Students Spread Happiness to Combat Haters and Trolls

This year in #DigCit class, we dove into our study of Haters and Trolls a little differently.  Thanks to CommonSense Media, (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/digital-bytes) we watched a short video explaining what haters and trolls are.  We then discussed something specific we learned about haters and trolls from the video, sharing any experiences we had with them.  Next, the students were given either video A or B and a specific question for the assigned video.  They were to then make a graphic representation in our collective Google Slides: https://goo.gl/HpYRYs present to the class about their answer to the question.  All of that was meant to get them thinking critically about haters and trolls and the impact they can have, as well as how they can combat them.

Here is the introduction to the project, written by the students:

In our Digital Citizenship (#digcit) class we are learning about haters and trolls. Mrs. Murat places an emphasis on #stuvoice in her classroom through the use of social media and sharing our work on her blog. Mrs Murat allowed Hannah and me(Val) and to use her blog to share out our ideas about haters and trolls. Haters are people who post negative things on social media to get something out of it. Trolls are people who go on social media looking for certain things like a family who just lost a loved one. Once they find what they are looking for they will post rude or hurtful comments to upset the family and friends.  In this project our class watched two different videos on haters and trolls http://digitalbytes.commonsensemedia.org/  (scroll down to the bottom, hover over generation, choose haters and trolls, then scroll down to the bottom and click continue, then click either video) then answered various questions on them. Here are some tips on how to avoid haters and trolls : 1. Don’t respond to them. Ignore the comments 2. Report any negative or hurtful comments on your page 3. Have a trusted adult monitor your social media page so they can get rid of it before you see it Use the 30% rule (30% will love, 30% will hate it, 30% will not care. Only think about the 30% who will love it) 

While diving into haters and trolls, I came across this campaign on Twitter and we decided that this would be a great way to flood the internet with positive messages on how they use social media to solve problems instead of create them!

Here are some of the tweets

Next, the students had to choose between the following tasks. or they could propose one to me.  The only limitation was that they could not use a platform that they had previously used. 

Choice 1

Choice 2

Some of their projects are linked below and I think most of them will be using these as evidence of how they are transitioning to digital leaders! 

Project Links:

https://youtu.be/EfxNn2heDIk

https://animoto.com/play/WvqWUUbdZ4ea8Ti5ah3X6w

https://youtu.be/VKKlYUhRZHo

https://youtu.be/g0MlrURR_rU

https://www.wevideo.com/view/611115035

http://explee.com/video/6q730

Lastly, they scheduled out tweets for #IDOH (International Day of Happiness) for Sunday, March 20th.  Here are some of their tweets to spread the happiness!

Spread the happiness and combat the trolls and haters!