School District Wins 'Best Hashtag' Award

The Elk Grove Unified School Distict's anti-cyber-bullying campaign received some national attention Wednesday.

The district's #UnfollowBullying campaign won an award from Edublogs Wednesday. A full press release from the district follows:

EGUSD’s #UnfollowBullying campaign wins 2012 Edublog Award 

The Elk Grove Unified School District’s (EGUSD) student-led #UnfollowBullying campaign name was selected as the Best Twitter Hashtag for 2012 by Edublogs during their virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, December 12, 2012.  #Unfollowbullying was voted the favorite from 116 nominations worldwide.

The Edublog Awards are an annual, community based program that recognizes and celebrates excellent practice in the use of blogs and social media to facilitate education. Entries are welcome from any country, in any language, from educators working with any age group or type of learner, including learner-led initiatives. Nominations open within categories in November of each year, with the awards event taking place in December following a community vote.

The district’s #UnfolllowBullying campaign recognizes that students are the ones who will lead the charge in their online communities to ensure that all students are treated with respect and kindness. The initial idea for a student-led campaign came from the EGUSD Internet Safety Task force. This group of staff, law enforcement and parent representatives felt that the most effective way to reach students is through their peers. 

Last year, Superintendent Steven M. Ladd, Ed.D., asked his student advisory committee to select a digital citizenship campaign topic, create a name and design a campaign during their four meetings in the 2011-2012 and one in the 2012-2013 school years. Students selected cyberbullying as the topic of focus. They brainstormed a number of campaign names, before selecting #UnfollowBullying.

Just within the first few weeks of the campaign, hundreds of middle and high school students pledged to support this important endeavor. More information about the campaign and highlights are posted on the #UnfollowBullying website at http://blogs.egusd.net/ub/.

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