 

Her Teenangels program (where teens and preteens are trained to deliver programs and help to their peers on all cyber-risks, including cyberbullying) have addressed the United Nations, US Congress and the UK Parliament, as well as briefed Facebook, Google, Disney, Webkinz, MTV, Nickelodeon, Yahoo! and Zynga on cybersafety issues. Teen People Magazine, the Girl Scouts of the USA, MTV, Seventeen Magazine, the US Senate and Dr. Phil have featured their work and expertise.

Their research has formed the basis of StopCyberbully’s cyberbullying expertise, as well. They have identified and fine-tuned peer counseling programs, awareness programs and student-developed activities, such as “Don’t Stand By – Stand Up!”

Her StopCyberbullying Toolkit for Schools recently launched in the US. It contains US$1.5 million worth of digital resources, lesson plans, animations, computer games and printables, as well as risk-management guides. Although most of the resources translate well to worldwide English cyberbullying needs, the legal discussions address only US laws at this time. Special editions are being designed for global use.