The Cyberbullying Research Center, based in the United States, has a large page of resources (mostly in PDF form with watermarks) all with the APA citation laid out for you and advertising their book. Interesting items include:
- A list of abbreviations used for sms/IM/etc. Its not complete and quite a few of them I don't recognise, but if you are a concerned parent and you don't know it would be a good place to start.
- An instruction sheet on how to take screenshots in Windows and Apple (the sheets are copywrited 2009 so I assume it covers the most recent version). If bullying occurs, take a screenshot, save it and you then have a visual record of the incident.
- An instruction sheet on how to view email headers in a range of programs. Email headers contain the routing information of the received email and can be used to trace the source of the email. This information is not preserved if the email is forwarded. The CRC suggests sending it to the victim's ISP and keeping a record of it.
- A response sheet for educators, with "investigate thoroughly" the first item and I feel this is appropriate. All reported bullying should be investigated promptly. It also suggests talking to parents, school councilors, the internet site where it occurred, keeping all evidence and using a record sheet (which they provide). It does not suggest talking to the student about what happened, possibly because they think that has already occurred.
- On the response sheet for parents "Make sure your child feels (and is) safe and secure" is the first item, with "Talk to your child about the problem in detail" appearing later in the list. These are important steps, but this can be done by more than the parents. Most of the other items in this list appear in the educators list, however they do mention that the knee jerk reaction of restricting internet access is not applied and that consequences should be applied if your child was cyberbullying.
- Unfortunately they do not provide a response sheet for children that are being cyberbullied. The aim of the site is to provide resources for parents and teachers, but this is no reason not to provide a list of things you should do if, maybe even while, you are being bullied.
- As mentioned previously, they provide an incident report. It provides room for details of the reporter, victim, bullies, witness, a description and location of the event, what took place and the action plan to implement. This is a good sheet if all of the information for it is known, however what do you do if you do not know the identity of the bullies? There is sheet to record incidences of bullying as they occur.
- Prevention guides for parents and educators. For educators its some educational strategies to create a positive environment, though it does suggest using peer monitoring (which will only work if they are not doing it together). For parents its suggestions like usage contracts, filtering (eww), usage contracts (more on that later), educating them, watching for warning signs, "Establish that all rules for interacting with people in real life also apply for interacting online", "Cultivate and maintain an open, candid line of communication with your children" and "Teach and reinforce positive morals and values". Those last three are really important, thought the last two are something parents have been doing long before the internet was first thought up.
- Written internet/phone use contracts between parents and children. I think it would be best to say this flat out rather than obscurer it - I don't like the idea of this, they imply a level of mistrust already exists and children will pick up with that. A verbal agreement along the lines of "Can I trust you not to look up porn if I'm not watching?", "yes" would be better, along with a statement about "broken trust" if they do something wrong. It doesn't have to be porn in particular, but hey, talking about it straight out might be better.
- How to start a conversation on cyberbullying with children.
- Games (crosswords, etc) to promote discussion of cyberbullying. However, if they go like the maths word find I saw in class the other week everyone would get lost off topic.
On the topic of unknown abbreviations, the Urban Dictionary is a good place to go. Generally there are multiple entries for a single topic, but once you've been through most of them you have a good idea what people think an abbreviation, or word or phrase, means.
Still to look at, because Mother has called:
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