ByBoo

During the summer and fall of 2006, Interactive Institute Studio [12-21] and Reaktor Sydost (a regional resource center for film and young communication) worked on a survey on digital bullying. The most important result from the survey is that if we want to understand and deal with the  issues of digital bullying, we need to start with a better understanding of digital social spaces as extended "ordinary" social spaces.

With this conclusion as our starting point, we started working on a one-year project (or thematic group) called Byboo, in 2007. In this project we worked together with the 3rd and 4th grade at a small elementary school in the village of Johannishus. Both the kids, their teachers and parents were involved, and we worked together with a range of activities about safety aspects and friendship - online as well as offline. We arranged meetings where we discussed and worked with practical and ethical tools in order to deal with digital life. We came togehter both in the classroom and online at www.byboo.se, a community we built exclusively for the project. (A bit like Lunarstorm or Playahead, but simpler and with a local touch).

The project was very successful, the kids felt important and the adults learned a lot about the kids´ everyday digital life. Although, we noticed that the kids quickly "grew out of" the community and became much more of a "msn generation" (instant messaging) than a community generation. However, this also shows how quickly the digital platforms and ways of communications change in today´s society, and how important it is to find ways to become smarter together, both kids and adults, when it comes to these matters.

Feel free to read our publications abot the project; "Social relations at new digital arenas - about bullying, sharing knowledge, and a village community online" by Ida Qvarnström and Jessica Linde, (the first publication of the Young Communication book series), and "Digitalis philosophises" - a discussion booklet about social relations and communication online as well as offline. We produced "Digitalis" toghether with a network called SIP here in Växjö (order at www.digitalisfilosoferar.se).

Both during the project and afterwards we have been working on getting our publications out to teachers, and especially teachers education programmes in our region. But also many interested parents have read and used our material. We have also arranged meetings with a major company, a supplier of IT tools for schools, and shared our ideas and experiences from our work with them.

Contact

Ida Qvarnström
Reaktor Sydost
E-mail: ida@reaktorsydost.se
www.reaktorsydost.se