1. Today´s teachers and the internet??
In my work as a assistant/teacher at a secondary special school, I have a lot of conversations with other
teachers and educators. Often it is about issues around students' social problems and how they often
misunderstand each other. The work also includes being supportive with the students and helping them
with conflict management. Often students misunderstand each other at social media as they sit alone at the
computer after school.
Usually the conflicts start online and continues at school. Or the conflict starts in school and continues on
the web. This creates a gap between students and teachers because teachers are not as familiar with the lives
of young people online.
With the Internet and the computer, students have a life online that teachers may not be interested in, or do
not understand. Is it because they don´t want to learn or should it be in there curriculum?

2. For example
A student sitting outside the classroom with a sad look. She would not join the lesson. A teacher tries
to find out what happened and asks if something happened at home before she came to school. The
teacher also investigates if another student said something? the girl shakes her head.
The Teacher is thinking and thinking, but she/he do not really know what the problem is?
What should she/he do?

3. The same situation with the girl who sits outside the classroom. Instead of asking a lot of different
questions, I only ask one single question.
Has something happened on the web?
The girl nods and answers that she wrote on Facebook yesterday that she would kill herself. Now her
friends are worried and the girl does not dare to go into the class because she does not know how the
rest of the class will respond.
The girl is ashamed of what she wrote and the other students have written a lot on her log and so on. I
ask her to tell me more, and we agree to talk to other students and teachers. The teacher then has a
session where students in the class together are talking about what to write on the web and how to
handle it.

4. Almost all teachers have an understanding of how students solve conflicts, speaks out, says sorry and shake hands,
that is something that most teachers are very good at. Now there is much that is new in the case of conflicts on the
internet. While the wonderful feeling that the students get when they meet new friends on the internet and get
confirmed by them. There are a lot of places where students can meet new friends and people of all kinds.
So the question is where dose the students turn if they encounter problems online?
Is it the teachers who are around the students most of the day?
Is it to friends or parents?
How can we the teachers show students that we are there to support them even when it comes to conflicts on the
net?