Up2Us Campaign Inspiration
The students at Mercy College in Coolock, in Dublin, had some fantastic ideas to put the Up2Us campaign into action in their school. As part of the YSI week, Mercy’s transition year students held an Internet Safety Awareness Week.
Here’s what they organised:
- Presentations at assembly time to each year group
- The reading out of Internet Safety Messages on the intercom every morning for that week
- An Internet Safety thoughts board
- The running of an Internet Safety competition – best poem, best superhero, best poster, crossword, word search and a lunchtime scavenger hunt
- Asking students to sign a petition against the website Ask.fm
- Conducting a survey on internet safety at the school
- Carried out Random Acts of Kindness on Internet Safety day (Our fave!) like giving free hot chocolates to students that did RAK
- Created a 4-minute video on Internet Safety called ‘Your safety is ON the LINE’
Nickole from Dublin held a Diversity Day celebration in his school. Here he outlines what this involves:
“Every year, my school holds a Diversity Day to help raise awareness of the different ethnicities in my school. We do this in order to hopefully eliminate bullying going around the school by celebrating the diverse cultures we have in our school. We do two surveys in total: one BEFORE the day and one AFTER.”
“Surprisingly, the results show that there isn’t much bullying around the school, which is reassuring to know, and the cases where there was bullying were resolved. Furthermore, we make an exhibition of the different cultures in our school to raise awareness of the fact that our students come from different backgrounds and that we accept them into our school community.”
“The Diversity Day is held on the last week of March before the Easter Holidays. This year, the theme is cyberbullying and plans are in the making for the day.”
Supplies needed: Posters, art supplies, wristbands
Target audience: Teenagers, teachers
Top advice for running an anti-bullying activity like this: “Keep it simple and interactive. Through personal experience, I have found sifting through statistics and a binding script is a waste of time. Confidence and trust is key to a memorable presentation. Treat your audience the way you would like to be treated. Gain their trust. Get them involved in an activity. Don’t be fixated on one person (this can get awkward and creepy), circulate around the room!”
Caitlin and Robyn from Finglas, Dublin created and led an anti-bullying programme for the first year students in their school. Robyn explains what they did:
“Caitlin and I have been running an anti-bullying campaign with first years. In it, we get their take on cyberbullying, show them videos, ask them to fill out questionnaires and make posters with them which are displayed in their classrooms.”
Supplies needed: Posters, presentation, Youtube to show an anti-bullying video
Target audience: Teenagers
Top advice for running an anti-bullying activity like this: “Take all of the students’ ideas on the board. Make note of what they are saying. Analyse their answers in the questionnaires. If successful with younger kids, try teenagers and then gradually move onto parents/ teachers.”
Adam from Thurles made a video to help people understand how messages can be misinterpreted online. Here he explains more:
“I’ve made a short video that poses a question: whether those seen in the video are bullying each other or just having banter. It’s for the audience to decide once they view the video. Those who watch the video at the Safer Internet Day event will be featured in another video that will be used to help promote the work of Webwise. The video can be accessed here. ”
Supplies needed: Camera, laptop, editor
Target audience: Anyone
Top advice for running an anti-bullying activity like this: “Get a group of people to help. Come up with a fun/interactive/doable idea, find out if there’s an interest and then implement it.”
Drimnagh Castle
Success of Drimnagh Castle’s Cyber Bullying Awareness Week
Drimnagh Castle’s cyberbullying awareness video
Emmet from Dublin helped create a school-wide anti-cyberbullying campaign. He explains in more detail here:
I held an Anti-Cyber Bullying Campaign in my school entitled ‘Let’s kick it out!’. We facilitated workshops for first-year students to educate them about the topic of cyberbullying and ways of combatting it. Methods include simple instructions such as utilizing the ‘Block Button’ and ‘Report Button’. The response was great, and the students felt the workshops were very beneficial. We created an awareness video for the workshops and we also created an edited version for Primary schools which we also facilitated workshops in. We held all this during Anti-Bullying week.
Supplies needed: Posters, presentation, art supplies
Target audience: Children and teenagers
Top advice for running an anti-bullying activity like this: Just get talking with your principals about permission to hold any type of workshops or campaign. The best thing to do is to get a teacher who is passionate about the topic or one who is willing to lend a hand to help with the whole running of things. This can be helpful as in workshops it helps to keep the class under control. Most importantly have fun doing what you’re doing. Try and make the workshops as fun as possible within reason of course. No one wants to listen to a boring presentation to make it as interactive and as fun as you can.
Transition Year students from Presentation College, Carlow ran a year-long campaign to tackle cyberbullying in their school. Their campaign involved a social networking page, drama workshops, talks and peer education. Here they describe what they did:
“We ran an awareness campaign. We brought Cyclone Theatre to the school to perform their anti-bullying drama. We also invited the local Garda to deliver “The Connect With Respect” programme. We got Bully4U and iResource to give cyberbullying workshops.”
“We also have written our own cyberbullying workshop and are in the process of visiting local primary schools.”
“We have joined with Comhairle na nog Waterford to host a Cyber Day and got students to sign the Cyber Code.”
To get students in his school thinking about the topic of cyberbullying Thomas from Thurles conducted a survey. He then gave a presentation to students on cyberbullying to address issues that came up in the survey. He gives advice here:
“I’ve completed a survey with 1st-year students and gathered that data. I am now planning on getting 3rd-year students to take the same survey to compare age groups. I will then give a presentation to students on dealing with cyberbullying.”
Supplies needed: Poster, presentation, wristbands
Target audience: Teenagers
Top advice for running an anti-bullying activity like this: “Be clear and concise in what you want. Prepare questions that may be asked and make sure to proofread your project/surveys before handing them out. Show the projects/surveys to teachers to make sure that the questions and information are appropriate for the age group.”
For more great ideas, like how to make a movie, organise a scavenger hunt, or more – check out our Safer Internet Day page.
