 Mrs. Malabour, thank you so much for joining us again in the ISD education conference. We're very happy to see you again in Qatar. And first, we'd like to know, you discussed last year about the fearful message that children and teachers and parents are exposed to when we speak about cyber safety. So from your experience, how do you see the reactions of parents and teachers when they are exposed to such a message? There is a research study recently that came out in the United States that actually showed that after teachers have been exposed to one of these scary messages in a program at school, they actually decreased the use of the internet in the classrooms. And there's been many stories circulating in the United States now from kids themselves saying that, gee, after we see one of these messages, my parents really don't want me to go online. So it's actually been a very, since last year, a watershed moment in the United States because there's been so much research now that's very clearly pointing to the inefficacy, the fact that these kind of scary messages don't in fact change behavior. There's been increasing reports about predator safety, in fact that these messages are ill-targeted, targeted to the young and appropriate aged children that in fact we're not even getting out the correct safety message to children. So what's happening in the United States now is that two things. One is we're going to be needing to realize that if we're going to talk safety we need to be getting out the correct message to the correct age. And secondly, that by scaring everyone, all that we've been successful in is scaring teachers to go online. And a very high-level official in the United States last week, in fact, spoke at a conference, a very public conference, and said, it is critical that we get our children online. It's critical to their success in the 21st century. And in essence saying that we need to get through this fear. This is not helping us. We've done a very poor job of delivering an important message inappropriately. And so there's been a very, very big transition in the United States, a groundswell movement saying we're not going to deliver that kind of fear message anymore. We're going to start delivering a much more appropriate safety message. But more importantly, we realize how critical it is to get kids online. And that's where we're going to focus our efforts. So you said that when teachers dealt with cyber safety, they were a bit uncomfortable with the topic itself. So why was that? Well, over the past 10 years, where have the teachers gotten their information from? They've gotten it from law enforcement. And the law enforcement message has been one of fear and scare tactics. And the media message has been one of fear and scare tactics. So this is where they've been getting their information. There's been some misinformation given out in the public about studies that were indeed very carefully researched. And then misunderstood or the results misinformed. So it's much like 10 years ago, the United States had a program on what we called a stranger danger message, which kind of said to kids, be careful of strangers. And in fact, the statistics show that it wasn't strangers. They should have been careful of it. It was inappropriate touching by people they knew. So the message was really off target. And then much the same thing is happening in the United States with this safety message. But there's also been some new research talking about, or I should say not so new research. Research has more recently been publicized in the area of social norms. What should we be doing? What kind of messages should are effective in changing behavior? What kind of messages should we be giving to children? And in the arena in research of social norms, it's saying that what we should be doing is having kids within a group discuss what's okay and what's not okay. And so that kind of group conversation has been very successful, for example, in dealing with the use of seat belts and in anti-smoking campaigns in the U.S. So when the kids as a group decided as a norm that smoking isn't cool or that you have to wear seat belts, that kind of peer pressure can work in a positive way. And the research is beginning to say, let's begin to, in this arena of safety, use the same kind of method. Why are we using these ineffectual scare tactics that haven't worked before, that have never worked? So cyberbullying is one of the areas that many parents and teachers and even children are concerned about. So what do you think, basically from the studies you've came across, what are the latest findings about cyberbullying? Some of the most recent findings and the most important findings are that the message, we should be talking more to the bystanders, the people that are observing the cyberbullying rather than speaking directly to the cyberbullying, that a much more effective manner is talking to the group and observing this behavior and saying you need to speak up and step in and say that this isn't okay. The findings have also said that children are very unlikely to tell adults what's going on. And so that a mechanism the school might set up is a way for a child to let someone know anonymously or quietly some mechanism that they can tell someone. Most often that's a peer. So then if you've effectively set up some information in the school the peer knows that they need to speak up because it's very, very unlikely that the child being targeted will speak up. I think those are the two most important findings. And I think it goes back to getting a communication out within the school community that this is not acceptable behavior. And that's informing parents, informing and letting them know what's going on. Digital citizenship was one of the topics we discussed in the morning. So who is a digital citizen and is it applicable to children only or to parents and teachers and what is your definition of a digital citizen? I think the concept of digital citizenship is applying to any of us that means all of us today that go online. And I think it's simply using the concept of citizenship pulling it into cyberspace saying as a citizen of any country you have responsibilities and you have privileges. And now as a citizen of cyberspace you have responsibilities and you again have privileges. But I think it comes as a bit more when people talk about cyber citizenship they're talking about understanding some safety mechanisms, understanding manners, politeness, etiquette. But they also typically broaden the definition to include digital literacy meaning that one might say well as a citizen in our face to face world a citizen is typically educated so that you can participate in your democratic processes and participate in daily discourse was a digital citizenship. You also need to be literate, you need to be educated. What does that mean? And in cyberspace digital literacy means being able to effectively retrieve information to evaluate it to discern if it's timely who the author is to understand if they're being sold something to critically think through the resources. So that becomes a very critical part of digital citizenship. What I think it's really the terminology's really been using to expand the conversation beyond the safety scare tactics we were talking about earlier. It's being used to say what we really are talking about is being a citizen in cyberspace with recognizing responsibilities, recognizing the skills that we need to have to effectively participate in the 21st century and the 21st century happens to be a large part online. I'm sure most of our viewers want to know what Cybersmart does when it tries to approach teachers and talk to them about cyber safety. So please tell us in detail the efforts you've done and the approach you've taken. Cybersmart was the first organization ten years ago to provide teachers with a standards-based curriculum in not just safety but manners, research skills and all of the skills that we're now terming digital citizenship. So for ten years our message to teachers has been that this is a part of skills that you need to provide your students with. I think what's changed over that ten years is an increasing recognition of the importance of those skills. And why is that in the United States at least increasing recognition that yes it's important for the success of the 21st century achievement and success in life but on a more immediate level we're seeing more and more students become disengaged in school. So they have a life where they're on the iPod, they're texting their friends, they're retrieving information, they want to go to a movie, they go online and they go into school and the world goes back. It's like a time warp. They go into school and the teacher is saying it's page 38 and we're looking at chapter six today. So our message to teachers is consistently but increasingly so it's been get the kids online, use the timely information. Why are you looking at a textbook when you could be looking at resources that were printed much more timely or in real time or allow a child to collaborate with the information with a classroom across the world. Why are you teaching in black and white when the world's color so to speak and so that's increasingly been our message working with teachers. What was the reaction of teachers? How did they respond? I think initially many teachers are extremely reluctant but understandably so. I think that their teachers in the United States are very pressured with meeting content and test standards and so their first reaction is my kids have to pass this test and so the first thing we need to do what we typically is make them begin to realize that to engage the students in learning they're going to have to move in this direction and interestingly it's the schools that are have the most disengaged students if you will that feel the most urgency. Unfortunately those are oftentimes the schools that have the least amount of funds but I think that it's very easy for a teacher to say well gee I'm going to keep doing that what I'm doing I think that that's going to be less of an excuse if you will because as the teachers begin to see the kids get more and more disengaged but in fairness some of our standardized testing is kind of out of sync with the kind of learning that should be going on. There's a very strong movement in the United States to begin recognizing what we call in a 21st century learning. Unfortunately a lot of that has been pegged to using Microsoft Word and using a Wiki and all these little gizmos and gadgets throwing out when really we should be talking to the teachers about what are your learning objectives what are the content objectives and how can you most effectively and most engagingly teach those objectives because then the multiple choice standardized testing that the kids are doing kind of just comes. And interestingly just a side comment the research is coming out about how we learn cognitively from the cognitive sciences of course we didn't even know 20 years ago but when you look at how you learn we learn through by making connections so this discreet kind of pushing information down in discreet units really doesn't work in terms of learning theory so if you can begin to look at cognitive learning theory how do kids learn best combine that with the notion of engaging the kids you have a very very powerful reason to begin to re-look at how we're teaching the kids so what would you say to a teacher who's really stressed about meeting the deadlines and just giving the curriculum and who doesn't really have time to maybe know more and he's just really stressed about the legislation the school and stuff so what would you say to that teacher? First I would say I understand I totally sympathize I would probably having said that I would probably go to the administrator because I think in large part this is a message that needs to come from the administration the administration of schools need to understand that first they need to set out that vision here's where we're going and then they need to do everything to allow the teacher's opportunity to buy into that we feel that comes from professional development that's why we say that when you provide professional development you allow the teachers an opportunity to make mistakes to have questions you're asking them to make a huge transition learning theory shows that typically you teach the way you learn the way you did learn well none of these teachers even the young ones even the 22 year olds did not learn in the environment we're asking them to teach in now so I really think that the administration needs to say it's okay we're going to give you this professional development experiences on a sustained basis not going to throw you in this is not a one day workshop we're going to expose you to things we're going to let you make mistakes we're going to give you the opportunity with cyber smart we typically talk to school and say let's take you through four weeks of just getting them engaged in what the vision is but we're going to do this online we have schools that say to us well come talk to us say we're not going to talk to you because we want the teachers to begin learning online because that's the way you know the way we're asking them to the direction we're asking them to move in and that goes for the younger teachers too by the way who are extremely savvy but online feel very comfortable but don't have a context of how do you pull that into a classroom and so it's really saying to giving the teachers an experience to say we're not asking you to throw out what you learned in school we're still talking about setting very clear learning objectives we're still talking about some basic strategies of classroom management and the content areas you know but we're asking you to rethink your whole pedagogy and put it in the context of the kind of world we live in today and that's a huge, huge leap for teachers to make and it's a huge leap to make in front of a classroom of 30 kids who are very critical of you so I'm very sympathetic to teachers and I think that the opportunities for professional development have been very few and far behind and it's wonderful to bring in I know near where I live the state of New Jersey has very clearly identified 21st century learning and what they did is they hired some very well known speakers and terrific people but to me sitting and listening to an inspirational person talk about the vision is nothing compared to getting them online and having them experience some of that learning themselves and maybe make mistakes in front of their, you know, with their colleagues so they feel comfortable to go those next steps So my final question, tell us about the PBS episode The Digital Nation, what was it about? Yeah, that's not a good question for it, it's not applicable to it It was, the PBS Digital Nation episode was really just looking at how we're living our lives online that was the general gist of it it was really in terms of education in terms of career opportunities in terms of just life online today if anything, it would get a very broad overview one might look at it and say I realize how much of life online is today what it reminded me of when I saw it without my background was that for us to use terms like oh this is your real life, this is your on life is completely false what we talk about is this is our face-to-face life and this is our online life but they are both very real and I think that terminology that we used to say about real life is very false now it's no distinction we are living online and we are living face-to-face and that kind of circles back to some discussions with safety with the kids about saying or with adults for that matter with teachers for that matter thinking about managing your image online for example, that's been an issue in the United States where a teacher goes and has a Facebook page and doesn't think because that's their personal life the trouble is, I'm the principal and I can see their personal life and maybe you don't want me to see that so it does all come together and there's not the clear distinction so we used to have and I think this is important conversations and very much important conversations that the administration of the school sets forth and by the way, I think the problem with the safety of the conversation is that teachers, it was like another and added extra, like why in the world and I have enough on my plate now you're asking me to do safety doesn't that belong to the computer guy in the computer lab and you really want to say first there shouldn't be a computer lab anymore it should be all integrated in every single course and it probably shouldn't be a safety lesson there probably should be an ongoing just like security experts talk about an ongoing series of messages and a general climate and teachers that feel comfortable enough in the midst of giving out an assignment to go online, take a moment a teachable moment to say let's talk about safety, I'd like to talk today about for a moment about cyberbullying in the context of we're going to have an online assignment and it really isn't appropriate to say, you know, gee your comment was stupid it might be a funny thing face to face because you can see my expression, I'm smiling and we're, you know, but it doesn't play out in online and so the conversations become more integrated I think that's the point we're hoping to go to and that's what we try to do with a rational development Thank you so much for this lovely interview