Standing up to cyberbullying
YMCA, Google help parents ‘Be Internet Awesome’. Page 3
Students and staff at Simonds Elementary School in San Jose’s Almaden Valley show off the bilingual resource material they received Feb. 11 at workshops coordinated by the YMCA to bring Google’s Be Internet Awesome program to U.S. families. Locally, the YMCA of Silicon Valley hosted 16 workshops—including one at Robert Randall Elementary School in Milpitas—for families to get advice on how to manage cyberbullying and online safety.
Simonds Elementary School in San Jose’s Almaden Valley and Robert Randall Elementary School in Milpitas were among 16 local sites to host Feb. 11 workshops for parents looking for advice on how to manage cyberbullying and online safety.
The workshops were part of a 16-city collaboration coordinated by the YMCA to bring Google’s Be Internet Awesome program to U.S. families. More than 315 workshops were held at YMCAS throughout the country in observance of global Safer Internet Day.
YMCA of Silicon Valley hosted the local workshops at local elementary and middle school YMCA afterschool program sites. The workshops were designed to help parents instill healthy and responsible Internet habits in their children.
“As technology use among children continues to rise, parents often tell us that they feel they should be doing more to monitor their children’s screen time activity and give guidance on responsible digital citizenship,” said Mary Hashiko Haughey, senior vice president of operations at YMCA of Silicon Valley.
The free, one-hour workshops focused on Google’s Internet Code of Awesome: Be smart, alert, strong, kind and brave. The intention was to help families learn how to communicate responsibly online, recognize phishing and scams, build strong passwords, be positive and kind online, talk about questionable content with their family and explore why building healthy tech habits is important. Parents were given resources to help them continue these discussions at home.
The Safer Internet Day events marked the third time that the YMCA partnered with Google to host the workshops.
“Teaming up with YMCAS across the country helps us reach parents directly,” said Jessica Covarrubias, Google’s Be Internet Awesome lead.