Empowering Communities to Combat Bullying: SONETBull Project Overview

1. www.sonetbull.eu

2. International Conference on Practices and competences in dealing with bullying in school SONETBullproject overview Achilles Kameas Hellenic Open University www.sonetbull.eu

3. Project baseline • Dealing with bullying requires the close collaboration of all involved stakeholders and the aggressive and continuous use of modern educational and technological means. • In SONETBull project, we combine modern pedagogical approaches(online training, peer learning, crowdsourcing) with widely used technological means (Internet, social networking, mobiles) in order to provide timely and continuous support to the entire community of stakeholders in dealing with school bullying. • The project shall design, create, implement and evaluate an online peer learning platformthat will allow stakeholders to access accredited training material on school bullying, to publish their experiences and to comment and tag the experience of their peers. www.sonetbull.eu

4. Target Groups • Teachers • School directors/principals/heads • Counselors and psychologists • Non-teaching staff • Parents • Parents’ associations • Teachers’ educators and trainers • Regional andlocal authorities • Other groups (school bus drivers, shopkeepers, care providers, etc.) www.sonetbull.eu

5. Expected outcome • A report on practices and competences in dealing with bullying in school communities (which includes a collection of best practices addressed to bullying and cyber-bullying, legal framework, real life cases) • A peer learning methodology for dealing with school bullying (which includes learning needs, training domains and methodologies, assessment criteria, learning outcomes) • Learning objects using crowdsourcing (which include digital learning objects on school bullying; taxonomy of terms and concepts related to bullying; tag cloud; about 1000 learning objects) • A online peer learning platform(which will integrate social networking tools: Blog; Forum; Wikis; Tag cloud) • The SONETBullguide on future exploitation and viability(which will detail the outcomeshaving exploitation potential together with the findings and conclusions of the project) www.sonetbull.eu

6. Needs analysis • Report on practices and competences in dealing with bullying in school communities • The consortium identified the practices and competences in dealing with bullying in school communities. This analysis presents a complete picture of school bullying in the participating countries. It contains: • Desk research on school bullying • Real life cases of bullying situations in school • Collection of best practices in dealing with school bullying • Identification of skills and competences required to deal with bullying • The report is freely available on project website www.sonetbull.eu

7. Learning and training • Peer learning methodology for dealing with school bullying • SONETBullinvests in recording, classifying and making available the experience of the school community members, contributing to the formation of a collective memory and a set of contextualized tools. Ongoing activities: • Identification of the involved actors • Identification of training domains and approaches • Specification of learning outcomes along with the assessment criteria • Core user groups are now being formed; these will be the initial trained members of the project community of users www.sonetbull.eu

8. Training and peer learning • The project offers to target group members: • Guided training adapted to the specific needs and role of each group • Peer learning based on the online exchange of experience and content • Guided training contents • School bullying • One common general module • Specially designed modules for each group • Peer learning methodology • Online platform • Peer learning is based on the provision of content by members of target groups (crowdsourcing) and the exchange of their experience www.sonetbull.eu

9. Learning objects using crowdsourcing • Learning Objects can be: • Descriptions of bullying episodes • Reference material (i.e. publications, articles, etc.) • Online lectures • News items • Learning Objects are tagged with metadata (compliant to IEEE LOM Base Schema) so that they can be easily retrieved • A tag cloud is provided to quickly access the contents • The consortium is now producing the contents of the guided training and the initial set of learning objects www.sonetbull.eu

10. Online platform • Social networking peer learning platform • The platform will provide the means to: • Receive accredited guided online training • Access a repository of certified online digital training material • Upload experience and best practice in the form of episodes • Present opinion and foster discussions using blogs and forums • Collaboratively develop training content and scenarios using wikis • Index all types of content using tags • Quickly access specific “first aid” content via mobile devices • Create discussion and special interest groups and establish communities of practice • The platform prototype will be available in a few months www.sonetbull.eu

11. Impact • Members of the school community will be trained in recognizing and reporting bullying incidents and become actively engaged in preventing school bullying. • Teachers will be empowered in using collaborative ICT tools and creating educational scenarios and digital contents. • A repository of training material, toolkits, resources and best practices on school bullying will be accessible to the project target groups. • Stakeholders (i.e. regional and local educational authorities) will become more aware of the strategies and tools to deal with school bullying. • The decision makers will become more and more aware of: • the need to integrate the bullying issues in the curricula (initial and continuing education); • the need to encourage the training of non-school actors and parents as well; • the need to propose prevention strategies and intervention protocols to the schools. www.sonetbull.eu

12. Sustainability • Activities aiming at attracting the attention of key stakeholders • Each partner acts as a national project agent, providing the interface between the national authorities and the project consortium • A Final Conference will be organized in Patras, Greece in order to introduce project results and outcomes • HOU will host, maintain and update the project portal and the training platform beyond the end of the project • Project communities • 250 initial community members during project lifetime • More members after the end of the project www.sonetbull.eu

13. SONETBULL Partnership • HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY (CTI), Greece • INITIATIVES POUR UNE FORMATION EFFICACE ASBL (INFOREF), Belgium • COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE& PRESS DIOPHANTUS (CTI), Greece • FONDAZIONE MONDO DIGITALE (FMD), Italy • DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY (DCU-ABC), Ireland. • Expertise in educational and technological innovation in distance learning • Expertise in educational content development • Expertise in peer learning • Expertise in ICT and in social networking and repository applications • Specific expertise in bullying school issues • Assurance of participation in pilot testing (via school associations) • Experience in participating and leading EU and LLP projects www.sonetbull.eu

14. HOU team Contact persons: • Achilles Kameas, project coordinator (kameas@eap.gr) • Aggeliki Kanellopoulou, project manager (akanellopoulou@eap.gr) • Ifigeneia Sotiropoulou, researcher (ifi.sotiropoulou@gmail.com) • Andreas Panagiotopoulos, developer (pandreas@eap.gr) • Konstantina Polymeropoulou, dissemination (kopo@eap.gr) www.sonetbull.eu

15. Thank you! • For more information: • Visit SONETBull • http://www.sonetbull.eu • Like SONETBull • https://www.facebook.com/sonetbull?fref=ts • Follow SONETBull • @sonetbull www.sonetbull.eu