ReThink before the damage is done. That's the slogan behind some new software that is absolutely brilliant. I want to thank Mr. Regedanz for passing this information on to me. ReThink is a non-intrusive, innovative, patented software product that effectively stops cyber-bullying before the damage is done. Cyber-bullying is getting more and more prevalent today than it ever has and we must find a way to stop it. Well a 14 year old girl did just that. Trisha Prabhu, from Naperville IL, read a news story about the suicide of an 11 year old girl from Florida who had been repeatedly cyber-bullied by her classmates. She was shocked, heartbroken, and outraged. How could a girl younger than herself be pushed to take her own life? She knew something had to change. While doing her research, Trisha found that current solutions that are out there follow the STOP, BLOCK, TELL method. Victims are asked to stop what they are doing, block the cyberbully, and tell a parent or guardian. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't stop the damage before it's done, places the burden on the victim to stop the cyber-bullying, and research has found that 9 out of 10 victims don't tell anyone that they are being targeted. They suffer in silence.What Trisha developed when she was 13 years old is an app that uses patented context sensitive filtering technology to determine whether or not what the person is going to text is offensive and gives the adolescent a second chance to reconsider their decision. Without getting into a big ordeal about the brain and how it works, it is common knowledge that the pre-frontal cortex (the thinking part of the brain) fully develops later in life, thus an adolescent doesn't have the capabilities to think rational at times and they do things more spontaneous. This app will give the teenager a chance to think about what he/she is about to send. You may be thinking or doubting that this is going to work but research showed that when adolescents are alerted to ReThink their decision, they change their minds 93% of the time. In this internationally acclaimed study, using ReThink, the overall willingness of the average adolescent to post an offensive message reduced from 71% to 4%.
I will include two links for you. One is her YouTube presentation that lasts 11 minutes and the other is her website. My hope is that all the teachers would watch the presentation with their class and then visit the website. There are opportunities for our school to become involved and use this on all our connections and also for us to nominate two ambassadors from our school to implement ReThink at our school. This is a free app for Android and an iOS device.
Her Video Link
Her Website
No comments:
Post a Comment