Week 6 – blog assignment

The outside links:

I learnt the term Cyberbullying from the website that a new submission to the Australian Federal government to enhance children’s online safety. This is a term referring to one child bullying the other via interactive technology. Then I also found another website named www.stopcyberbullying.org which is an organization promoting “Stop Cyberbullying” to the children. There are a lot of information about what cyberbullying is exactly meant and advices to prevent it. There was a StopCyberBullying Youth Summit that was held on Mar 22, 2014 in New Brunswick. More government are working on bills to promote the internet safety for children.

Thorough search one are of the site. What do you find?

There are tips advising how to prevent or stop cyberbullying. The key is to educate the children about the consequences such as losing their ISP or IM accounts. It is also important to teach them to respect others and to take a stand against bullying of all kinds. As there are different types of cyberbullying, there is no "one size fits all" solution. Cyberbullying is different from traditional schoolyard bullying. The motives and the nature of cyber-communications, as well as the demographic and profile of a cyberbully,  differ from their offline counterpart.

New information available:

I found some early childhood best practices in New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute website. It has information about general best practices in early childhood education and Best Practices in Infants and Toddlers. Also, it has other useful links in relation to best practices from other websites. These are useful tips for educators.

The website adds to my understanding of equity and excellence in early care and education:

I learnt that Australian Government has a funding named Australian Government’s Child Care Flexibility Fund. This is to support the provision of flexibility in early childhood care and education to anything to meet the needs of the families. This includes provision of non-standards hours, flexible sessions and enrolment, working in combination with other services and flexible location or service delivery. This flexibility would be able to accommodate the diverse needs of children and families from different background and culture. (http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au)

Other insights about issues and trends

There is an Edutech Congress & Expo this week in Brisbane. The Leading education thinker Sir Ken Robinson has drawn the attention of the participants in three concepts he brought along:

• these are revolutionary times — we live in times with no precedent

• to meet the revolution we have to think differently on talent and ability

We have to behave differently and run institutions differently.

“Technology liberates and changes the world. It helps us conceive of things we would never have thought of. Yet when most tools have unintended consequences Robinson's words reminded educators to do what they do best — think, choose, guide.” (early childhood Australia website)

 

References

Early Childhood Australia website, extracted from http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/supporting_best_practice/supporting_best_practice.html

New York early childhood Professional Development Institute, extracted from http://www.earlychildhoodnyc.org/resources/aboutECE_bestPractices.cfm

Stop cyberbullying organization, extracted from http://www.stopcyberbullying.org