SID 2009 in Germany – cyberbullying campaign and many other activities planned Preparations for Safer Internet Day are well advanced in Germany. As in previous years, we are calling on organisations, institutions, companies and schools to participate with a range of events and activities.

The German Awareness Node klicksafe started planning SID 2009 in the middle of last year. Considering the current issues that are arising in the field of internet safety, it was decided that the focus of klicksafe activities for SID 2009 was to be cyberbullying. In order to give schools and teachers the best-possible tools for dealing with the topic in class, an additional module to klicksafe’s handbook for teachers was developed. This module, “What to do about Cyberbullying?”, offers background information and six worksheets for classroom use. The worksheets cover a range of topics including defining cyberbullying, causes and consequences, prevention possibilities and also the current legal situation.
 
This module was launched in October 2008 together with a call for action: schools are asked to be proactive when dealing with cyberbullying by using the klicksafe module for project days or in class on Safer Internet Day. Among those schools taking part and sending their results to klicksafe, workshops on cyberbullying with a German TV actor will be raffled. Also, a declaration of self-commitment for schools was prepared, so they can sign it as a school and thus actively and visibly state their commitment against cyberbullying. On Safer Internet Day, klicksafe will hold a press event at a school in Berlin, informing the public about Safer Internet Day in general, the cyberbullying school campaign and also about the initial results of the use of the module in schools. Speakers at the press event will be the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the directors of the Media Authorities that run the klicksafe project – Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westfalia –, and experts from the field of bullying and cyberbullying.

Many other institutions, organisations and companies as well as schools and media have already indicated a strong interest in taking part on SID 2009, and many of them have already begun to plan for this. For example, the German hotline jugendschutz.net together with the Foundation Media Literacy Forum Southwest (MKFS) and the Media Education Research Association Southwest (mpfs) will hold an event in Mainz, presenting both the new KIM-Study (Children, Information, Multi-Media) and a new instant messenger for children, developed by Microsoft in cooperation with the FSM (Voluntary Self-control for Multimedia Service Providers, running the second German hotline IBSDE together with eco). Moreover, the German Federal Ministry for consumer protection has organized a conference together with BITKOM (German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media) about “Data protection in the information society”.

Many other events, both large and small, including online activities, information evenings and workshops are already planned. A list of all activities can be found online at www.klicksafe.de/sid.