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Home » Cyberbullying: Cyberslammed by Kay Stephens and Vinitha Nair

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Cyberslammed: featured book review

Cyberslammed by Kay Stephens and Vinitha Nair

Understanding, preventing, combating and transforming the most common cyberbullying tactics.

An essential cyberbullying resource

Cyberslammed is an innovative guide to the nature and scope of cyberbullying. It provides positive perceptual and psychological techniques to help understand and minimise the effects. Tactics to prevent and deal with cyberbullying are discussed in a workbook format well-suited for use in schools and home education.

The book’s stated aim is: “To help decrease incidents of cyberbullying by encouraging self-protection in digital environments, informing both educators and students about what constitutes potential criminal activities, as well as increasing public awareness and promoting ethical behavior online.”

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon is broken down into discrete areas: the digital pile on, rating websites, imposter profiles, the hater’s club, sexting, and video jacking. Each area is explored with illustrative examples and developed into strategies for prevention, intervention, coping and resolution. The perspectives of the victim and the bully are highlighted to offer a practical and neutral overview for educators and parents.  Group activity plans, vocab word banks and topics for discussion offer ready to roll resources for schools and youth groups.

What this book does well

The intelligent psychological approach to techniques in this book are ideally situated for use with small groups in schools. The methods described transcend trends in current technology and focus on positive mental outcomes. This ensures the books will remain a useful resource for years to come and won’t become quickly outdated as websites and internet usage evolves. By focusing on the human element this book has ensured its place as a long term investment for schools, home educators and parents.

The advice is practical and based on real-world case studies. It isn’t dumbed-down or generalized in any way. The activities explore rather than instruct the young people and there’s a strong sense of guided discovery to create a genuinely positive resolution to each issue raised. Not stopping at what cyberbullying is, this book creates an environment for pupils to ask why and how it develops and which strategies work best when dealing with it.

What is unique about this book

This book wins through its sheer versatility. It’s clearly at home in schools, but equally useful as a resource for camps, youth clubs, seminars, consultancy, bullying conferences, teacher education, and parenting.

The book is aimed at the US market, specifically middle and high schools, but would be equally useful as a resource to cover online bullying in the UK National Curriculum for Citizenship & PSHE in KS3 and KS4 and Ofsted guidance regarding eSafety.  Similarly, the book would also be useful for schools in Australia, specifically with regard to Overarching Learning Outcome 13:  “Students recognise that everyone has the right to feel valued and be safe, and, in this regard, understand their rights and obligations and behave responsibly.”

How to buy the book

Cyberslammed is available from Amazon and can be shipped worldwide. Cyberslammed also has a website here.