2015 Student First Anti-Bullying Forum

This past week was a very exciting event. It was the third provincial student anti-bullying forum held in Saskatchewan.  The most exciting part for me was the fact that we were able to host the forum completely online and managed to have over 9,000 students participate.
 

As part of Saskatchewan's Action Plan to Address Bullying and Cyberbullying, the Ministry of Education hosted the third Student First Anti-Bullying Forum on the theme, "Stand Up to Bullying: Activating the Bystander." 
This free online forum was open to students in grades 6 to 12.  It was designed to foster responsible online behaviour and encourage young people to engage in positive, collaborative activities to build safe, caring, inclusive and accepting communities, both in school and online. 


The week-long event featured a live broadcast in English and that included a keynote by Dr. Alec Couros from the University of Regina.  You can watch the full broadcast in English here. We also hosted a live chat later in the week using Twitter and a conference app called LiveCube that added a gamefication component to the event. 
 It was amazing to work with Dr. Couros and Katia Hildebrandt to organize such an engaging and exciting week for Saskatchewan students. 

Thanks team for the great kick-off to our week-long online youth forum. #sasksf @kbhildebrandt @courosa pic.twitter.com/vYRte6QO3x

— Joanna Sanders (@MmeSanders) November 17, 2015

To help ensure we met the needs of our French students in the province, I was able to offer a similar keynote in French as well as help to support a live chat. It was so great to have the opportunity to present to students again, especially on such an important topic. Here is the video of my presentation to French students on the topic of digital citizenship: