Training Sources

CyberTraining Parents

Claudia Stelter; TinkoStoyanov ; Mona O'Moore ;JoãoAmado ;ØysteinSamnøen ;Birgit Kimmel &TaliHeima.

Lifelong Learning Programe

2011

English

Portuguese, Spanish, English

European

Online Publication

School bullying

Headmasters, Teachers, Parents

This portal is the result of the CyberTraining Parents in Europe Project, which had as main objective offering formation courses about cyberbullying. These courses were mainly directed to teachers and families. Specifically, there are four courses included: in-person course for trainers. online course for trainers, in-person course for families and self-directed course for families. Additionally, a package of resources for the development of said courses is offered.
The in-person courses are developed in each one of the participating countries, with, at least, twenty addressees in each one of them. In these courses, several resources apart from the theoretical presentations are used, such as practice oriented elements, role playing games, group work and other interactive elements. On the other hand, the national courses received support from a forum which offered the participants the opportunity of interchanging experiences with other participants, both at a national and international level.
The online courses, at an international level, include the online and moderated formation courses. These courses were developed with, at least, 15 trainers from all Europe.
In each course it is intended to achieve a basic understanding of the new technologies of information and communication and safety on the Internet by the addressees. Particularly, it is focused in raising awareness of cyberbullying, its sources, prevalence and effects, legal affairs at a national and international level, as well as strategies for its prevention and intervention of cybernetic intimidation.
Lastly, there are offered several self-directed courses to ensure the future sustainability of the project and that are specifically directed to parents. Their design is based on moderated courses and has been adapted for individual, online students.

The material on this website is actually a group of resources of great value, as they count with the backup of having been previously experimented with more than one hundred people from different European countries. Nowadays, it can be found available on the website both the self-directed resource and the package of courses for trainers.

The self-directed course for families is a very demanded resource because families tend to be sensitive about their necessity of formation in issues such as cyberbullying, but do not usually have the time to receive such formation. Therefore, a self-directed course is a very good strategy to cover this necessity. It is a good tool to allow the parents of the students to have at their disposition a resource that helps them to help their sons and daughters when these see themselves involved in these kind of problems, not only as aggressors or victims, but also as spectators, active to a certain extent.

The package of resources for trainers is very well designed. The structure is logical and ordered and the content is very useful and varied. It is composed by three modules: Introduction to New Media, Introduction to Cyberbullying and How Parents Can Detect, Intervene and Prevent Cyberbullying. Each module is carried out by different experts and has a common structure: summary, introduction, a sequence of sections that synthesizes the new scientific discoveries about the main aspects of the main topic of study, conclusions, resources and references. The activities that are included in the theoretical description of the different sections deserves special mention, since it is of great help for its understanding. Furthermore, both the resources and the bibliographic references are helpful.

Another strong point of the material is its great availability, since it can be easily found on the Internet. Thus, having an Internet connection one could view the resources completely free, even without the need of registration.

Regarding the diffusion and availability of the material we can say that it is excellent. As mentioned before, it is available for free on the Internet, in online format and in PDF, with the possibility of viewing the content in seven languages: English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Norwegian and Arabic.

Considering all of the above, we can confirm the existing relation between the CyberTraining manual and the European School Safety Net Project, as they look for successful intervention strategies to achieve a complete intervention of teachers when facing the different cases of cyberbullying, a type of bullying that is a risk factor for early school leaving.