ReThink, a proactive tool to prevent and stop cyberbullying

Toni Codina on 7 February 2023

A digital tool that aims to detect and stop cyberbullying at the source, before it happens. It is a proactive and effective solution to help teenagers make positive choices on social networks.

ReThink self-empowers users, giving them a second chance and encouraging them to reflect, while transforming their behaviours and attitudes. All in all, it encourages teenagers to become responsible and positive digital citizens.

Cyberbullying is the intentional abuse of another person through social networks or technological platforms, and although it is not a problem exclusive to adolescents, it is one of the age groups where it is most prevalent. Victims of cyberbullying suffer from depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, among others. Studies show that teenagers can often act on impulse, leading them to post harmful and hateful messages that they may later regret. For this reason, the ReThink technology app works in such a way that it targets potential bullies, detecting when preteens and teens try to post offensive content on networks. It then provides users with a warning and a moment to rethink the offensive content –more specifically, whether or not it is appropriate– before posting it on the networks. In this way, it aims to curb their impulsiveness.

The ReThink app is available free of charge, easy to install and quick to set up. It has been approved by teachers, principals and school administrators and its use is recommended by police forces. The results are successful: according to research, 93% of the time teenagers change their minds when given the input to rethink their decision about whether or not to post the offending content. In fact, the figures show that the willingness to post such messages is reduced from 71% to 4%.

Characteristics of innovation

New technological tool, Adolescence and youth, Self-management and participation, User empowerment, Prediction and prevention, Mental health

Localitzation

United States

Partners/ Funders

It counts on the economic support of individuals.

Genesis

ReThink was born out of the realization that cyberbullying is a serious problem affecting millions of people –in most cases, teenagers– around the world. It was the brainchild of young Trisha Prabhu in 2013, who was shocked and outraged to learn that a teenage girl had committed suicide after being repeatedly harassed by her classmates. As a result, she decided to create the technology product ReThink, which is the result of her innovative research and technological development.

Level of implementation

Since its introduction, ReThink has been expanding its reach: it has expanded beyond 136 countries and reached millions of people around the world. So, beyond being a technological product, ReThink has become a movement. It has won several awards, including the MIT Solve Elevate Award, the MIT Inspire Aristotle Award, the International Diana Award and the Innovators Urbana-Champaign Award from the University of Illinois, among others. It has also been presented at various conferences and forums of international relevance.

More information

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Innovative tools for people with communication difficulties

Toni Codina on 6 February 2023

Talking Mats (United Kingdom) and Voiceitt (Israel).

Held on March 14th, 2023, from 15:00 p.m. to 16:30 p.m.

Simultaneous translation from Catalan and Spanish into English was provided.

Speech and expression difficulties are common in people with disabilities, autism, brain injuries or dementia, and this often prevents them from expressing their opinions, feelings and aspirations in the educational stage, in a medical visit, in court or in many other life situations. At the same time, it makes it difficult for them to hold a conversation with other people or with automatic voice recognition systems (xatbots, assistants, robots…).

In recent years, solutions have been developed in other countries that provide innovative solutions to overcome these difficulties with the support of technology and visual communication tools. These solutions are being used by more and more people, from more countries and from more and more different linguistic backgrounds. In this Innobreak we will present two of them, one from the United Kingdom and the other from Israel:

Talking Mats, a visual communication tool for people with communication difficulties (disability, autism, brain damage, dementia…). It is a tool for thinking, expression and comprehension support because it allows to process concepts through the breakdown of information, giving time to respond and reducing memory requirements. In addition, the quality of the information is improved by giving control to the respondent and providing a structured framework for open-ended questions. The tool is very useful in areas such as education, social health and justice. Since the project was launched in 2011, the tool has been used by more than 14,000 people in 40 countries.
Voiceitt, a voice assistant for people with speech impairments that allows them to use the intelligent voice assistants on the market: Alexa (Amazon), Sirius (Apple), Google Assistant (Google), Bixby (Samsung), etc. It is an accessibility application that learns the particularities of the atypical speech of these people and translates it to conventional voice assistants, making it possible for them to use these assistants for their conversations and daily routines like the rest of citizens. The app analyzes the voice data, cadence, breathing, pauses, etc. of each person and through automatic learning learns and models the speech patterns to understand what is being said.

Speakers:

Margo Mackay, Talking Mats (United Kingdom)
Rachel Levy, Voiceitt (Israel)

With the support of:

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Tools for the digital transformation of basic social services

Toni Codina on 2 February 2023

Training program for technical staff of Social Services of local authorities.

Catalonia: 8 free editions in 2023 for City and County Councils. Consult the calendar of editions.

Other Comunidades Autónomas: editions on request

More information

Digital transformation is a process of change that our society has experienced and continues to experience every day. A process of change with a strong impact on society, organizations and citizens of the 21st century, and also on the social services sector.

It is a path that has only just begun, that has a long way to go and that involves a change in the approach, the way of working and the way of orienting care in social services. Because transforming organizations and the social sector digitally is not only about virtualizing procedures that were previously done in person or on paper, but also involves changes in the forms of management, organization, provision of services and interaction with the people served.

This course aims to provide a response to the need of the basic teams of social services of the local administrations to be trained to use the new tools that today technology puts at their disposal, and to be trained to successfully face the changes of all kinds that the use of these new tools entails for the professionals, for the teams and for the organizations.

Goals

To train in the use of basic digital tools useful for the daily activity of the professionals who make social intervention.
To offer guidelines for the management of the changes that digitalization entails in basic social services teams.
To show innovative digital solutions for basic social services that some more advanced local authorities are piloting or implementing.

Recipients

Professionals (social workers, educators, administrative staff…) of the basic social services teams (SSB) of the local administrations.

Editions (2023)

a) Catalonia (in catalan)

Aimed at professionals of County Councils (in collaboration with the Catalan Association of Municipalities). Check the days and times in the PDF program:

Edition Vegueria Terres de l’Ebre. Start date: March 3rd
Edition Vegueria Ponent. Start date: April 21st.
Edition Vegueria Alt Pirineu-Aran. Start date: May 19th.
Edition Vegueria Penedès. Start date: September 15th.
Edition Vegueria Tarragona. Start date: October 20th.

Aimed at professionals of City Councils (in collaboration with the Department of Social Rights of the Generalitat de Catalunya). Consult the days and schedules in the PDF program:

Edition 1. Start date: June 7.
Edition 2. Start date: October 4.
Edition 3. Start date: November 8.

b) Other Autonomous Communities

Editions commissioned by the Autonomous or Local Administrations interested.

Format and duration

Online, through the Zoom platform. The course has a duration of 15 hours distributed in 8 sessions of 2 hours (except for the introductory session of 1 hour). The workshops combine theoretical reflection with practical training in the use of various digital tools, and include asynchronous activities of personal work and activities in small working groups.

The course is based on the digital tools available to local councils in order to adapt the training as much as possible to their realities and expectations.

Tallers:

1h – Current challenges of digital transformation in the social services sector 2. 2h – Managing changes associated with digital transformation in BSS teams.
2h – The management of changes associated with digital transformation in BSS teams.
2 h – Digital tools useful in the day-to-day work of BSSs
2 h – e-Government tools and services useful to BSSs
2 h – Digital tools for individual, group and community intervention with BSSs
2 h – Cases of use and good practices in the use of digital tools for BSSs
2 h – The new e-Social of the Catalan System of Social Services
2 h – Innovative digital tools for BSS being tested or implemented in some local authorities.

Price and subscriptions

a) Catalonia

Professionals from County Councils: free registration through the Catalan Association of Municipalities. The application for registration opens two weeks before the start of each edition.
Profesionales de Ayuntamientos: inscripción gratuita por medio de este formulario de inscripciones.

b) Other Autonomous Communities

Interested Autonomous or Local Administrations can write to formacio@isocial.cat. The price of an edition on request is 4,695 €.

Teaching team

5 experts linked to Administrations, universities and social entities with experience in Social Services and their digital transformation. You can consult the names and CVs of the teachers in the course brochure by clicking on the “More information” button.

Coordination

Francesc Oliveras

Computer scientist. Self-employed professional consultant in ICT in the field of Social Services, eAdministration and Electronic Signature. From 2007 to 2009 he was General Manager of the public company CatCERT. Since 2010 he is responsible for the technical office of the GESS information system, which serves the basic social services professionals of 5 county agencies in Girona to manage and monitor the users of social services. Since 2023, he has been coordinating the DigitaliSSB project of the iSocial Foundation.

In collaboration with:

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Memory Center Platform, an interactive platform that brings the experiences of migrants closer together

Toni Codina on 31 January 2023

Multimodal and multilingual digital platform that collects heritages, testimonies, experiences and narratives around the phenomena of displacement and forced migration in order to help build complex identities and foster social cohesion between refugees and European host societies.

It harnesses the benefits of innovative digital and artistic tools to facilitate cultural exchange, storing and managing a wide range of content (documents, videos, images, texts). It is available in 6 languages (English, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Greek and Polish) and is accessible to institutions, academics, artists and the general public.

This software platform represents the final archive of all the content produced throughout the life of the So-Close project, so of cultural heritage on refugees and migrants. In fact, it is the culmination of the project: it stores and makes it possible to search, view, share, download and aggregate the materials created. Thus, the MCP contains digital maps, virtual exhibitions that allow the sharing of tangible and intangible elements of the countries of origin and host countries, and interactive and immersive video documentaries. In this sense, the MCP interacts with the three digital tools created during the project –Storymap, Webdoc and Exhibition– with the aim of sharing and pooling cultural heritage. Apart from preserving and gathering all these generated contents, it also connects them with similar initiatives thanks to the social network tracker and allows the user to be a co-creator of new cultural materials.

In addition, this platform provides a number of basic accessibility functions –such as font size modification or font adaptation for people with dyslexia, among others– for people with functional diversity. These functions can be easily activated by users.